“I’ve always felt more comfortable [with comedy] because I was scared of drama. I didn’t really know how to access my emotional side without wounding my own person.

“Once I learned how to do that it opened up all these doors to me and I realized, You know what? Real life contains moments of laughter followed by uncontrollable sobbing.”

“I think tackling certain characters has definitely helped me in my life because I can’t come to the truth about a character when I’m lying to myself. As a result it forces you to look at things and sometimes it is painful and you don’t want to deal with it.”

[Interview mag., Feb 2008; photo from 'Enchanted']

Some related Talent Development Resources pages:
Comedy
Nurturing mental health
Nurturing mental health : acting

“It’s so obvious that this is a population that has a huge appetite for drugs.” Drew Pinsky, MD

The death of Heath Ledger - considered an accidental overdose of prescription medications - is another indication of how much drug use there is in the entertainment community. He also reportedly had a long history of drug use and misuse.

Actor Megan Fox ["Transformers"] said in a Maxim magazine interview last summer that she knows only five other people in Hollywood, other than herself, who do not routinely use drugs.

Dr. Drew Pinsky, of the VH1 show “Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew,” affirms in a recent article that Hollywood drug abuse is widespread - much higher than it is in the general population, because, the article says, “those attracted to acting and fame tend to be narcissists who often struggle with various mental health issues, and then have the means to procure a constant drug supply and keep it quiet when they lose control.”

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Jurnee Smollett plays Samantha Booke in the film “The Great Debaters” (set at Wiley College in Texas during the Great Depression), who becomes the first woman selected by debate coach Melvin B. Tolson (played by Denzel Washington) to compete on the debate team, which defeats the University of Southern California’s team (changed to Harvard in the movie).

Jurnee Smollett gives credit for much of her success and powerful performance to her mother, Janet, who “had a very socially active life.”

“She marched and she did the sit-ins and she did voter organizing,” Smollett said. “It built that whole warrior spirit inside of all of us.

“She told me, ‘You’ve been given this talent for a reason. It’s not for you to gloat in the fame, because there are always people around who will pat you on the back, but you have to know at the end of the day, you are to use this talent for a bigger purpose.’ ”

[Los Angeles Times, Dec 24, 2007.]

Related Talent Development Resources pages:

Fame / celebrity
Perspectives on talent
Perspectives on talent : teen/young adult.
Social activism
Social activism : teen/young adult

Ellen Page, to “Juno” screenwriter Diablo Cody: You have to take risks and go against conventional wisdom and structure. What was that like.

Diablo Cody: I guess I didn’t see the point of adding another conventional story to the pile; there are so many. I guess I would rather fail doing something off the wall, than succeed at something pedestrian. That’s my whole philosophy in life.

Ellen Page: If I don’t take a risk, I get really, really bored. And being challenged stems from taking a risk. …

Diablo Cody: Was there ever a time in your life when you were tempted to follow the traditional starlet route?

Ellen Page: No, not in the slightest. I’d rather be shot in the foot.

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In her new film “The Savages,” written and directed by Tamara Jenkins, Laura Linney [imdb] plays Wendy Savage, an aspiring playwright and temp office worker.

“She’s not a typical protagonist,” Linney says [in the article Anything but typical, by Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times, Nov 29, 2007].

“She lies, she cheats, she steals, she’s in a relationship with a married man. She’s emotionally really immature, and yet she is also capable of great empathy, she’s very smart and she’s a total narcissist. She’s this contradiction of things, like one of those wave machines, she goes to one side and then the other. She’s all over the place.”

Jenkins was confident that Linney would be able “to handle the tone of the film, that she was capable of the flawed, messy humor of it and would also be able to connect to the pathos of it.”

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“Sometimes I wake up in the morning before going off to a shoot, and I think, I can’t do this; I’m a fraud. They’re going to fire me — all these things. I’m fat; I’m ugly…”

Those admissions by Kate Winslet [Interview mag. Nov 2000] were made after her Academy Award nominations for Titanic (1997) and Sense and Sensibility (1995).

Those kinds of impostor feelings are shared by a wide range of highly talented people, including many actors.

Michelle Pfeiffer said (in 2002) “I still think people will find out that I’m really not very talented. I’m really not very good. It’s all been a big sham.”

Nicole Kidman has said she often thinks, “They’re going to look at me to fire me.” And Don Cheadle said, “All I can see [in his performances in movies] is everything I’m doing wrong that is a sham and a fraud.”

Actor Stacey Jackson, in her Backstage/Unscripted article Doubts, notes that “A healthy dose of self-doubt isn’t always a bad thing. Ask your parents and friends if they have doubts about their professional abilities, and I’m sure the honest ones will say, ‘yes.’

“It seems silly now, but until recently, I thought that I was the only one who questioned my abilities. But teachers, consultants, lawyers, writers, doctors, you name it, they all have doubts at various points in their careers. Even brilliant actors doubt their talent.”

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