The scene starts. You say the first line. At some point, you notice that your hands are just… there. One hand goes into a pocket. The other touches the face. Next thing you know, your arms are crossed in your lap for no reason.
This doesn’t mean you need more things to do. It just means you lost track of what your character is doing. You’ve become more focused on your own body than on your character’s task.
Hands tend to look more natural when they’re doing something, when they have a thought, a task, or a relationship. The character is straightening a chair while they’re sidestepping the question. They’re holding a letter that they don’t want to share. Or they’re keeping their arms very still because they’re waiting for an audience response. It’s not uncommon in scenes to have empty hands. Even with empty hands, you can create a clear physical sense of what is happening. If you’re approaching a scene partner to take them aside, your hands could change as you do so. If you’re protecting your personal space, or if you’re leaving, your hands could change to indicate that intent. Or you may just decide not to tell someone something, which would also change your hand position.
Some hand movements become noticeable simply because they’re there for no particular reason, and they’re out of tune with a scene. Constantly brushing hair from your face, pointing every time you want to stress a word, or making the hands always move in tandem, this kind of handiness creates a flatness to the acting that makes you seem like you’re trying too hard. So don’t try to get rid of the hand motion by itself, but instead, find the source. Are you trying to get the pause? You’ve lost your eye line. Are you trying to get the emotion that the words themselves are giving us? Try getting those things first, and the gesture will often go away on its own.
Try out a few lines or a portion of a monologue with your hands just kind of loosely hanging at the sides of your body. Read through it once without allowing any kind of hand gesture. It will feel very restricted, but it will give you an idea of where a movement or a gesture really needs to be there. Read through it again and allow yourself to do one kind of gesture or one hand action when your character decides something, or they make a choice, or when something changes or when you pick up an object. For the third read-through of the same action, allow yourself to do that one action, but get rid of all the other actions that you felt the need to do just to fill the silence.
If that’s still feeling too vague, you can work with a neutral prop. It doesn’t really matter what it is. It can be a chair, or a piece of folded up paper, or a cup, or a book. But pick something that you’ll know is important for the scene. Again, don’t just constantly play with it. Do you set it down? Do you carry it? Do you protect it? Do you offer it to your partner? Or don’t you touch it? Make a purposeful decision for what the prop’s action is. Let the prop affect your focus and your blocking, not just be something for you to distract your hands with. And whatever action you’ve taken with the prop, let that have an intent so that the audience knows why you’ve put it down, or why you’ve picked it up, or what you’ve decided with that object.
Film one of those rehearsal readings, and make sure that you’ve stepped back from your camera so that it’s actually a wider shot so you can still clearly see your own body and your hand movements. Watch through your video without any sound. Note where the hands start to draw attention. Watch it, then listen without watching. Write down all of the beats where your character shifts their thoughts, makes a pause, or places emphasis on the text. Compare those to how your hands moved. Are they helping you get through those beats, or are they just continuing on as if the text was the exact same rhythm, as if nothing was changing? Keep the ones that allow you to get something, like a character choice, a relationship, a decision, and let the others fall away so that you have your character’s movement and stillness in your body, not just your hands.