From her article Lesson From a Young Actress:
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
No Comments » | 04.06.08
“It’s important to present oneself as relaxed and confident..”
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.”
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No Comments » | 04.02.08
Brooke Shields: My hope is that my kids won’t want to go into show business, just because of the heartache… I thrive on the experience of working. I don’t know myself any other way. [But] I’m not enamored by [fame]. I don’t covet it, the way someone who’s anonymous wants it, and then their life changes.
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.
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No Comments » | 03.10.08
“With most people when there’s a pain in their life there’s mental scar tissue that forms over the pain and helps you go on living.
“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.”
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“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
No Comments » | 03.06.08
Referring to his role of Brick in the Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (directed by Debbie Allen),” Terrence Howard says, “I always tell directors, ‘The role I want is the role I can’t accomplish, the thing that’s going to make me fail.’ Every warrior is looking for that fight that he won’t win. And I’m finding it.”
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.
No Comments » | 03.03.08
Melissa George plays Laura in the HBO series In Treatment: “An attractive young anesthesiologist in the midst of a relationship crisis” seeking the help of a psychoanalyst, played by Gabriel Byrne.
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.
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1 Comment » | 02.28.08
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