Highly sensitive, and in the spotlight
Speaking of her role in the new film “Miss Potter” as Beatrix Potter (1866–1943), the English author and illustrator of the Peter Rabbit books, Renée Zellweger [right] commented, “I’m not a performer. I don’t want to hop up on a stage and go ‘Look at me! I’m Renée! What do you think?’ That’s not me. What I do is very different. If I want to express something, it’s through the filter [of a character]. So I never feel exposed.” [Life Magazine Jan 5 2007]
As a film production journalist for several years, I had the opportunity to interview filmmakers on locations and sound stages, and came to appreciate what an isolated and protected environment a film set is. And many actors talk about the people they work with as a “family.”
Zellweger said the movies she works on are “little projects that I have to believe are private experiences or I couldn’t do them. I couldn’t do them knowing that potentially I’m going to disappoint people. I think about acting as this thing I’m lucky to do because I love it. But if I had looked at it from an outsider’s perspective in the beginning and known ‘This is what your life will be like on a daily basis, can you handle it?’ I might have said, I don’t know.”
Many other actors have also in some way identified themselves as highly sensitive, including Ellen Muth; Jennifer Beals; Winona Ryder; Heath Ledger; Amy Brenneman; Mandy Moore; Alison Pill; Naomi Watts; Scarlett Johansson, and Brittany Murphy, who once commented, “I’m a very oversensitive, vulnerable person. You have to be to do this for a living.”
In my article The Dark Side of Fame, I note that fame can assault sensitive people, as Zellweger implied above. Johnny Depp said he felt so intimidated by his celebrity status during his early career that he “had to be drunk to be able to speak and get through it. I guess I was trying not to feel anything.”
But the experience of fame can also be strengthening, as Kim Basinger explained: “Because I’m such a shy person, having to live it out loud in front of everyone has made me a stronger woman, so much stronger, that it’s been a gift to me in a way.”
Related Talent Development Resources pages:
Highly Sensitive People
intensity / sensitivity
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Technorati tags: acting . actors . Renee Zellweger . highly sensitive . gifted adults . Johnny Depp . Brittany Murphy . Winona Ryder . Mandy Moore . Alison Pill . Naomi Watts . Scarlett Johansson . Ellen Muth
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