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

Acting in the final two “Potter” movies, and thinking about choosing college (maybe Columbia University), Emma Watson recently talked about criticism of her work as Hermione, and modulating her perfectionism.

“I will look back on this part of my life and I know it will be special, but it used to be that if I ever had a bad review or someone said, ‘Oh, she is too this,’ or ‘She’s too that,’ I got upset about it.

“Now what I have worked out is that it would actually be physically impossible to be perfect for everyone. Everyone has a distinct idea in their head of what each character is like.

“So I’ve kind of had to lower my standards. I can’t be perfect for everyone. J.K. ['Potter' author J.K. Rowling] thinks I’m perfect, and that’s good enough for me.”

[From Hero Complex blog post 'Harry Potter' countdown: Emma Watson still 'quite intimidated' by pal J.K. Rowling, by Geoff Boucher, LA Times, Jul 2 2009.]

Perfectionists and ‘greatists’

Director Jane Campion said about working with Nicole Kidman: “She can be quite murderously challenging in her perfectionism. Take Twenty: ‘Are you sure that’s good enough?’ We’re going, [wearily] ‘Yeah.’ ”

A number of talented and accomplished actors and other creative people are energized – or burdened – by this drive. Jennifer Connelly has admitted, “I am an obsessive-compulsive and a perfectionist. I don’t say it with pride.” And Bridget Fonda has said, “I’m afraid of making a mistake. I’m pretty neurotic about it.”

It’s also a matter of how you think of it. Director James Cameron refutes being labeled as a perfectionist: “No, I’m a greatist. I only want to do it until it’s great.”

The burden of being perfect

But a drive to be perfect can be an obsessive emotional force that helps fuel insecurity and dissatisfaction with your work, and undermines healthy self esteem. It can be part of why you “can’t stand” to watch your dailies or films – like Joaquin Phoenix and others. But that can keep you from learning more about and refining your performance.

Q’Orianka Kilcher [Pocahontas in "The New World"] says she has been a perfectionist “since she was little” but learned from Colin Farrell to let go of it: “He taught me acting wasn’t about being perfect. An actor should never take themselves too seriously. It took a burden off my shoulders.”

Emmy Rossum

Emmy Rossum [photo from "The Phantom of the Opera"] says that for her, being prepared for a role is crucial: “It’s not about control but perfectionism – my biggest vice and one of my biggest assets.”

Michelle Pfeiffer

That is a perspective shared by Michelle Pfeiffer: “I’m a perfectionist, so I can drive myself mad – and other people, too. At the same time, I think that’s one of the reasons I’m successful. Because I really care about what I do. I really want it to be right, and I want it to be good, and I don’t quit until I have to.”

Excellence is the prize

Linda Kreger Silverman, PhD, Director of the Gifted Development Center, says “Excellence is the hard-won prize of those whose zeal and dedication are fueled by the drive to attain perfection, as they envision it.”

But it’s a matter of balance, of using this need to “make it great” to refine yourself and your work, without being overwhelmed by it.

> Related pages:
Perfectionism
Perfectionism – articles books
article: Perfectionism – by Douglas Eby
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actors and perfectionism, dealing with perfectionism, overcoming perfectionism, demanding the best from yourself, striving for excellence

“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.”

Doubt can keep us diligent

But, Jackson notes, “Doubts keep us diligent. Without doubt, I probably wouldn’t keep studying my craft and striving for better work. Fear of failure is a great motivator and it keeps our actor egos in check… doubt and passion is a powerful combination. It’s the mark of a determined actor.”

There are probably a number of personality traits that impact our self-doubt and feelings of being a fraud, such as perfectionism, holding very high standards for yourself and your work.

A number of years ago, speaking of Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow said, “I think Matt places so much importance on being an artist or a good actor, and he’ll really beat himself up to get there. You always feel like he’s feeling: ‘I don’t deserve this.’”

And Damon admitted, “I just never know if I’m going to pull it off. I have terrible, grave concerns about my own ability.”

Some feel they owe their success to others

In her article The Impostor Syndrome, Dr. Valerie Young explains the concept of the Impostor Syndrome was developed by psychology professor Pauline Clance and psychologist Suzanne Imes in a study called The Impostor Phenomenon Among High Achieving Women (1978).

“In a nutshell,” Young writes, “Clance and Imes found that many of their female clients seemed unable to internalize their accomplishments. External proof of intelligence and ability in the form of academic excellence, degrees, recognition, promotions and the like was routinely dismissed.

“Instead, success was attributed to contacts, luck, timing, perseverance, personality or otherwise having ‘fooled’ others into thinking they were smarter and more capable than these women ‘knew’ themselves to be.

“Rather than offering assurance, each new achievement and subsequent challenge only served to intensify the ever-present fear of being… Found Out.”

Cognitive challenges can limit fraud feelings

One way to deal with fraud feelings, if it becomes too self-limiting, is to use a cognitive therapy strategy of “questioning the evidence”: Would a producer of director really make such an important business decision as casting based merely on your looks, with no consideration of your acting ability? Do your peers really make comments about your work that imply you are a fake?

There may also be deeper issues of self-esteem or fear of success that can help make us feel like a fraud. But all that kind of stuff can be improved with counseling, or just life experience and greater self-awareness.

Related Talent Development Resources pages:
Impostor syndrome
Impostor syndrome 2: articles books
Self-esteem / self concept
Self-esteem/concept sites books
Self concept / self esteem articles
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imposter phenomenon, acting self esteem, self-esteem book, self esteem builders

Escape into comedy

Amanda Bynes began professionally acting at the age of seven, and at age thirteen became the star of her own tv series The Amanda Show.

Bynes says she understands the feeling of being an outsider, one of the themes of the film “Hairspray” – in which she plays Penny [photo].

“I grew up having terrible acne and feeling insecure,” she once told an interviewer. “I was tall and skinny. I didn’t feel pretty at all, and guys didn’t even like me. That’s why I got into comedy.”

[Interview mag., July 2007; photo from "Hairspray"]

Highly self-critical

Many talented comedians and comic actors acknowledge there is a dark side to being funny.

“Deep, deep depression is the flip side of comedy. Casting agents don’t realize it but in order to be funny you have to have that other side.” Parker Posey [From the page: Comedy]

Many talented people – even highly gifted and accomplished, with Academy Awards etc – often have insecurities, impostor feelings and other anxieties, maybe in part because of high sensitivity.

Lesley Sword, director of Gifted and Creative Services [in Australia] finds that gifted children are “highly self critical and over reactive to the criticism of others. They express dissatisfaction with themselves; they see what ‘ought to be’ in themselves… They have a vision of perfectionism that they measure themselves against and they can become despondent sometimes even depressed, at their perceived failure.”

[From my post Anxious thinking about our abilities, and article Being Creative and Self-critical.]

Fortunately, there are many ways to deal with anxiety, including self-help programs: see
Anxiety Relief Products / Programs

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Amanda Bynes, imposter phenomenon, comedians and depression, anxiety relief products

Jackie Earle Haley just achieved an Oscar nom for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in Todd Field’s “Little Children.” His reaction was enthusiastic: “Jubilation. Pure unbelievable joy. This is a day of all days.”

Fellow “Children” nominee Kate Winslet recalled his audition for the director: “We read together; he gave the most breathtaking audition I’ve ever seen in my life. And Todd gave him the job on the spot.” [Hollywood Reporter Jan 23, 2007]

“I started acting when I was 5 years old,” Haley has noted.

“And I was pretty well known for a while. Your self-esteem and your identity start to become wrapped up in that celebrity, and when that starts to fade away, your self-esteem and your identity start to fade away with it.

“Those roles that I played and the success that I had, that is not who I am. It’s part of who I am, but it’s not everything. So when it drifts away and you start to feel increasingly insecure, it’s kind of a long battle out of that.”

“That transition from child to adult actor is so incredibly elusive,” he adds.

“The roles that were coming to me as a young adult were not that great, but I was taking them anyway to pay the rent. And the more bad roles in bad movies I took, the less anybody wanted me for a good role in a good movie.”

[photo: Phyllis Somerville and Jackie Earle Haley in "Little Children."]

Kate Winslet

Kate Winslet said of her acclaim for the film, “I literally feel like I’ve never been nominated for anything before in my life. You don’t understand, I am a girl from a small town in England who was told that she might have a career in acting if she was happy to settle for playing fat parts.” [Entertainment Weekly Feb 2, 2007]

That kind of experience early in life can endure as self-critical thoughts and insecurity, especially for sensitive people.

As I mention in my article Being Creative and Self-critical, Winslet has admitted that before a movie shoot, she still sometimes thinks, “I’m a fraud, and they’re going to fire me… I’m fat; I’m ugly.”

Highly creative and talented people are, according to research on giftedness, often susceptible to perfectionism and unreasonably high standards and expectations that can lead to exaggerated criticism.

For more quotes by actors and others on these topics, see the pages self-esteem / self concept, identity, body image and intensity / sensitivity – and the Highly Sensitive blog.

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More Self-esteem Products / Programs

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acting and image, building confidence for actors, self confidence products, self-esteem products

He is intensely disciplined and purposeful, a combination that has made him much in demand as an actor, though his perfectionism has its prickly side, especially for actors or filmmakers not as devoted to their work as Jackson….

On one film, Jackson grew so frustrated working with an actor who muffed lines and changed dialogue that he marched over to the actor’s trailer and delivered a stern lecture, though I imagine a lecture by Jackson is more like a dressing-down by a Marine drill instructor.

“I don’t suffer fools lightly,” Jackson says. “There’s no reason to settle for mediocrity. It’s why I loved working with ['Freedomland' costar] Julianne Moore. Not having to worry about the actor on the other side allows you to let go emotionally.”

Jackson was frustrated working with F. Gary Gray on “The Negotiator” and Thomas Carter on “Coach Carter,” saying they were not well organized or prepared. “People should come in every day ready to work, not confused about what they want to do or mistreating the crew by overshooting because they don’t know what they want,” he says.

> photo: as Lorenzo Council in “Freedomland”

> related page: perfectionism
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Samuel L. Jackson, acting and discipline, disciplined actors, actors and perfectionism, peak personal performance