In SherryBaby (2006), Maggie Gyllenhaal portrayed Sherry Swanson, who returns home after serving a prison sentence to reestablish a relationship with her young daughter. Gyllenhaal describes for Interview magazine her experience with the character, and the big change in her attitude toward appreciating roles that are “not so wayward.”
Maggie Gyllenhaal: We shot Sherrybaby in 25 days. I was never in my own clothes. I would get into her clothes, be her all day, come home, fall asleep, wake up, go back to work. I do better in that kind of work. What I found with Sherry was that she was in such a rough place that she didn’t have the luxury to feel any kind of self-pity or to fall apart at all, or she would not have been able to survive.
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No Comments » | 05.05.08
“Actors and actresses, because that’s their career, can be sort of self-obsessed.”
Kristen Bell says that for her new film “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” she “just looked into the depths of the most hard-to-admit or vulnerable or bad characteristics of my own personality and what an actress can become if given that kind of self indulgence or that amount of vanity.
“That I think anybody could really become. But actors and actresses especially, because that’s their career, to be sort of self-obsessed. And there’s a lot of comedy in that.” [From darkhorizons.com interview by Paul Fischer March 27th 2008.]
When asked about narcissism and being an actor, Ben Affleck admitted, “I’d say it’s the one quality that unites everybody in the film industry, whether you’re an actor, a producer, a director, or a studio executive. You want people to look at you and love you and go, ‘Oh, you’re wonderful.’
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No Comments » | 04.18.08
Brooke Smith plays heart surgeon Dr. Erica Hahn on “Grey’s Anatomy,” and her extensive filmography includes the series “Weeds” and movies Vanya on 42nd Street and The Silence of the Lambs.
In an interview, she was asked if she has any advice for actors who “would love to have a career even half as fruitful as her own.”
She replied, “How about the fact that the reasons you don’t work are quite possibly the reasons you will work? The fact that I’m not like everybody else is hopefully what got me here. I think the danger is trying to figure out what everybody else wants you to be.
“Even when you’re at an audition, the kiss of death is the second you try to do what you think they want you to do. Just keep being authentic to yourself.”
[From Playing Doctor, by Jenelle Riley, BackStage.]
Related Talent Development Resources pages:
Eccentricity, Identity and Self Concept.
No Comments » | 04.14.08
Mare Winningham is playing Amanda in a stage production of Tennessee Williams’ classic ‘The Glass Menagerie’ at the Old Globe in San Diego. In an interview, she commented about how rare it has been to find such deep, complex roles.
“Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but so often during the last 30 years, you’re trying to make something better than it is. You’re trying to find richness where there isn’t any. You’re trying to find complexity where there is none. You’re trying to make something more than it is.
“Here, you don’t have to do that. It actually makes it easier that Amanda is so multifaceted. It’s a welcome relief.”
The article also notes, “While Tennessee Williams was writing the play, his first success, he also struggled to free himself from less significant — though better-paid — Hollywood work.
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No Comments » | 04.09.08
From her article Lesson From a Young Actress:
When I was little, my mother had a host of rules of “gentlemanly” behavior that you had to follow on a movie set if you wanted to be labeled a “professional.”
Of course, Mom was wrong about a lot of things. As I have grown older, I’ve learned to keep the good rules and punt the others.
For example, “You must always hang up your costume after you’re wrapped” and “You must never be late.” Good rules.
But here’s her big mistake: “You must always serve the director. It’s his movie and his vision that you are honoring. So always, always try to accommodate any note that he or she gives you, even if you think it’s wrong.”
That one’s tricky. I’ve learned there is a gray area between truly collaborating with a director and following his every edict.
I’m happy to say I have learned a few lessons from the young performers with whom I’ve worked during the course of my 43 years in the entertainment business. One of my best teachers was Abigail Breslin..
Continued in Lesson From a Young Actress, By Jodie Foster
No Comments » | 04.06.08
“It’s important to present oneself as relaxed and confident..”
Gabriel Byrne commented that the audition process “is really a most inadequate way to determine if an actor is right or not for a particular role. Unfortunately, it’s a situation that most actors have to accept.
“Work on developing an unshakable trust in yourself and your talent. It’s important to present oneself as relaxed and confident even when you don’t feel it.”
From the book: How to Get the Part… Without Falling Apart! by Margie Haber
Quote from the page Acting3
More Books: acting
Photo from “In Treatment.”
In her LAcasting.com article Relax into acting, Colleen Wainwright notes, “It’s great to have a little fire in your belly. But if you’re reading this, my guess is that your problem, if you have one, lies in the other direction. Because too much ambition, ferocity, gung-ho-ness is death to good acting, bad for the health, and not particularly attractive in an audition situation either.”
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No Comments » | 04.02.08
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