In her new memoir Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain, Portia de Rossi writes about a dark side of pursuing a “perfect” look.

“Anorexia was my first love. I didn’t decide to become anorexic. It snuck up on me disguised as a healthy diet, a professional attitude. Being as thin as possible was a way to make the job of being an actress easier . . .”

From the book summary: “Portia de Rossi weighed only 82 pounds when she collapsed on the set of the Hollywood film in which she was playing her first leading role.

“This should have been the culmination of all her years of hard work—first as a child model in Australia, then as a cast member of one of the hottest shows on American television. On the outside she was thin and blond, glamorous and successful. On the inside, she was literally dying.”

Here is a video of her recent appearance on The Ellen Show:

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Toni Collette provides more perspectives:

“I don’t understand why you have to look like a model to be a successful actor, what a character looks like is an extension of what they feel,” she says. “This is going to sound offensive, but for female actors there is a uniform of being you are meant to aspire to.

“There’s this new batch of younger women who all look the same: the same rail thin body, the same blond hair – it’s like they all go to the same hairdresser. It’s kind of scary, and not the kind of image you should be putting out.

“What audiences and I respond to is what you can’t see, what can’t be fully explained. What’s between the lines, unseen.” [Los Angeles Times, January 29, 2006]

Not that a lot of us don’t appreciate thin blond women – particularly those with acting talent, depth and passion – but thankfully there are women in film and television with other body types equally as appealing.

My related article: Body Image and Creative Expression.

Related post: Building identity – Naomi Watts on the struggle for integrity

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Toni Collette, Portia de Rossi, acting and image, female stereotypes in Hollywood, perfectionism and eating disorders, perfectionism and mental health, perfectionism and self concept, body image obsession

“My life was crushed when they told me ‘No.’ But I was 17, it was a long time ago and rejection like that only makes you stronger, gets you asking — how can I better myself?” [thetvaddict.com]

On body image

[Have you noticed any pressure in Hollywood regarding your size?]

“I actually noticed it more when I was younger which is why I stopped, it was getting to my self-esteem. But once I learned I am not my dress size and to never let anyone put me in a box, I was more content with being myself and letting the world see my light shine.”

[Young, Fat, & Fabulous youngfatandfabulous.com]

Also see more quotes on Body image.

women and talent, women developing creativity, negative body image, acting and rejection

And then I took it a step further because they wanted me to look really downtrodden, so I actually drank wine so I was hung over and I put mascara in my hair to give myself really bad roots.

Jim Parsons (“The Big Bang Theory”): Is that what we call Method?

Benz: It’s called “I want the job.” I signed in and sat down, and they came out and were looking around, and I heard them saying, “Well, she signed in, but where is she?” I finally said, “I’m right here.” And they said, “Are you wearing prosthetic makeup?”

Parsons: Wow, you had the best compliment and the worst insult in 24 hours!

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Lea Michele (“Glee”) I’ve never been through a TV process before. I’ve been on auditions, but I’ve been working in musical theater in New York since I was 8 years old.

I came out to L.A. after my most recent Broadway show, and I just wanted to be on “Grey’s Anatomy.” I wanted to be a bloody victim of some kind of car crash, and I end up going out for “Glee.”

I had to sing two musical theater songs and a pop song, plus read 800 sides. That whole part was comfortable for me; it was normal. But the whole “You’re going to go to the studio, then you’re going to go to the network”—I had no idea what any of that meant.

And maybe that was good, because I didn’t understand it and just thought of it as a callback. For my last callback, I got into this terrible car accident pulling into the Fox lot, left my smoking car on Pico Boulevard, and ran into the audition with glass in my hair.

They were saying, “We heard Lea Michele just got into a car crash!” I was like, “No, I’m here, I’m totally fine.”

It was such a Rachel Berry thing to do: literally leave the smoking car on Pico and run to the audition. But I auditioned, and they told me in the room that I got it.

I hate auditioning.

Jim Parsons : I love auditioning.

Julie Benz (“Dexter”): Me, too. It’s a competitive sport to me.

Parsons: Me, too. Go, fight, win! First of all, I enjoy working on anything.

Benz: I look at it as, it’s literally your time to be an actor that day. And it’s a performance; that’s all it is. I don’t look at it as a job; it’s my time to play the part how I want to play it. And I throw my material away when I leave. You learn to love it.

Michele: I want that to be my mantra. I get really, really nervous. I come from the world of singing at auditions, which is a whole added stress.

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Back Stage: Do you remember your worst audition?

Benz: I have a tendency to just say what I’m thinking. I walked into this room, and it was a big movie, and the director looked at me and goes, “You remind me of my ex-girlfriend,” and went on and on about how horrible his ex-girlfriend was.

He hated her so much and said I was the spitting image of her. I finally looked at him and said, “I should just leave. I don’t even think I should audition.” And I left.

Michele: My problem is, going on auditions, I was brought up so when you get in that room, you do whatever you can to get the job. So whatever they ask me, I say, “Yes, I can do it!” I went in for a gymnastics movie, and they had a form you had to fill out, asking things like, “Can you do back flips?”

I filled out the whole thing, completely lying about everything I could do. And I got in the room, and they said, “It says here you’re working on the beam.” I said, “Yep, working on the beam, hope to get to the vault soon!”

I completely lied. And when I got a callback, I realized I couldn’t go in. I couldn’t do anything I’d said I could do.

From Prime Time – Who’s in the Running: Television Actors, By Jenelle Riley, Back Stage, November 18, 2009

acting talent, acting performance, training as actor, developing creativity, creative expression, audition confidence, acting careers

She comments about her audition: “I just really didn’t think I was any good on TV,” she says, despite a short resume that also includes a part last year on NBC’s Law & Order: SVU.

“I just knew I wasn’t going to get it, so I was so relaxed about the audition that I got it. The same thing happened with my audition for Juilliard . . . if I don’t take it seriously, I tend to do better.”

About tv acting, she says, “I know it sounds silly, but it takes some time getting used to all the cameras in your face. I think it’s like playing jazz.

“After I learn the rules, I can have fun and play a little bit.”

From article St. Petersburg native, ‘Lie To Me’ co-star Monica Raymund ready to put in the work, By Eric Deggans, St. Petersburg Times

acting talent, acting performance, training as actor, acting self esteem, acting passion, audition success

A recent newspaper interview [Shedding the wings, by Amy Kaufman, Los Angeles Times, July 9, 2007; photo: Myung J. Chun] notes that “she wants to major in something ‘basic, like English,’ rather than garnering further training in the arts.”

“I didn’t like being around that competitive energy that comes with that,” she says of one summer spent in an acting class. “All those musical theater kids that think they’re gonna be the next Kristin Chenoweth.

“They’d sit there and they’d prep their songs endlessly with so much thought. I just knew what my song was about and I came in and sang it, and the teacher went, ‘That’s what you all should be doing, right there.’ And I didn’t outline the song or this and that. You just have to stop thinking sometimes.”

That perception was also articulated by Jennifer Lehman, a film acting teacher, consultant and scriptwriter, in our interview: “Our thinking mind is different than our feeling mind, and if we start thinking, we shut down creative expression – for actors, anyway.”

Lehman thinks a creative experience “is a very full experience, multidimensional. But if you’re making a mental choice about something, then your experience becomes limited to only that. A creative experience has many layers all at the same time. If you’re trying to juggle a bunch of ideas, it’s going to limit your availability to feeling states.”

Related page: Awareness – thinking
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overthinking creativity, competition between actors, entertainment psychology, creative experience characteristics

[LATimes: Anthony Minghella said: "Increasingly, audiences are uncomfortable with any subject that is not aspirational." It seems that you think about projects versus products...]

Vera Farmiga: “It’s such a barbaric world we’re creating and living in. I think that every choice I make is with that in mind. How will that choice contribute to the chaos, and how will it maybe not? How can it?

“I live a pretty humble existence, which makes it possible. And I just want to live in a gentler, more refined world. And I have a simple existence in the country.” [She keeps goats on her place in upstate New York.]

[LA Times: Last August, you appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine; the article was about you mostly and about how there are no great roles for emerging serious actresses. What were the repercussions of that?]

Vera Farmiga: “Really what I heard was that it gave a lot of young actresses some guts. And hope. I heard some stories here and there about how it touched this person and it helped her with perseverance and it’s on her nightstand. Any time.”

[LA Times: Well, you seem like that person from that article.

Vera Farmiga: "God, it's tricky reading an article about yourself. There's just this cringe factor."

[LA Times: People forget that it's hard for actors to look at themselves, because we project such narcissism on them.]

Vera Farmiga: “That is something I really work hard to negate, to combat, in a profession where it’s so much to do with ego and narcissism and image.

“I fought against [being interviewed for] that article for some time. I was resistant…. [I had never] gotten a job from any magazine article. Or red carpetry. Or partydom.”

[LA Times: Are there ways in which other actresses cannot be in competition for a smaller pie but work in cooperation?]

Vera Farmiga: “It has to be more of a sisterhood if we [want to] see more roles for women. Women producers have to cultivate more projects for women…

“The business is a lot of fun and games and free stuff and fame and fortune and working with people and spotlight and glamour — but the only thing that keeps me in the business is being a messenger for something serious and important… ["Joshua"] centers around a deviant child — but is also an opportunity to learn about postpartum psychosis and depression, which is a huge female issue.

“There’s that squabble between Brooke Shields and Tom Cruise. And as I was listening to their fencing about it, I realized this was a major women’s health issue that affects 17% of women who give birth a year.”

From Vera Farmiga on acting, motherhood and goat-milking, By Choire Sicha, Los Angeles Times, July 8 2007.]

Related pages:
Ego / narcissism
Fame / celebrity
Socially conscious filmmaking
Related article: Ego and Creativity
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Vera Farmiga, film industry unreality, celebrity and personal growth, films for political change

In my article Actors and Addiction, I quote Philip Seymour Hoffman about using drugs and alcohol earlier in his life: “It was anything I could get my hands on. I liked it all.” He got sober, he says, because “You get panicked. I was 22, and I got panicked for my life.”

He is far from alone. Many artists and performers – not to mention many of us who aren’t – use and sometimes abuse. Sometimes get addicted.

In his article Stuck on You [in Back Stage], Ryan Thomas notes:

“Tales of performers who have struggled with addictions — be it alcohol, drugs, gambling, food, or sex — are nothing if not common.

“In a profession filled with feelings of perfectionism, egotism, intense competition, and irregular paying work, the headline-grabbing exploits of a Mel Gibson or a Robert Downey Jr. barely raise eyebrows anymore.”

Speaking of Downey Jr., his former wife Sarah Jessica Parker admits, “Fairly early on, he told me he had a drug problem… In every good and bad way, I enabled him to show up for work… He was like a broken pipe with a leak that you’re constantly putting tape around and tape over tape, but you can’t stop the leaking.”

Downey admits “the actions I took and the decisions I made tied my shoelaces together. But I’ve never been as trustworthy or worked so hard as I am now [being sober].”

[From my article Actors and Addiction]

Costs outweigh benefits

Ryan Thomas goes on to explain some of the other personal and career influences that can actively encourage or enable use.

“Alcohol and drugs have long been a part of social networking within the entertainment industry. Camaraderie among showbiz types is often manifested at bars or at cast or wrap parties. Indeed, some maintain it’s that prevalence of booze and drugs that can help get performers started in the first place. Even at work. Especially at work.”

But, he adds, “Whereas a Lindsay Lohan will have plenty of work waiting for her when she gets out of rehab, the performer who is scratching and clawing for parts could face a potentially crippling drop in recognition if he or she takes time off to deal with a problem. On the other hand, given the havoc an addiction can wreak upon a career, can that performer afford not to?”

From Stuck on You, By Ryan Thomas, BackStage.com May 18, 2007
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addiction acting, entertainment psychology, pressures on actors

“I don’t want to be a babe. I don’t want vanity to ever get in the way, because I think to maintain that, you have to be aware of yourself all the time, and that gets in the way of acting. My job’s not to be the beautiful person. My job is to be the best actor I can be.” [quotes from imdb.com]

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Gaining attention and work as an actor may be fueled by beauty for many women – and men – but there can be a downside. For example, Evangeline Lilly ["Lost"] said, “I spent many nights crying myself to sleep wishing I was ugly because of the way men leered and disrespected me, because they assumed things about my mental capacity or my physical willingness based on the way I look.” [From my article: The Dark Side of Beauty]
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Zooey Deschanel, acting self esteem, acting and beauty, demand the best from yourself

Given the authors’ credentials (they have been casting partners since 1981), consider the advice they offer blue-chip. They cover everything from how to handle a call-back to telling actors to send head shots “that actually look like you.”

Most important, never take anything personally. A great audition doesn’t always translate into a role: there are many factors that determine the final decision, such as chemistry, preference and competition. These veteran insiders have a passion for casting major motion pictures, and they use meetings with famous people to illustrate how Hollywood works. Tales of actors’ career trajectories are informative without being malicious. [From Publishers Weekly summary]

A Star Is Found: Our Adventures Casting Some of Hollywood’s Biggest Movies – by Janet Hirshenson, Jane Jenkins
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casting director book, acting careers, personal development for actors

“The business has changed as far as the perception of celebrity,” she notes. “Before, you know, you were a working actor and it was cool, and people knew who you were. Now there’s all this tabloid bulls**t and perks that didn’t happen before. People are basically interested in who is having sex with who, what they’re wearing, how they’re living. There’s a lot of ‘we have to hide this from the press’ and ‘this can’t be known.’ It’s like: Can we just make the f**king movie?

“For me, I don’t have a publicist. I don’t want to talk about my personal life. I don’t want to talk about my process. I don’t want to be a model and do fashion shoots. It’s nice to be an entertainer, but I’m a reluctant celebrity. … the media adds so much pressure to celebrities’ personal lives that it’s really destructive. I miss journalism and witty writing and people being creative. //

“Well, I think my career would probably be in a better place had I been more aggressive. But I don’t have it in me. I’m not a competitive person, and I’m also really private.”

quotes and photo from hbo.com/entourage

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> related post: The Dark Side of Fame

> related article: The Dark Side of Fame – by Douglas Eby
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Debi Mazar, celebrity and personal growth, acting and image, actors privacy