Why don't you try acting...?

Whilst out running tonight, I spotted my dentist. He was running on the opposite side of the road to me. I waved at him and shouted hello. However, as he got closer, I realised that it wasn't my dentist. To cover my mistake, I smiled like I knew him and shouted over, "How are you?" He just looked perplexed as he ran past me. He's probably sat at home now, feeling guilty and trying to recall where we might know each other from.

My dentist is a keen runner and whenever I see him we always talk about it. Or rather, he talks about it whilst I blink responses back to him, as he's usually elbow deep in my mouth. When I first met him we talked about running and this conversation segued into him mentioning that one of his favorite films is Marathon Man. I pointed out to him that, perhaps, it mightn't be the best of conversations to have before a course of dental treatment, given the torture scenes between Dr Szell and Babe.

I heard a wonderful story about an exchange between Lawrence Olivier (Dr Szell) and Dustin Hoffman (Babe) prior to filming the torture scene. Hoffman, an advocate of method acting arrived on set looking tired and dishevelled. Olivier saw him and said, "Dusty, what's wrong? You look awful." Hoffman explained that he wanted to bring as much realism to this scene as he could and so he told Olivier, "In order to prepare I haven't been to bed, I haven't eaten and I haven't washed." Olivier, looked baffled and simply replied, "Why don't you try acting?"