Though he was known for saying, "Actors are cattle," Alfred Hitchcock had highly specific ideas about film acting, which he saw in terms of contrast and counterpoint. Hitchcock was a theorist of acting, which he proved in some of his lesser-known 1930s interviews, and he has not been given his due as a director of actors. He felt that the camera was duplicitous and that it could be made to lie, and so he loved his actors to look one way and to be another, or to do one thing and suggest another. The best Hitchcock actor was one, the Master said, who could "do nothing well," to which he always added that this was actually difficult to do. This book will analyse actors in Hitchcock films, exploring what acting for Hitchcock entailed and what acting is and can be in the cinema.