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

What choices and compromises do you make to gain attention and opportunities as an actor?

Romola Garai has expressed a number of thoughtful perspectives on these topics. Here are some quotes from her imdb.com profile.

On Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights :

“I wouldn’t have done something that I thought had no merit in it at all, but I did experience a fall-out from being calculating about your career, believing that you should do something in order to get you somewhere else. It was just creatively unfulfiling.”

“The filmmakers were obsessed with having someone skinny. I just thought, why didn’t they get someone like Kate Bosworth, if that’s what they wanted? An actress like that wouldn’t worry about whether or not the political ideas were being sensitively or subtly dealt with. They’d do the job, smile and look pretty on the cover of Teen Vogue. There I am, 135 pounds and trying to make art! I was so wrong for it!”

”I had the time of my life. I have used every part of my body, plus muscles I did not know I had, because the dancing is a combination of salsa and Latin ballroom. It felt like daily aerobics.”

On the Vanity Fair premiere: “I [showed] my tits and teeth. I’m useless at it. About 40 per cent of success as an actor is now based on whether you’re good at being interviewed and how you conduct yourself. And I’m really bad at that.”

More on being an actor :

“When I was a child I always wanted to be funny and to please people in my family. As you grow up that instinct becomes more refined, but it’s still there. How can it not be? I just don’t believe you’re capable of being an actor unless you have a desire to experience your emotions in a public way.”

“It’s too simplistic to say that people start to believe what’s written about them. But what happens is that you become a certain way to please people, to be liked, to be what’s expected of you, to change yourself so that you become the best possible version of yourself for people who don’t know you.

“And I think that’s a terrible, pernicious thing.”

[Photo: Romola Garai as Emma Woodhouse in "Emma"]

acting performance, acting self esteem, acting passion, entertainment psychology, actors training, personal development for actors

Those who do become household names? They’re talented. Yes. That’s a given. Being even moderately successful in this industry requires a baseline of talent. Done.

These folks are also filled with charisma. They ooze it from every pore. You can’t take your eyes off them when they enter a room and you never will be able to figure out exactly why.

They’re charming in interviews, they’re quick-witted or smart or so goofy that you forgive that they’re neither quick-witted nor smart. And they love what they’re doing.

They are enchanted and mystified by the road they’re following.

They simply love getting to work. They have a blast just being who they are, every minute. Or at least that’s how it looks most of the time. They’re almost never in it for the fame. That fame thing is just something that happens because of how talented, how good-looking, how charismatic, and how lucky they are.

But when an actor comes to Los Angeles with his or her eyes on the prize of fame, of “household name” status, of being stopped on the street for autographs and stalked on Robertson for photographs, I want to ask that actor to redefine success.

For his or her own sanity.

Because success–when it’s measured in autographs and red carpets and stalkers and paparazzi and private jets–is too far away.

When, instead, it’s measured in “straight offers” and “straight to producers” or meetings to strategize which project will be next of the many from which you’re choosing, and handlers who tell you at which mics to stop as you navigate the red carpet (not as the film’s mega-watt-star but as one of the many wonderful, working actors whose work everyone loves), well, then you’re getting warmer.

And even better, when success is defined as you, being happy, pursuing the work that you love in the place that you love surrounded by people that you love and who love you, seeing measurable progress over the years, as your name moves up casting lists in more and more offices, while you remain gratified and fulfilled by the work you’re doing, well, that’s the bullseye.

That’s success you can attain.

~~~~

Bonnie Gillespie specializes in casting SAG indie feature films and provides career consulting services to actors.

Her books include Acting Qs: Conversations with Working Actors
and Self-Management for Actors: Getting Down to (Show) Business.

~~~

Photo: Charlize Theron on the red carpet.

Related post: Shia LaBeouf on fame and meaning and insecurity

Related pages:
Fame and celebrity
Identity
Self-esteem / self concept

Also see my article: The Dark Side of Fame.

acting talent, acting performance, training as actor, developing creativity, creative expression, acting self esteem, acting passion, entertainment psychology

“Actors and actresses, because that’s their career, can be sort of self-obsessed.”

Kristen Bell says that for her new film “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” she “just looked into the depths of the most hard-to-admit or vulnerable or bad characteristics of my own personality and what an actress can become if given that kind of self indulgence or that amount of vanity.

“That I think anybody could really become. But actors and actresses especially, because that’s their career, to be sort of self-obsessed. And there’s a lot of comedy in that.” [From darkhorizons.com interview by Paul Fischer March 27th 2008.]

“Narcissism is the part of my personality…”

When asked about narcissism and being an actor, Ben Affleck admitted, “I’d say it’s the one quality that unites everybody in the film industry, whether you’re an actor, a producer, a director, or a studio executive. You want people to look at you and love you and go, ‘Oh, you’re wonderful.’

But, he continued, “It’s a nightmare. Narcissism is the part of my personality that I am the least proud of, and I certainly don’t like to see it highlighted in everybody else I meet.” [Interview mag., Dec. 1997]

Sarah Silverman commented in an interview about discovering the writing of psychologist Alice Miller: “There’s a book called ‘Drama of the Gifted Child’ given to me by my sister, and I was thinking, This is unbelievable. It’s all about me. I related to it so much.

“And I asked a friend of mine if she’d read it, and she said that Alice Miller originally titled the book ‘Drama of the Narcissistic Child’ – but she knew that no one who needed to read it would buy it. That was really funny, and a little bit embarrassing.”

[From Making 'Magic' (And Trouble) with Sarah Silverman, NPR, Fresh Air audio interview, Oct 3, 2007; photo from "Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic."]

The psychology of narcissism

But what is narcissism? The basic idea is being obsessively self-absorbed, always putting your own needs first, having poor empathy or appreciation for other people’s needs etc. But what is behind someone operating that way?

Alice Miller writes in The Drama of the Gifted Child about childhood harm leading to compromised emotional life as an adult, including those kinds of behavior.

Miller has been quoted about the word ‘gifted’ in the title: “I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb… Without this ‘gift’ offered us by nature, we would not have survived.”

She writes in the book, “A little reflection soon shows how inconceivable it is really to love others (not merely to need them), if one cannot love oneself as one really is.

“And how could a person do that if, from the very beginning, he has had no chance to experience his true feelings and to learn to know himself? For the majority of sensitive people, the true self remains deeply and thoroughly hidden. But how can you love something you do not know, something that has never been loved?

“So it is that many a gifted person lives without any notion of his or her true self. Such people are enamored of an idealized, conforming, false self. They will shun their hidden and lost true self, unless depression makes them aware of its loss or psychosis confronts them harshly with that true self, whom they now have to face and to whom they are delivered up, helplessly, as to a threatening stranger.”

Miller says in looking at the origins of this loss of the self in the book, she chooses not to use the term “narcissism.” “However, in my clinical descriptions,” she adds, “I shall speak occasionally of a healthy narcissism and depict the ideal case of a person who is genuinely alive, with free access to the true self and his authentic feelings.

“I shall contrast this with narcissistic disorders, with the true self’s ‘solitary confinement’ within the prison of the false self. This I see less as an illness than as tragedy, and it is my aim in this book to break away from judgmental, isolating, and therefore discriminating terminology.”

[From Direct Quotes from The Drama of the Gifted Child.]

Celebrities and narcissism

In his article The narcissist, unmasked, Benedict Carey describes qualities that fit many celebrity level performers, as well as other professionals: “They’ve got the most fabulous personal trainer in town, the best lawyer, the top BMW mechanic, and make sure the world knows it.

“They’re charming enough to attract friends, associates and lovers — only to drop them as soon as better prospects show up. They need the best table in the house, the lion’s share of the conversation and, above all, top billing, whether on the marquee or in the mailroom.

“While familiar at almost any level of society, these peacocks find Southern California an especially comfortable habitat. In the warm bath of sunlight and celebrity, their behavior can be entertaining, even encouraged, and it’s usually relatively harmless.

“Yet some of these seemingly overconfident people are actually in considerable psychological trouble, suffering what psychiatrists call narcissistic personality disorder, one of the most self-destructive and difficult-to-treat conditions in the lexicon of mental illness.

“For contrary to Narcissus of Greek legend, who was enthralled by his own reflection in a pool of water, researchers say that roughly 1 million Americans with this personality disorder act not from self-love but from a kind of self-loathing, a dread of failure and an inability to endure its emotional fallout — shame.

“Millions more are thought to suffer from narcissistic tendencies, due to similar but less extreme fears. Recent research suggests that this anguish develops in early childhood, and that therapists can help put it to rest.” [Los Angeles Times, Oct 14 2002]

Does fame and power fuel narcissism?

Another perspective is offered by writer Stephen Sherrill in his New York Times article Acquired Situational Narcissism.

“We all know that movie stars, professional athletes, rich people and politicians often act like complete jackasses,” he writes, “but Robert B. Millman, professor of psychiatry at Cornell Medical School and the medical adviser to Major League Baseball, thinks he knows why. The cause, he says, is acquired situational narcissism, a psychological dysfunction that Millman was the first to identify and that he treats in his celebrity patients.”

Sherrill explains, “People who aspire to stardom tend to be more narcissistic than others, but they don’t develop a true narcissistic personality disorder until they begin to achieve success: the first platinum album, the first appearance in Vanity Fair’s ‘Young Hollywood’ issue, the first public fling with Winona Ryder.”

Not necessarily craziness

Having these sort of narcissistic tendencies doesn’t mean you are “crazy” or necessarily need therapy.

But it can be helpful to our emotional growth and power as creative people to be more aware of how we operate, and change what doesn’t serve us well.

Richard Gere once commented, “The more I grow, the less I become this egocentric thing that is prone to anger and hatred and all this other stuff. The trick is to get out of the way of the ego, so that whatever is of value illuminating inside you or me or the waiter or anybody else can be seen. The job of the creative person is to get out of the way.” [LA Times, 1/5/03]

Ego self-esteem

Spiritual writer Eckhart Tolle [Meg Ryan made Oprah aware of his book The Power of Now] distinguishes two kinds of self esteem. “First there is the ego self-esteem,” he says.

“Even if you have high ego self-esteem, there’s always hidden fear underneath it. It’s always there to compensate for the fear you feel of not being good enough or perhaps failing. So you need to play a role of being big to compensate for fear of failure that’s deep down.

“But the world would say he or she has high self-esteem. People who have big egos. But the world doesn’t realize that that’s not true self-esteem.”

True self-esteem, he explains, “goes much deeper. It’s finding the source of power and aliveness deep inside.”

From article Eckhart Tolle on Shyness, Self-esteem and Ego.

Actor Vera Farmiga cautions, “This business [entertainment] is tough, it is so tough. But my first and foremost thing is like, ego always gets in the way. You gotta keep that in check – you got to.”

~ ~ ~

Alice Miller’s site

Books by Alice Miller:
The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness

Another book: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.  Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Re-Visited

Related article: Ego and Creativity

Related pages:
Ego / narcissism
Ego / narcissism 2 : quotes articles books

actors and narcissism, entertainment psychology, search for your true self, overcoming narcissism, narcissism books

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

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
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Jurnee Smollett, celebrity and personal growth, find your purpose

Kept in a box

“Too many people want to get rich and famous and do it quick,” Jaime Pressly said in a recent interview article. “To get anywhere you have to be focused, ambitious, headstrong and really, really want it. It won’t come on a silver platter, and it won’t last long…

“I started [acting] 13 years ago — there’s girls who started when they were 10, 9, and once they became 16 or 18 or 21, no one wanted them to grow up. They went leaps and bounds beyond what they need to do, whether a photo shoot because they wanted to show they weren’t a little girl any more, or they go rebel…”

She adds that the entertainment business “has a way of putting you in a closet and locking you in, and after a while you get claustrophobic. You kick the door down and you come out with a vengeance. . . .

Support could make the difference

“That’s what happens with everyone who grows up in the business. They feel like they’re being yelled at. They think of what they’re going to do to prove you wrong. And they say the wrong thing and make the wrong move and regret it.

“But had they not been pushed, they may not have been that way. If we would support each other and support other celebrities — and if the press would support people long enough to grow up and try new things without pigeonholing them — things might be a lot easier.”

[From Jaime Pressly, all grown up, By Choire Sicha, Los Angeles Times Nov 11, 2007.]

Photo: Jaime Pressly as Joy Turner in ‘My Name Is Earl’ (NBC).
~~

Jaime Pressly, celebrity rebels, celebrity and personal growth, personal development acting

“Celebrity hits like a bomb. So you have to find what makes you stable in the storm.”

Jimmy Smits adds, “Then, no matter what’s happening around you, no matter what the hype or the publicity, you can still manage to make leaps in your work as an artist.” [imdb.com]

In my article The Dark Side of Fame, I note that many talented actors have an ambivalent attitude about gaining or pursuing celebrity status, or just high visibility with the public, and with the decision makers such as film studios which can help their careers grow.

Winona Ryder commented about being relatively out of the spotlight the past couple of years, “Hollywood people associate movies solely with fame and I didn’t enjoy working in that way anymore. I am so much happier now.”

And there are a number of ways fame can make people emotionally unstable.

For example, psychiatrist Robert B. Millman developed the concept of acquired situational narcissism to explain some of the grandiose fantasies and other distortions people can be prey to after gaining high levels of fame.

One of the problems is being surrounded by people assuring the famed one that they are worthy of it. But as Millman noted in a NY Times article, the famous really are different: ”They’re not normal. And why would they feel normal when every person in the world who deals with them treats them as if they’re not?”

Fame can also assault sensitive people. 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 it can also be strengthening, as Kim Basinger noted: “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.”
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celebrity and personal growth, film industry unreality, living with fame, personal development acting

[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