What choices and compromises do you make to gain attention and opportunities as an actor?

Romola Garai has expressed a number of thoughtful perspectives on these topics. Here are some quotes from her imdb.com profile.

On Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights :

“I wouldn’t have done something that I thought had no merit in it at all, but I did experience a fall-out from being calculating about your career, believing that you should do something in order to get you somewhere else. It was just creatively unfulfilling.”

“The filmmakers were obsessed with having someone skinny. I just thought, why didn’t they get someone like Kate Bosworth, if that’s what they wanted? An actress like that wouldn’t worry about whether or not the political ideas were being sensitively or subtly dealt with. They’d do the job, smile and look pretty on the cover of Teen Vogue. There I am, 135 pounds and trying to make art! I was so wrong for it!”

”I had the time of my life. I have used every part of my body, plus muscles I did not know I had, because the dancing is a combination of salsa and Latin ballroom. It felt like daily aerobics.”

On the Vanity Fair premiere: “I [showed] my tits and teeth. I’m useless at it. About 40 per cent of success as an actor is now based on whether you’re good at being interviewed and how you conduct yourself. And I’m really bad at that.”

More on being an actor :

“When I was a child I always wanted to be funny and to please people in my family. As you grow up that instinct becomes more refined, but it’s still there. How can it not be? I just don’t believe you’re capable of being an actor unless you have a desire to experience your emotions in a public way.”

“It’s too simplistic to say that people start to believe what’s written about them. But what happens is that you become a certain way to please people, to be liked, to be what’s expected of you, to change yourself so that you become the best possible version of yourself for people who don’t know you.

“And I think that’s a terrible, pernicious thing.”

[Photo: Romola Garai as Emma Woodhouse in "Emma"]

acting performance, acting self esteem, acting passion, entertainment psychology, actors training, personal development for actors

Joan Chen comments about first seeing “Edward Scissorhands” in 1990:

“It was unique cinema that felt like pure magic. The bizarre beauty of the film and the gentle hero with his lethally sharp scissorhands stayed with me through out the years.

“Looking back, after almost 20 years, I now understand better the fierce longing and intense loneliness that the film had stirred in me. Like the protagonist, Edward, I was the shy, misunderstood outsider for a large part of my life in America, and again later in China.

“Having experienced the adulation of the millions in my late teens, I became a much reviled traitor, who brought shame to China after leaving for the US and later for playing the part of the mistress to the white man in Tai-Pan.

“The capricious and precarious nature of the mob sentiments was a nightmare, which I knew well. I empathize with the conflicting desire of the artist to retreat to his lonely tower and to be loved by people who appreciate his talent.”

- Actress / Director / Producer / Writer Joan Chen

(Singapore Sun Film Festival, October 2009 – posted on imdb.com; photo: as Yee Tai Tai in Lust, Caution.)

Many other actors and artists are shy and highly sensitive, as Joan Chen seems to be, and to need time and space away from work and the emotional pressures of attention.

For more about the trait, see the Highly Sensitive site.

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“I think it’s my job to risk looking foolish. One of the things I’ve learned from the actors I’ve worked with is you don’t get something for nothing. If you don’t risk looking foolish, you’ll never do anything special.” Ethan Hawke

Those quotes are from the article Ethan Hawke says ‘Daybreakers’ is no ‘Twilight’: ‘It’s a post-adolescent vampire film’ by Yvonne Villarreal [Los Angeles Times January 7, 2010].

Villarreal continues :

It’s a role [in "Daybreakers"] about as far as you can get from his Broadway gig performing a nine-hour stage trilogy of Tom Stoppard’s plays, “The Coast of Utopia,” about mid-19th century Russian radicals. And that’s what attracted him.

“There’s some kind of actors that can radically change who they are from movie to movie,” Hawke said. “I’ve never really been that kind of actor. I enjoy changing the worlds that I’m in.”

Continue reading »

Bryce Dallas Howard portrays the “unapologetic” Fisher Willow in The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, from a screenplay by Tennessee Williams.

Howard says “The Hollywood scene, these parties, freak me out. I’ve never had a sip of alcohol in my life. I wasn’t interested in losing control.

“There was alcoholism in my family, so I saw the negative effects and how difficult it was to recover.

“When I was in high school, I would never go to parties because I would be embarrassed to say no. Consequently, I had almost no social group.”

She also notes: “When I work on a film, I always tend to relate to the crew. I struggle immensely with celebrities of all forms. I get clammy hands and turn a little purple.” [From Too Good to be True, by Peter Davis, Papermag.]

In creating and playing her character, she found, “I learned some interesting things about myself. Fisher is unapologetic about anything she does or says, and I am not; in fact I am apologizing all the time.

“I liked that she was almost hedonistic in her approach to life, and I connected to that side of myself that wants to be fearless.

Continue reading »

Amber Riley is one of the dynamic actor-singers on the musical/comedy series Glee. She recalls her rejection from American Idol:

“My life was crushed when they told me ‘No.’ But I was 17, it was a long time ago and rejection like that only makes you stronger, gets you asking — how can I better myself?” [thetvaddict.com]

On body image

[Have you noticed any pressure in Hollywood regarding your size?]

“I actually noticed it more when I was younger which is why I stopped, it was getting to my self-esteem. But once I learned I am not my dress size and to never let anyone put me in a box, I was more content with being myself and letting the world see my light shine.”

[Young, Fat, & Fabulous youngfatandfabulous.com]

Also see more quotes on Body image.

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Evan Rachel Wood says, “I used to not even be able to order pizza on the phone because I was just so shy.” She thinks acting allows so much to come out on-screen, “because that’s my time to let go in a safe place.”

Scarlett Johansson has noted that sensitivity can have a dark side: “I think I was born with a great awareness of my surroundings and of other people. Sometimes that awareness is good, and sometimes I wish I wasn’t so sensitive.”

Everyone has some sensitivity to inner experiences and emotions, to the moods of others, and to many other sensations. But highly sensitive people have unusually strong awareness and reactivity, and are more likely to be shy.

From my article Using Your High Sensitivity Personality As an Actor.

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