Many creative people report feeling incompetent, inadequate and having low self esteem or self-regard at times. But there are ways to shift those feelings.

A number of film actors report they don’t even watch their own movies.

When you can be seen in close-ups on twenty foot high theater screens, it may be especially hard not to criticize your appearance and performance.

That sort of criticism may be based on perfectionism, but also can be related to poor self-concept or fraud feelings.

Kate Winslet has admitted that before going off to a movie shoot, she sometimes thinks, “I’m a fraud, and they’re going to fire me… I’m fat; I’m ugly; I look like a whore! [laughs] [Interview mag., Nov, 2000]

[From my article Being Creative and Self-critical.]

Reese Witherspoon says, “I have absolute amnesia about every movie I have ever made. I won’t watch them because if I did I would spiral into a state of self-hate…” [wenn.com 21 Dec 2010]

Bill Nighy has commented, “You come to realise there is this huge disparity between what you think about yourself and your work and what other people think about you and your work, at first you either think they’re insane or that it’s a conspiracy to make you look stupid. Or maybe, just maybe, they’re right, and you’re sometimes quite good at what you do.”

Even someone as accomplished as Meryl Streep admits she has “varying degrees of confidence and self-loathing…. You can have a perfectly horrible day where you doubt your talent. It could be about not feeling able to achieve a certain scene or about an emotion you feel you weren’t able to get to… Or that you’re boring and they’re going to find out that you don’t know what you’re doing… any one of those things.”

[From the page Self-esteem / Self concept - which has a number of other quotes by actors.]

So what can you do about low self-esteem or self-confidence as an actor?

Developing yourself as a person and an actor, taking classes, getting into commercials or community theater or any performance work can help feelings of low self-esteem.

There are specific products and programs that can help.

The Self-Esteem Supercharger, a CD program from Learning Strategies can help enhance confidence.

According to the site, “Many professional and recreational athletes have found listening to the Self-Esteem Supercharger before a game or match improves their performance.”

Professional soccer player Michael Cestone says, “I had tried subliminal tapes with limited results, so I had to try the Paraliminals because they were different. I was desperately looking for something to help me prepare for the season. I noticed results immediately.

“The first time I used the tape I felt more focused and was able to read the game better, as well as make faster decisions. That was only the beginning.”

Learn more about The Self-Esteem Supercharger and other items in the section:
Self concept / self esteem Products and Programs.

> Also read more (and see video by Jack Canfield) about the Natural Confidence program by Morty Lefkoe.

Also see post: Impostor phenomenon: Gerard Butler – “Have I ever thought I was a fraud? Maybe 18 hours a day.”

Also see post: Building self-confidence: changing limiting beliefs and helping others.

~~

dealing with self-criticism, building self confidence, self esteem confidence, building self esteem, impostor feelings

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:

~~

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

~~

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

“Because I’m in a lot of movies right now or am on the covers of magazines? I just hope there is something solid behind that.

“Because here’s the thing with ‘it girl’ status. It’s great and amazing that anybody is saying that at all. But how long does that last? I would like to establish myself. I don’t want to just have a moment.”

The article continued,

She admitted that she worries about the way she looks. And because she speaks often candidly to journalists, sharing tidbits about her life that her handlers might consider too personal (like the fact that she takes the anti-anxiety medication Lexapro), she said that she often has others minding her words.

[Lexapro is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) approved for major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, or panic disorder.]

“Oh, I’m always being briefed by a publicist before I have [interviews],” she said, twirling her braided hair around with her fingers. “They’re like, ‘Come on, you can’t be self-deprecating.’ ”

But that’s just who she is, said Atom Egoyan, who directed “Chloe” … “She’s very self critical. After I would say cut, she always had this expression of frustration, like she didn’t quite get it. But I found that quite endearing, because she’s always feeling there’s more she can do to capture or enhance or clarify.”

[From Amanda Seyfried in full bloom, By Amy Kaufman, Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2010]

~~~

Dealing with anxiety

Like many other creative people, actors may experience anxiety.

Energy psychiatrist Judith Orloff M.D. works with many actors, to help them deal with stage fright or other forms of anxiety. In her book Emotional Freedom, she suggests a number of strategies, including supplements and meditation, and “avoiding caffeine and other stimulants, excessive sugar, and violent newscasts and films.”

For some of her clients, she does prescribe Inderal, at least temporarily – a medication to reduce stage fright by decreasing the fight or flight response.

In my interview with Dr. Orloff, she says, “a better way is that I teach everyone to do a three minute mini-meditation where they learn how to breathe, center themselves, let their thoughts flow by, and focus on something really nurturing and positive, which is a better way, I believe, to learn how to shift your anxiety and really own the moment.”

Also see my site Anxiety Relief Solutions – Multiple drug-free self-help products and programs to relieve social anxiety, stage fright, performance anxiety and other forms of anxiety.

Being self-critical

James Earl Jones says, “I think self-criticism is sort of a given when you’re an actor. It’s also about being curious and not being flippant. Anyone who accepts being in this noble profession is automatically self-critical.”

From post James Earl Jones – being an actor is fun, but you’re self-critical

As I note in my article Being Creative and Self-critical: Healthy criticism can help refine our talents and creative projects in the pursuit of excellence. But when it is based on a excessive perfectionism or an unrealistic self concept, criticism can be destructive and self-limiting, eroding our creative assurance and vitality.

Being self-deprecating can be related to unhealthy self-esteem or feeling like a fraud, and self-criticism can be based in perfectionism.

I’m not saying Amanda Seyfried has any of those issues – but many very talented actors (and other artists) do.

creative anxiety, creativity and anxiety, stress and creativity, anxiety and artistic expression, artists and anxiety, artists and self-criticism

After spending the greater part of my life as an actress and performer, I became a therapist in early 2007.

While I still do a little bit of acting when I have a chance, I now mainly spend my time helping other people to fulfill their creative ambitions or to just learn how to be happier.

The interesting thing to me is how valuable my years as a performer have been in helping others with their issues.

There were things I learned as a young actress years ago that have been incredibly helpful to me throughout my life, many of which I can pass on to my clients.

For example, I had a wonderful voice teacher at drama school, who turned out to be so much more than just a voice teacher and who eventually became a lifelong friend – Mary.

One of the things she used to say was “use it, darling, use it” whenever I was experiencing a strong emotion, particularly something uncomfortable.

What she meant was, remember how it feels to be angry or grief-stricken, so that the next time you need to access that emotion for a role, you can bring it up and associate it to the event that precipitated the emotion.

The reason this is useful for my therapy clients is that I can demonstrate to them that it really is possible to control one’s own emotions – you don’t need to be an actor to do that, although actors get facile at doing it because emotions are their “stock in trade”.

Most ordinary people believe that emotions are something outside of their control, and yet if a person can learn to induce an emotion at will, they can also learn to let it go.

When you’re getting angry but you don’t want to have an outburst you count to ten – isn’t that an example of doing that?

Another exercise we learned at drama school that I’ve found useful later on relates to my own self-identity.

Mary recommended that we spend one day thinking of ourselves as beautiful and noticing how others responded to us. So I put my hair up and wore my best dress and rode around on the London Underground with this mantra in my mind, “I am beautiful, I am beautiful.”

To my amazement, my normally shy timid demeanor was replaced by an aura of confidence and poise and people literally stared at me and paid me a lot more positive attention than usual.

This demonstrates that your beliefs about yourself really do transmit themselves non-verbally and in very subtle ways, to others. Try it sometime!

By the way, I also tried this out in a different way, when I was part of an improvised Italian street theater. I was in my late twenties pretending to be an old “bag lady”, a deaf and dumb beggar who lived for scraps.

Again my perception of myself and my projection of what I believed myself to be got an appropriate response from the people around me – many of whom didn’t even realize that I was part of the street performance going on, and who thought I was the real thing.

Another trick that Mary taught me was, when something is uncomfortable, do it more. When you can accept totally a situation and become comfortable with it, the situation no longer holds any fears for you. That is the premise behind the expression: “What you resist persists but what you befriend will surely end”.

Although everybody is born with a certain predisposed temperament, you can also train yourself to develop a different and more effective personality.

For example, I was a very shy child and young adult. And yet I managed to train myself to be an extrovert.

It felt at first like a new coat that didn’t quite fit, but eventually one day this new persona felt like the real me. I remember how incredibly delighted I felt when my boyfriend’s mother remarked how she couldn’t imagine me being shy!

People tend to believe that their personality is something inevitable, that they cannot change. But in fact you’re personality is remarkably fluid and a lot of it is within your power to choose.

The personality, like the brain, is constantly changing throughout life, and that’s not a bad thing, in fact it’s a good thing for your personal growth.

I remember as a teenager feeling that I could be anybody I wanted to be, and to a large extent I was right.

The thing is, I can still be anybody I want to be.

If I start behaving radically differently of course the people closest to me will be surprised and possibly also discomfited and confused, but that is something I can choose to deal with, and they will eventually learn to accept the changes.

The fact is – and this is a fact – every one of the 50 trillion cells in the human body is discarded and replaced every seven years.

That means that we are literally a whole new human being every seven years. So if I want to recreate myself inside as well as outside, I can.

It may take some willpower and persistence to counter old habits, but it is possible.

The only thing that keeps us locked into our old personality, is the force of memory and habit. They say it takes 21 days to break a habit, so you have to stick with it. and believe it’s possible.

Have you ever looked at an old photograph of yourself and thought to yourself “that doesn’t feel like me, it’s as if I’m looking at another person”?

That’s because you literally are looking at another person, a person with a different set of 50 trillion cells. But your memory is the thread that binds you to the past.

Actors are very fortunate, because they are used to creating themselves anew – it’s what they do.

An actor knows how to use his emotions, channel his energy, take control of his body and mind.

~~~~~

Carmen Lynne is a long-time resident of Redondo Beach and an empathetic and inspiring group leader. She is a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist and Guided Imagery Facilitator, who graduated from HMI in 2007, and a Certified Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Group Facilitator with the NACBT. She is currently studying for her MA in Psychology and plans to gain licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist.

Carmen currently works in two chronic pain clinics as part of the therapeutic team: Comprehensive Pain Relief Group under Dr. Gregory Smith, MD in Redondo Beach and Care Center for Rehabilitation under Dr. Brenda Klass, PhD in Encino. Before becoming a therapist Carmen worked as an actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer.

Mind Over Mood groups

What does “Mind Over Mood” really mean? It means that your thoughts and emotions – which may feel like rebellious undisciplined children – can in fact, be controlled, with a few simple techniques and tools. Your skill and training as an actor makes you uniquely qualified to employ these very techniques. You do it all the time – you just need to learn how to do it in everyday life.

Mind Over Mood is a course that will literally train your brain. In the same way as physical training develops your muscles and makes you stronger and healthier, this kind of brain training makes you emotionally stronger and healthier by training your brain and giving you the power to control your thoughts and emotions.

If you’re afflicted by thoughts and emotions that hold you back and keep you from fulfilling your potential in any area of your life – here is your opportunity to change that. It’s like being handed the keys to your own power, the control of your own thoughts and emotions.

For more information about the Mind Over Mood groups, visit
www.newhealingjourneys.com

Article provided by the author.

~~~~~~~~

Related Talent Development Resources sites:

Depression and Creativity

Personal Growth Information

Nurturing mental health: acting – quotes, books etc

Also see Change, growth, coaching articles.

personal growth development, personal development, self growth, emotions and personal growth, acting and personal growth

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
~~

actors and perfectionism, dealing with perfectionism, overcoming perfectionism, demanding the best from yourself, striving for excellence

“What fascinates me is that every actor is given a charge, a task — no matter what your motive was in taking the role, even if it’s just to pay the bills,” the 78-year-old performer said in an interview.

“You’re the only person who will be able to present to an audience what that character is all about. You’re the public face of all the other work that’s gone into it. Your job is to create a performance that no one else would have thought of.

“And that,” Jones summed up with a boyish grin, “is fun!”

[Los Angeles Times January 23, 2009]

“I think self-criticism is sort of a given when you’re an actor. It’s also about being curious and not being flippant. Anyone who accepts being in this noble profession is automatically self-critical.”

[From article This is James Earl Jones, by Greg Braxton, Los Angeles Times January 7, 2009.]

Related post: Actors and self esteem.

~~~

James Earl Jones, acting self esteem, 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

“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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“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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