an English question

@dufresne (137)
China
May 15, 2009 11:00am CST
In the sentence "I think Trump is superb on the show. He's not hamming it up. He's just playing himself and that's very hard to do on television.", does "hamming it up" mean "overplaying a role" or "playing awkwardly on the role"?
2 people like this
3 responses
scarlet_woman
@scarlet_woman (23465)
• United States
15 May 09
overplaying.hamming is showing off to draw attention to themselves. over exaggerating for drama.
AnjaP
@Rollo1 (16679)
• Boston, Massachusetts
15 May 09
In acting terms, a "ham" is an actor who greatly exaggerates his performance. He may read lines in an overly emotional way or use exaggerated movements, all with the intention of keeping the attention on himself. This meaning of the word ham can be traced back to about 1880, and it's origin is not quite clear, although it may have to do with the ham fat that actors used to remove stage makeup.
egdcltd
@egdcltd (12060)
•
15 May 09
Overplaying the role would be fine here. It's basically when you overact a part.