Marilyn Monroe

Ayn Rand wrote a commentary in the Los Angeles Times, two weeks after Marilyn Monroe’s death on August 5, 1962.

Referring to the “sordid and horrifying childhood of Monroe, Rand wrote:

“To survive it and to preserve the kind of spirit she projected on the screen–the radiantly benevolent sense of life, which cannot be faked–was an almost inconceivable psychological achievement that required a heroism of the highest order.

“Whatever scars her past had left were insignificant by comparison.

“She preserved her vision of life through a nightmare struggle, fighting her way to the top. What broke her was the discovery, at the top, of as sordid an evil as the one she had left behind – worse, perhaps, because incomprehensible.

“She had expected to reach the sunlight; she found, instead, a limitless swamp of malice.

“It was a malice of a very special kind. If you want to see her groping struggle to understand it, read the magnificent article in the August 17, 1962, issue of Life magazine.

“It is not actually an article, it is a verbatim transcript of her own words–and the most tragically revealing document published in many years. It is a cry for help, which came too late to be answered.”

“When you’re famous, you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way,” Monroe said. “It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who is she – who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe?

“They feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, you know, of any kind of nature – and it won’t hurt your feelings – like it’s happening to your clothing. . . . I don’t understand why people aren’t a little more generous with each other. I don’t like to say this, but I’m afraid there is a lot of envy in this business.”

[From Ayn Rand On Marilyn Monroe (August 1962), Posted by ehehr1955.]

Many creative people, including actors, actively pursue fame, or at least endure it, as a way to advance their careers. But fame may also be driven by hidden psychological needs, and can lead to harmful expectations, distorted thinking and deep emotional challenges.

With all the attention about her movie “Brokeback Mountain,” costar Michelle Williams said at the time she and her then fiance Heath Ledger considered moving to Amsterdam or Greece or somewhere “with no paparazzi or gossip magazines, where we don’t have to feel so self-conscious, because that is the death of a spontaneous, creative, real life. I can’t live my life that way and pretend I’m not bothered by it and that everything’s fine. It deeply disturbs me.” [Interview mag., March 2006]

See comments by Williams about portraying the iconic star in the post:
Michelle Williams on Interpreting Marilyn Monroe.

Scarlett Johansson on being groped

The 2006 Golden Globe Awards provided another example of how fame can distort attitudes toward stars. Scarlett Johansson was interviewed by designer Isaac Mizrahi, who actually groped her, claiming he wanted to see how her dress was made.

She graciously said later, “Someone I have never met before fondles me for his own satisfaction. Like he doesn’t know how a dress works. He’s a guy that’s starting his TV career and he’s making a bit of an exciting moment for himself. I can’t be angry at him.”

But his outrageous behavior was an example of how celebrities are often treated.

When you are famous enough, it seems, you are no longer simply a human being to some journalists, for example, who seem to use fame as an excuse to set aside ordinary considerations of respect and propriety.

And people who “need” fame may tolerate a lot of disrespect to get more attention.

Virginia Madsen on sexism

Virginia Madsen (“Sideways”) noted that Lindsay Lohan has been asked questions the media would never ask of boys: “In every interview I read, somebody was asking her about her weight and, ‘Do you throw up in the bathroom?’ I mean, no one asks teenage boys, ‘Do you have pubic hair yet?’ Whereas they’ll ask a teenage girl, ‘Are you still a virgin?’”

> More in my article: The Dark Side of Fame.

~~

Stephen Mooallem: When you were younger did you ever get into one of those situations where you were doing back-to-back-to-back films?

Winona Ryder: I did that when I was in my late teens and then I totally had a meltdown because I was so exhausted. I mean, I wasn’t in one movie that was an overnight sensation—you know, like Pretty Woman [1990] was for Julia Roberts. So I was lucky in the sense that my success was gradual.

But then there was a point when there was so much attention, and you get surrounded with people who sort of make you feel like you have to do everything or else it’s all going to go away.

It’s really sweet when younger actresses come up to me. It’s so touching because I know how they feel. I know what they’re going through. It’s really tough to suddenly be very famous.

I think you get this feeling like you have to kind of be what everyone thinks you are, and if you slow down, then it’s all going to go away.

If anyone ever asks me for advice, that’s sort of what I tell them: that they shouldn’t feel like they have to live up to all of this, and that it’s important to try to have a life outside of it—even just for your work.

[Related article: The Dark Side of Fame.]

It’s like, sometimes I’ll watch a movie, and it’s got some big star in it playing a working-class person, and the character is in a grocery store, and you can kind of tell, from just watching the scene, that this actor doesn’t do their own shopping. So you have to have some sense of reality. That’s why, at the height of everything, I used to go to the Laundromat to do my laundry—just because I had to sort of maintain.

I think when all that was happening, I did sort of get trapped into working too much. And then I sort of had . . . It wasn’t like a breakdown, but I was just exhausted, and I had to just stop and take care of myself.

And then I kind of segued into only wanting to do one movie a year, and I was so lucky that I was able to do that. Even though I never really had to pound the pavement as an actor, I always worked really hard. But, at the same time, I always felt like people thought that I didn’t have to struggle even though I was struggling.

I approached work very seriously. I never went out. I couldn’t fathom people who could go out to clubs . . . I mean, if I had a 6 a.m. call, I had to be prepared. I had to be in bed at a certain hour. But I definitely went through a time where I was just terrified and exhausted and I didn’t really understand.

The world just seemed, or Hollywood . . . It just got to be too much for me.

My problems seemed so glamorous to other people, and everyone just thought I was so lucky. But then, I was lucky because my family was really there for me—San Francisco was a real refuge. I think I just felt like I really wanted to hold on to who I was as a person, and try to—for lack of a more interesting way to say it—have as much of a normal life as I could.

But it was hard. Nowadays, it seems like these girls . . . I know how they’re feeling. They think it’s going to be like this forever so they’re not being more -careful. But I’ve been doing this for a quarter of a century now. I remember when so many people were the number-one person at the box office.

And I’ve also seen so many people crash and burn, or be on top and then just make some bad choices. …

[A related post: Sober young actors – Staying healthy in a business with unhealthy pressures.]

MOOALLEM: Do you still write?

RYDER: Yeah. I write pretty much every day, but I don’t have any desire to publish anything. I mean, years ago, I wrote this short story, and it got -published in some really tiny zine. I did it under another name. But it was the greatest feeling because people talked about it and they didn’t know it was me.

I can’t even describe the feeling. It was like – people liked it, but none of my baggage got in the way . . . But I do still write. There’s something about it that I just keep coming back to.

From interview by Stephen Mooallem, INTERVIEW mag. 10/24/09

~ ~ ~

Also see more quotes in the Highly Sensitive site post: Sensitivity and stress – Winona Ryder: “Maybe I’m too sensitive for this world.”

The Anxiety Relief Solutions site has Multiple drug-free self-help articles, products and programs to relieve stage fright and other forms of stress and anxiety.

Writing provides an additional, often complementary, form of creative expression for a number of actors. See my site The Inner Writer

A role that resonated

Summer Bishil stars in “Towelhead,” about a Lebanese American girl’s coming of age in Texas during the first Iraq war.

In an article about the film, Rachel Abramowitz notes Bishil was 18 when she played 13-year-old Jasira in the film directed by Alan Ball (“Six Feet Under,” “American Beauty”), based on the novel by Alicia Erian.

Abramowitz describes the story as exploring “Jasira’s burgeoning sexuality and the fear it instills in her Lebanese single father who wishes she’d remain 9, and the desire it stirs in Jasira’s next-door neighbor, a 35-year-old Army reservist played by Aaron Eckhart.

“To some, the film — with its comic-horrific tone — will be shocking, but to Bishil it was a relief to find a part that not only suited her ethnically but actually resonated with her.

“It was like, finally, I’m reading something that holds a lot of truth in it, and means something. I was so relieved,” Bishil says.

Sexual curiosity and innocence combined

“I was really attached to [Jasira]. It wasn’t so much that I had gone through what she had gone through because I never did, but I understand her quest for understanding of herself and the people around her. And not having full control over her life. Over her body. Over her decisions. And not knowing what it means to own them.”

Bishil plays Jasira not as a budding Lolita, but as an inquisitive naif. “Just because she’s provocative doesn’t mean she’s not innocent,” Ball says. “Just because a child is sexually curious or is looking for pleasure or a sense of power in her existence doesn’t mean they’re not innocent. [Summer] really got that. I didn’t ever want [Jasira] to seem like she was being manipulative. It’s a much purer response. Summer is such a pure person, and I think it really translates to the camera.” ///

The role took a toll

In “Towelhead,” Bishil must imply — and occasionally perform — a range of sexual activity on camera, though Ball wound up cutting most of the graphic sex out of the film. “Summer was a pro,” Ball says. “I think it was much harder on Aaron than for her.”

Still, Bishil found one particularly violent scene was upsetting. “I knew this stuff would have to happen eventually but I didn’t think about it,” Bishil says. Afterward, however, she remembers going back to her dressing room and “having a little emotional tantrum and crying. And being very sad. I was really tired too. I wasn’t sleeping a lot. I was working 16 hours a day and operating on four hours of sleep. I’d come home and couldn’t sleep.

“Everyone was so nice about it. There wasn’t any reason to be crying,” Bishil recalls. But just living in Jasira’s mind was sometimes hard. “I didn’t realize the toll it took on me, until now.”

Acting as therapy

Many actors recognize what a powerful and releasing experience acting can be. Eva Green, for example, has commented, “It’s a way to exteriorize all my shit. To scream and cry and laugh on-screen, it’s almost like black magic. For me, acting is like a therapy.”

But it can also be emotionally challenging, and even dangerous.

Nicole Kidman has pointed out, “You live with a lot of complicated emotions as an actor, and they whirl around you and create havoc at times. And yet, as an actor you’re consciously and unconsciously allowing that to happen.” [From Nicole Kidman - a brief annotated profile.]

Speaking of her intense preparation and portrayal of Virginia Woolf in “The Hours,” she said, “Unfortunately the thing that makes me want to be an actor, in terms of wanting to be consumed, is also what can destroy you because it becomes almost too hard. At a stage of life, you have to say, I have to walk away from this.”

Other gifted actors like Kidman may also be very emotionally vulnerable and highly sensitive, which can make self-protection and stress relief especially important, to continue being creative at high levels.

> Also listen to podcast interview with Summer Bishil.

Related:
Taking your character home
Hollywood Balancing Act
Miley Cyrus and our fascination with teen sexuality
Sexuality : teen/young adult
Intense but Relaxed
Stress / de-stress
Stress resources articles books programs
~~

summer bishil, emotional toll of acting, entertainment psychology, personal development acting

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 consciously 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.
~~

Maggie Gyllenhaal, entertainment psychology, personal development acting, creative risks

Mare Winningham and Tennessee Williams

Mare Winningham is playing Amanda in a stage production of Tennessee Williams’ classic ‘The Glass Menagerie’ at the Old Globe in San Diego. In an interview, she commented about how rare it has been to find such deep, complex roles.

“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]

Meaning and depression

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.

More to life than acting

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.
~~

creative meaning, artists and depression, Eric Maisel, creative potential

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

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.
~~

brooke shields, kate winslet, acting self esteem, celebrity and personal growth

“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
~~

nt psychology, creativity and madness, high sensitivity personality

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.
~~

Terrence Howard, compromising yourself, celebrity and personal growth, acting self esteem

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
~~

Melissa George, personal development acting, acting and therapy

“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.”

“They have all kinds of pathology,” Pinsky said, citing a study he did on narcissism among Hollywood celebrities. “It’s so obvious that this is a population that has a huge appetite for drugs. So their behaviour, their horrible relationships, their addiction is not caused by celebrity, but is allowed to spiral into a fatal illness because of their celebrity status.”

From article Media should stop protecting stars and report on drug abuse.

Not all actors are narcissists or addicts

Of course, Pinsky is just expressing his own perspective. Maybe it is true that many actors who seek fame do have mental health issues such as narcissism. But many actors are not in it for fame, and many do not have drug abuse problems. The media tends to report only problems, and perpetuates celeb rehab as another kind of titillating news.

One point of talking about substance abuse here, is to point out potential mental health problems actors can have, problems that limit their creative expression.

The media can stop enabling

The same article quotes Elizabeth Snead, a blogger for the Los Angeles Times, about seeing actor Brad Renfro at an L.A. party. He died last month of suspected substance-abuse causes.

“I watched a very under-the-influence Brad Renfro make quite a scene at a swanky Hollywood party several years ago. Not only did none of his celebrity friends, or the publicists throwing the bash, find his stumbling, slurring, falling down and bleeding nose unusual, but not one reporter covering the party reported it,” she wrote. “I tried to. But it was edited out of my then-newspaper’s party item.”

But there may be changes coming in media, toward reportage more helpful than just TMZ-style “coverage” of drug misuse, such as DUIs and slurred celebs confronting photographers.

Several celebrities, among them Kirsten Dunst [photo], Amy Winehouse and Eva Mendes, have entered rehab since Ledger’s demise, and the above article says there are also signs that his death “has forced news outlets to examine their past tendency to keep quiet about stars struggling with drug problems.”

But it isn’t a matter of only the media “keeping quiet” – as Elizabeth Snead noted, it is family, friends, producers, coaches, publicists and others who may enable destructive behavior.

Brad Pitt once commented, “We are treated as special. We get away with things that other people can’t. And you start to believe the lie that you are special, that you’re better than other people.”

[From the page: Ego / narcissism 2.]

Celebrities aren’t special when it comes to drugs

Perhaps that narcissistic lie that you are “special” extends to how some people think about their drug use: that they are somehow immune from ordinary medical consequences, because they are so “powerful.”

Heath Ledger died of an accidental overdose of six prescription drugs, with a combination of painkillers, tranquilizers and sleeping aids found in his system, officials said.

Maia Szalavitz, a journalist who covers health, science and public policy, explains, “The toxicology results are in on Heath Ledger’s death — and sadly, they reveal the most common scenario in overdose fatalities. At least six different drugs were found in his system, including oxycodone and benzodiazepines. This is a combination of opioids and other ‘down’ or ‘depressant’ drugs: the most dangerous combination.”

From How Not to Die Like Heath Ledger, Part II.

Early lives may hold the answers

Many Philip Seymour Hoffman [Best Actor Oscar nominee for “Capote”] admitted he used drugs and alcohol earlier in his life. A lot. “It was all that stuff. 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.”

That is from my article Actors and Addiction, in which I also note that addiction psychologist Marc F. Kern, Ph.D. says “Altering one’s state of consciousness is normal” and that a destructive habit or addiction is “mostly an unconscious strategy – which you started to develop at a naive, much earlier stage of life – to enjoy the feelings it brought on or to help cope with uncomfortable emotions or feelings. It is simply an adaptation that has gone awry.”

William H. Macy once commented, “Nobody became an actor because he had a good childhood.”

That may not be absolutely true – but to some extent, we have all had less than ideal childhoods. The issue is how to deal with the anxiety and narcissistic needs that often accompany being an artist, without damaging your spirit or threatening your life.

~ ~

Related article: Death spiral – By Rachel Abramowitz, Los Angeles Times – Actor Brad Renfro’s sad death, despite efforts to lift him from substance abuse, was saddening but not surprising in a town that calls to the troubled as well as the talented.

Article lists: Addiction, Anxiety/stress, Addiction, Ego/Narcissism.
~~

Heath Ledger, drug use in entertainment, addiction acting, actors and narcissism, film industry unreality