In a recent interview, Amanda Seyfried says she isn’t comfortable with her new fame and status: “I mean, why am I considered an ‘it girl?’” she asks.

“Because I’m in a lot of movies right now or am on the covers of magazines? I just hope there is something solid behind that.

“Because here’s the thing with ‘it girl’ status. It’s great and amazing that anybody is saying that at all. But how long does that last? I would like to establish myself. I don’t want to just have a moment.”

The article continued,

She admitted that she worries about the way she looks. And because she speaks often candidly to journalists, sharing tidbits about her life that her handlers might consider too personal (like the fact that she takes the anti-anxiety medication Lexapro), she said that she often has others minding her words.

[Lexapro is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) approved for major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, or panic disorder.]

“Oh, I’m always being briefed by a publicist before I have [interviews],” she said, twirling her braided hair around with her fingers. “They’re like, ‘Come on, you can’t be self-deprecating.’ ”

But that’s just who she is, said Atom Egoyan, who directed “Chloe” … “She’s very self critical. After I would say cut, she always had this expression of frustration, like she didn’t quite get it. But I found that quite endearing, because she’s always feeling there’s more she can do to capture or enhance or clarify.”

[From Amanda Seyfried in full bloom, By Amy Kaufman, Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2010]

~~~

Dealing with anxiety

Like many other creative people, actors may experience anxiety.

Energy psychiatrist Judith Orloff M.D. works with many actors, to help them deal with stage fright or other forms of anxiety. In her book Emotional Freedom, she suggests a number of strategies, including supplements and meditation, and “avoiding caffeine and other stimulants, excessive sugar, and violent newscasts and films.”

For some of her clients, she does prescribe Inderal, at least temporarily – a medication to reduce stage fright by decreasing the fight or flight response.

In my interview with Dr. Orloff, she says, “a better way is that I teach everyone to do a three minute mini-meditation where they learn how to breathe, center themselves, let their thoughts flow by, and focus on something really nurturing and positive, which is a better way, I believe, to learn how to shift your anxiety and really own the moment.”

Also see my site Anxiety Relief Solutions – Multiple drug-free self-help products and programs to relieve social anxiety, stage fright, performance anxiety and other forms of anxiety.

Being self-critical

James Earl Jones says, “I think self-criticism is sort of a given when you’re an actor. It’s also about being curious and not being flippant. Anyone who accepts being in this noble profession is automatically self-critical.”

From post James Earl Jones – being an actor is fun, but you’re self-critical

As I note in my article Being Creative and Self-critical: Healthy criticism can help refine our talents and creative projects in the pursuit of excellence. But when it is based on a excessive perfectionism or an unrealistic self concept, criticism can be destructive and self-limiting, eroding our creative assurance and vitality.

Being self-deprecating can be related to unhealthy self-esteem or feeling like a fraud, and self-criticism can be based in perfectionism.

I’m not saying Amanda Seyfried has any of those issues – but many very talented actors (and other artists) do.

creative anxiety, creativity and anxiety, stress and creativity, anxiety and artistic expression, artists and anxiety, artists and self-criticism

By guest author Carmen Lynne

After spending the greater part of my life as an actress and performer, I became a therapist in early 2007.

While I still do a little bit of acting when I have a chance, I now mainly spend my time helping other people to fulfill their creative ambitions or to just learn how to be happier.

The interesting thing to me is how valuable my years as a performer have been in helping others with their issues.

There were things I learned as a young actress years ago that have been incredibly helpful to me throughout my life, many of which I can pass on to my clients.

For example, I had a wonderful voice teacher at drama school, who turned out to be so much more than just a voice teacher and who eventually became a lifelong friend – Mary.

One of the things she used to say was “use it, darling, use it” whenever I was experiencing a strong emotion, particularly something uncomfortable.

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It can be a major decision to be a mother and still pursue a demanding life as an artist.

On her Twitter profile, Amanda Bynes says:

i want to be a mom but not til i’m 30 and even if i get married b4 then i still want to wait to have kids til long after i’m married @amandabynes

Anjelica Huston has commented about choosing her creative professional life over motherhood: “I have a very full life and I am very happy with where I am now. I don’t want to change anything.

“I once wanted to have children and it was not my choice not to have children but it hasn’t broken my heart that I haven’t.

“I think unless you’re truly whole-heartedly prepared to make a full-time commitment, you have to really think about it. I certainly wouldn’t adopt children just because everybody in show business seems to be doing it.” [imdb.com]

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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.

emotional intensity, overexcitability, excitabilities, gifted and talented, highly sensitive people

“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.”

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