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.

So I shot all these fucked-up scenes that were really horrible, but I didn’t experience them that way. Obviously, I understood that all the things that happened in the movie were painful for her, but I didn’t let that into the work.

Then all the terrible things I’ve had to go through surfaced after we’d finished shooting. And I got over it. I don’t think I could play that part now. I don’t know that I could be okay with the things I had to be okay with in order to play her.

Interview mag.: Were you in therapy when you did that film?

Maggie Gyllenhaal: Mm-hmm.

Interview mag.: So was it exorcism? Catharsis?

Maggie Gyllenhaal: Well, that stuff is private, but every role I choose - whether consiously or unconsciously - there’s something in it that I have to think about and work through. . .

For a while, I got into taking someone really fucked-up and showing the audience how they were beautiful and lovable. That’s a way of practicing compassion. But now I want to play a queen! I want to play someone who’s thinking and elegant and not so wayward. I feel like a big change has happened.

Interview mag.: Here’s another observation from your press clippings: “Gyllenhaal clearly relishes taking a wrecking ball to anything perfect or beautiful in her own cinematic creations.” But I always suspected that you were happy to be beautiful in real life.

Maggie Gyllenhaal: That is not wrong about my work. It was also true in my life. What I thought was most beautiful was something a little fucked up, a little off. I think that’s a way of hiding. As an actress and a person. I feel different now. I’m not as interested in finding what is unattractive as I am in finding what is attractive. It’s much riskier to say, “I’m going to try and express what’s beautiful in me.”

[From interview by Tim Blanks, Interview magazine, May 2008.]

A number of other actors have also expressed perspectives on the mental health aspects of acting on the page Nurturing mental health: acting.

“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.’

But, he continued, “It’s a nightmare. Narcissism is the part of my personality that I am the least proud of, and I certainly don’t like to see it highlighted in everybody else I meet.” [Interview mag., Dec. 1997]

Sarah Silverman commented in an interview about discovering the writing of psychologist Alice Miller: “There’s a book called ‘Drama of the Gifted Child’ given to me by my sister, and I was thinking, This is unbelievable. It’s all about me. I related to it so much.

“And I asked a friend of mine if she’d read it, and she said that Alice Miller originally titled the book ‘Drama of the Narcissistic Child’ - but she knew that no one who needed to read it would buy it. That was really funny, and a little bit embarassing.”

[From Making 'Magic' (And Trouble) with Sarah Silverman, NPR, Fresh Air audio interview, Oct 3, 2007; photo from "Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic."]

But what is narcissism? The basic idea is being obsessively self-absorbed, always putting your own needs first, having poor empathy or appreciation for other people’s needs etc. But what is behind someone operating that way?

Alice Miller writes in The Drama of the Gifted Child about childhood harm leading to compromised emotional life as an adult, including those kinds of behavior.

Miller has been quoted about the word ‘gifted’ in the title: “I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb… Without this ‘gift’ offered us by nature, we would not have survived.”

She writes in the book, “A little reflection soon shows how inconceivable it is really to love others (not merely to need them), if one cannot love oneself as one really is.

“And how could a person do that if, from the very beginning, he has had no chance to experience his true feelings and to learn to know himself? For the majority of sensitive people, the true self remains deeply and thoroughly hidden. But how can you love something you do not know, something that has never been loved?

“So it is that many a gifted person lives without any notion of his or her true self. Such people are enamored of an idealized, conforming, false self. They will shun their hidden and lost true self, unless depression makes them aware of its loss or psychosis confronts them harshly with that true self, whom they now have to face and to whom they are delivered up, helplessly, as to a threatening stranger.”

Miller says in looking at the origins of this loss of the self in the book, she chooses not to use the term “narcissism.” “However, in my clinical descriptions,” she adds, “I shall speak occasionally of a healthy narcissism and depict the ideal case of a person who is genuinely alive, with free access to the true self and his authentic feelings.

“I shall contrast this with narcissistic disorders, with the true self’s ’solitary confinement’ within the prison of the false self. This I see less as an illness than as tragedy, and it is my aim in this book to break away from judgmental, isolating, and therefore discriminating terminology.”

[From Direct Quotes from The Drama of the Gifted Child.]

In his article The narcissist, unmasked, Benedict Carey describes qualities that fit many celebrity level performers, as well as other professionals: “They’ve got the most fabulous personal trainer in town, the best lawyer, the top BMW mechanic, and make sure the world knows it.

“They’re charming enough to attract friends, associates and lovers — only to drop them as soon as better prospects show up. They need the best table in the house, the lion’s share of the conversation and, above all, top billing, whether on the marquee or in the mailroom.

“While familiar at almost any level of society, these peacocks find Southern California an especially comfortable habitat. In the warm bath of sunlight and celebrity, their behavior can be entertaining, even encouraged, and it’s usually relatively harmless.

“Yet some of these seemingly overconfident people are actually in considerable psychological trouble, suffering what psychiatrists call narcissistic personality disorder, one of the most self-destructive and difficult-to-treat conditions in the lexicon of mental illness.

“For contrary to Narcissus of Greek legend, who was enthralled by his own reflection in a pool of water, researchers say that roughly 1 million Americans with this personality disorder act not from self-love but from a kind of self-loathing, a dread of failure and an inability to endure its emotional fallout — shame.

“Millions more are thought to suffer from narcissistic tendencies, due to similar but less extreme fears. Recent research suggests that this anguish develops in early childhood, and that therapists can help put it to rest.” [Los Angeles Times, Oct 14 2002]

But having these sort of narcissistic tendencies doesn’t mean you are “crazy” or necessarily need therapy.

But it can be helpful to our emotional growth and power as creative people to be more aware of how we operate, and change what doesn’t serve us well.

Richard Gere once commented, “The more I grow, the less I become this egocentric thing that is prone to anger and hatred and all this other stuff. The trick is to get out of the way of the ego, so that whatever is of value illuminating inside you or me or the waiter or anybody else can be seen. The job of the creative person is to get out of the way.” [LA Times, 1/5/03]

Spiritual writer Eckhart Tolle [Meg Ryan made Oprah aware of his book The Power of Now] distinguishes two kinds of self esteem. “First there is the ego self-esteem,” he says.

“Even if you have high ego self-esteem, there’s always hidden fear underneath it. It’s always there to compensate for the fear you feel of not being good enough or perhaps failing. So you need to play a role of being big to compensate for fear of failure that’s deep down.

“But the world would say he or she has high self-esteem. People who have big egos. But the world doesn’t realize that that’s not true self-esteem.”

True self-esteem, he explains, “goes much deeper. It’s finding the source of power and aliveness deep inside.”

From article Eckhart Tolle on Shyness, Self-esteem and Ego.

~ ~ ~

Alice Miller’s site

Books by Alice Miller:
The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness

Related article: Ego and Creativity

Related pages:
Ego / narcissism
Ego / narcissism 2 : quotes articles books

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.

“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.

“Living across from Muscle Beach in Venice, he confided to his journal that he was working ‘on something abominable — a script for Lana Turner.’ That same June day in 1943, he wrote to his agent, Audrey Wood: ‘I feel like an obstetrician required to successfully deliver a mastodon from a beaver,’ further deriding the MGM project as an attempt to make ‘a celluloid brassiere’ for the buxom star.”

[From Mare Winningham explores Tennessee, by Anne Marie Welsh, Los Angeles Times, April 6, 2008]

Finding meaningful work - or making your own - is deeply important for actors and other artists.

In his counseling and books, therapist and creativity coach Eric Maisel, Ph.D. emphasizes the need for creative people to nurture meaning to stay on top of depression.

In his book The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person’s Path Through Depression, Dr. Maisel writes that “Most creators feel miserable if few or none of their creative efforts succeed.”

In our interview, I asked him: “Many screenwriters never see their hard work produced as a movie, and many actors never get to perform to the level they aspire and train to reach. How do you counsel artists like these to make meaning, when they seem to depend so much on public awareness and acceptance of their creative work?”

Dr. Maisel replied: “A lack of success and a lack of recognition are profound meaning crises that must be addressed just as any meaning crisis must be addressed, with all of our heart and all of our energy.”

From our interview: Investing meaning in our art.

Also see Eric Maisel articles.

Gabriel Byrne comments about meaning: “So many actors feel that their work is themselves, and if they’re not working, they’re somehow kind of worthless… then life doesn’t have any meaning because they’re not doing the thing that they love. But the lesson I’ve learned is that life comes first and acting comes second.”

[From the article Filling your time with meaning.]

If the quality of acting roles is not providing enough meaning, perhaps other forms of creativity will. Winningham, for example, also expresses her creative talents through singing and songwriting.

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

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.”

She adds, “We’ve all seen it: that high-strung actor who’s so intent on saying his next line, he’s barely listening for his cue. Or maybe (ahem) you’ve actually been that person on stage, having a scene go by you in a blur, kicking yourself for letting the scene play you instead of the other way around.

“For the speed-meisters, the simplest, easiest ‘hack’ to help you regain control of yourself in the moment is literally to stop yourself ever so briefly before responding in a scene. Take a beat and take in your partner, or, if it’s a monologue, the situation; let yourself check in with how you’re feeling and how your partner is feeling before moving on.

See her article for more suggestions.

It isn’t that high energy is “wrong” - it is sometimes called intensity or excitability. Giftedness consultant Lesley Sword describes this in her article Overexcitabilities in Gifted Children as “an abundance of physical, sensual, creative, intellectual and emotional energy that can result in creative endeavours as well as advanced emotional and ethical development in adulthood. Overexcitabilities feed, enrich, empower and amplify talent.”

But there seems to be an enduring mythology about creative inspiration and performing as an actor, for example, that it benefits from an “edge” of nervous tension or even anxiety.

Creativity coach and author Eric Maisel, PhD comments in our interview Ten Zen Seconds (about his new book) that this really is a false and distorting idea: “It isn’t at all clear that tension or anxiety is what’s needed for peak performance and lifelong creativity,” he says.

“They may be unavoidable by-products of the difficulties that we face as we try to do large things and connected to our fear of failing, fear of making messes and mistakes, and so on, but they are not beneficial per se.

“You want enthusiasm, passion, love, curiosity, interest, and so on to inform your work and to exist right in the moment, in the performance moment or the creative moment, while at the same reducing (or eliminating) your fears, worries, anxieties, and so on.

“Creating is not an energy-neutral state: it is a high energy state, with, at its healthiest, enthusiasm and not anxiety driving its engine.”

From my post To create we need high energy - not anxiety.

This has always been my life. You don’t romanticize it when you’ve seen the underbelly of it, when you’ve seen rejection, the games, the way self-esteem is challenged and threatened. It’s an industry that’s predicated on knocking people down. Only the strong survive.

Life magazine: What’s kept you working for so long?

Brooke Shields: My concept of a work ethic is so ingrained in who I am. It may have started out as the way to be liked, but now it’s become my standard. Now whether someone likes me or not doesn’t factor into it. Now it’s much more selfish. I get involved in any movie or show I watch.

I live in the world of whatever I’m working on. Part of me is a gypsy that way. And because I have my real life—and it’s not going anywhere—it allows me to go off into my fantasy mind, because I know I have a home to come back to. [Source: Life magazine.]

Brooke Shields also once said about being a public person her whole life that she “assumed it wasn’t taking a toll on me because in return I got positive things, validation or affection or compliments or whatever. Little by little I gave away a lot. And at my age now, I’m done giving it all away. Because it isn’t directly proportionate to anything, except sometimes a sense of emptiness.”

And this is an item from The Week magazine, March 14, 2008:

Kate Winslet was caught off-guard by superstardom, says Nelly Kaprielian in Vogue Australia. After her film Titanic became a megahit in 1997, Winslet was transformed from well-regarded film actress into global celebrity. “I couldn’t grasp why that was happening to me. I was so young—I was only 21 years old—and I didn’t feel ready to become hugely famous.”

Her private life was dissected, especially in her native England, where some confused her with her character in Titanic. “The English press had decided that I was their ‘Rose,’ that I was grounded, that I had married a normal guy and was leading a normal life.”

So when she split from her husband, director Jim Threapleton, opinion turned against her; some articles claimed, incorrectly, that she had abandoned her baby daughter to Threapleton’s care. “They decided I was the culprit since I was the famous one. Sorry, but no one knows what really happened at that time in my life.”

Her solution was to take roles in some smaller films, such as Hideous Kinky, which took her out of the limelight and allowed her to better pace her career and life. “I loved acting and I didn’t want that desire to be ruined by the huge pressure that stardom was putting on me.” She got remarried, to director Sam Mendes, and had another baby, but the tabloids now mostly leave her alone. “To be honest, I think they finally started to get bored with me.”

Related pages:
Fame and celebrity
Identity
Self-esteem / self concept
article: The Dark Side of Fame.

“An actor’s scar tissue really never covers over things the same way, not if you’re going to be sensitive. With good technique, an actor can do that and walk through life without going insane.”

~~

“You have to get away from the theater or from the set and live life. If you work constantly from job to job, you’re living in a fantasy world and you have nothing else to offer than fantasy.” [imdb.com; photo from 'Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day']

Related pages:
Highly Sensitive
Nurturing mental health : acting

A recent LA Times article notes that he “expresses a certain discomfort with the flash of the paparazzi bulbs and red carpet.”

“I feel like I’ve slipped into a moral quagmire,” Howard says with his characteristic blunt honesty. “I’m being pulled into some shadowy places, discovering some very dark things in my nature on this road. I’d do anything I could to sprout wings and rise above.. just go back to being a contractor, laying some stones somewhere — the time before Terrence Howard ever existed. I feel like I’m strangling the real Terrence on a daily basis.”

At one point, he notes that he takes on roles “to discover more truths about myself.”

Continued in article Terrence Howard is ready for a new fight, by Patrick Pacheco.

HBO: Did you have any personal experience with therapy or was this a completely new world to you?

Melissa George: A completely new world, but I highly recommend it. If you can get a therapist like Paul, you’re set. [laughs]

I mean, to be honest, ‘In Treatment’ brought out a lot of internal angst and brought back certain memories. There’s a scene where I was talking about my family, and when we were shooting, I was no longer aware who was Laura and who was Melissa.

Because I was so in love with playing this character — and that sounds like “Oh actors get so invested,” but it really was like I fell in love with playing her — that all of a sudden words would come out of my mouth and I would react as Melissa or as Laura combined with Melissa.

So there are some scenes, some moments where it looks really real, I think, because I was feeling it for real. I was really going through therapy.

By the end, playing such a highly emotional character, it took it out of me. But I also felt very relaxed when I came home after shooting the series. I felt like I learned a lot about myself.

Text and photo from the HBO / In Treatment site.

Related Talent Development Resources pages:
Counseling / therapy
The Shadow Self
Nurturing mental health : acting