Actor stereotypes - Shia LaBeouf: “You have to be brokenhearted."

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Actor stereotypes – Shia LaBeouf: “You have to be brokenhearted.”

Shia LaBeouf [his new film is "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints"] says, “I’m a lonely dude. But, again, it’s the price. You subject yourself to weird [stuff], just so you can feel something. To be an actor, a true actor, you have to be brokenhearted.” [The Washington Post, October 17, 2006]

That comment reminded me of one by William H. Macy: “Nobody became an actor because he had a good childhood.” [from my article Actors and Addiction] [Related page: early life] and a quote by Natalie Portman: “Sometimes I get scared that I’m not a creative person, because it seems creative people are really flaky…” [Esquire, Aug 2004]

We can all too easily take on cultural stereotypes and other distorting concepts of identity – like the enduring idea of the “struggling artist.”

Of course actors and other artists have heartbreaks, and financial and mental health challenges – just like other people – but it is dangerous to our self concept and esteem as artists or other gifted and talented people to conclude we need to be unhappy, depressed, addicted or whatever in order to be a “true” artist.
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