“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 [...]
“I always have a deep-seated fear that it can all go away, and it can. You can not get work very easily,” Rose Byrne says, recounting how she’d recently read an interview with Julianne Moore, who admitted to panicking about never working again at the end of each film. “I mean, it’s Julianne Moore,” Byrne [...]
It’s a compulsion Toni Collette ["Little Miss Sunshine" and many other films] just wants to be “turned on” as an actor. “I’ve been doing it [acting] for half my life now and life’s too short to put your energy into something that you don’t believe in, that you don’t find entertaining yourself or doesn’t speak [...]
Being told who you are “You can’t be yourself because you’re always being judged.” That is a line from “Ellie Parker” about an actress trying to get a start in Los Angeles, played by Naomi Watts, who also produced the film. That sort of uncertainty of identity and insecurity affects many artists on the way [...]
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 [...]
Emotions bring the abstract to life on stage Hoon Lee plays David Henry Hwang’s alter ego in the play “Yellow Face” (at The Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles). “There are large emotional outbursts in both acts,” Lee says, “and the biggest challenge is remaining open enough because I’m painting a character who’s not that likable. [...]
Judi Dench claims not to be “good at my own company.” Rather, to understand her own identity she needs to be in the attentive gaze of others – as the psychologist D. W. Winnicott puts it, “When I look I am seen, so I exist.” Dench is clear on this point. “I need somebody to [...]
“There is no prize, out there. The only prize is, this one, and what you feel and what you want to accomplish. … “I feel that I very often watch a lot of young people sort of meander around without any idea about why they’re doing what they’re doing. “I mean to want and to [...]
The photo is from Sarah Polley’s film Away From Her (2006), in which Julie Christie has been gaining much acclaim for her portrayal of a woman with Alzheimer’s disease. In an interview [some years ago], she talked about her work as an actor, and using dark or difficult human emotions and experiences. “I think there’s [...]
Especially in such an ageist arena as entertainment, it is refreshing to hear some positive views on accepting, even embracing, our inevitable aging. Felicity Huffman thoughtfully expresses her perspectives on aging as an actor. [She stars in "Desperate Housewives" and the new film "Georgia Rule" (source of the photo) with Jane Fonda and Lindsay Lohan.] [...]
Rex Lee plays assistant Lloyd to a “rabid boss” – agent Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) on HBO’s hit series “Entourage.” In an article on Lee [Memoirs of a Gaysian, by Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times April 12, 2007] the author notes “Lloyd has become something of a pop icon — thanks in large part to [...]
Looking back at her earlier career and the fame of her 1994 show My So-Called Life, Claire Danes admitted in an interview that she always took herself very seriously. “I think because I am as earnest as I am, people were accepting of my evolving into a certified, legitimate…grown up. “When I was 18, I [...]
Rashida Jones plays Karen Filipelli on NBC’s The Office. The daughter of actor Peggy Lipton and musician Quincy Jones, she is biracial and also Jewish. A recent magazine article noted she is “Constantly told she looks too light to play African American, and rarely cast in period pieces” because, she explains, “people like me didn’t [...]
Melora Hardin [Jan Levinson in NBC's "The Office"] is also a musician, and in our interview several years ago, she talked about how actors and artists – especially women – are responded to and labeled. “I have never ever felt when I walked into a room as a brunette that anybody was testing my intelligence. [...]
“I don’t think I’m very much like anyone else, really. I’m sure there are aspects of other actors that I share, but I don’t see anybody else and go, ‘Damn, they stole my thing.’ I’m me, and I like that there are people who have an appreciation for that.” … “I don’t want to be [...]
Salon.com: Did you consider other careers? Joseph Gordon-Levitt: I went to college. I wanted to have a wide-open future with endless possibilities. [Laughs] It wasn’t so much that there were other careers in particular that I was considering so much as I just wanted to stop acting. I really wanted to move away from home [...]
In the new Interview magazine, Director James Mangold and Liv Tyler have a stimulating conversation on many aspects of excellence in acting, especially being vulnerable and authentic. James Mangold: “There are some actors who, when they feel insecure in a scene, will just turn up the volume or the energy to try to electrocute themselves. [...]
In her novel about a late-19th-century actress, In America, Susan Sontag wrote, “She had loved being an actress because the theatre seemed to her nothing less than the truth. A higher truth. Acting in a play, one of the great plays, you became better than you really were. You said only words that were sculpted, [...]
Sarah Polley on fame In a recent article, film critic Kenneth Turan writes: Sarah Polley looks back on her decision to leave “Almost Famous” as a turning point in her life, a decision to keep fame at bay and have as normal a life as possible. “My first experience with a sliver of fame was [...]
In a recent news story, the accomplished actor, director and producer “warned aspiring actors against getting entangled in the idea of popularity as it could be destructive. “The 60- year old, academy nominated actor has blamed Hollywood and attendant fame for the discomposure and bedlam in his personal life. “Success and fame are as addictive [...]
When I was substitute teaching in New York City public school…I kept getting offered full-time teaching jobs, and I kept going, wow, I could leave this acting thing and have benefits and a regular income, and (laugh) make a difference in the world, and feel good about my work. And not have to worry about [...]
It starts with the scripts Actor Naomie Harris [Pirates of the Caribbean 2 & 3; Miami Vice and others] comments on the portrayal of women in movies: “Everything starts in the writing, and getting more and more women’s perspective in the writing will have a huge impact on the quality of films we get. At [...]
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