From her article Lesson From a Young Actress:
When I was little, my mother had a host of rules of “gentlemanly” behavior that you had to follow on a movie set if you wanted to be labeled a “professional.”
Of course, Mom was wrong about a lot of things. As I have grown older, I’ve learned to [...]

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

In his article The Art of Making Meaning [a summary of his podcast], creativity coach and author Eric Maisel speaks about a client of his:
“Jack, an actor, had excellent verbal skills but a poor physical presence on stage.
“With my help, he decided that he had to take responsibility for that aspect of his career and [...]

Nervous excitement
“With any film and even theater, you never get over being scared and overwhelmed, because it’s a new character and that brings on a whole new set of circumstances.”
Alison Lohman is talking about one form of anxiety that actors experience, and may try to avoid or stifle.
But there can be value in that kind [...]

Jenna Gavigan’s role in the William Inge play “Come Back, Little Sheba” is the “vixen” Marie. Gavigan is on academic leave from Columbia University to pursue acting.
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, [...]

Holly Hunter says about developing her talent as an actor, that she was “trying to get as much experience as I could. But very early on, I was always extremely particular. From the beginning, I was never desperate.
“I did other things for money; you know, the normal, boring stuff – I temped, I did waitressing.
“But [...]