“When you’re famous, you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way.” 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 [...]
Actor Mayim Bialik earned her Ph.D. from UCLA in Neuroscience, and on “The Big Bang Theory” she plays Amy Farrah Fowler, a neurobiologist and “not-girlfriend” of physicist Sheldon Cooper. In a Los Angeles Times article, Bialik comments, “The first episode I did for them, the executive producer said, ‘Do you really have a PhD?’ I [...]
Body image issues can be particularly acute for people in entertainment, which also provides most of the icons and role models of appearance. 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 [...]
Cynthia Bain has been training young actors for 10 years and has established herself as one the premier coaches and performance consultants. Her students include some of the top young performers in film and television. In our interview, she addresses a number of questions, including : How important is it for your students to have [...]
A multitalented woman Venice magazine: You began writing poetry when you were nine.. Do you feel like it has become somewhat of a second form of expression for you? Amber Tamblyn : Definitely! I did a lot of writing with my father (actor/choreographer Russ Tamblyn) who always encouraged my budding imagination. I think all true [...]
A role that resonated Summer Bishil stars in “Towelhead,” about a Lebanese American girl’s coming of age in Texas during the first Iraq war. In an article about the film, Rachel Abramowitz notes Bishil was 18 when she played 13-year-old Jasira in the film directed by Alan Ball (“Six Feet Under,” “American Beauty”), based on [...]
An inherited gift From article: Child actors: Sofia Vassilieva, ‘Medium’, By Lisa Rosen, Los Angeles Times NBC’S “Medium” centers on Allison Dubois (Patricia Arquette) and her psychic abilities — in her dreams, she sees how people were killed. A great part of the show’s charm comes from the fact that Allison is also a wife [...]
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 [...]
Brooke Shields: My hope is that my kids won’t want to go into show business, just because of the heartache… I thrive on the experience of working. I don’t know myself any other way. [But] I’m not enamored by [fame]. I don’t covet it, the way someone who’s anonymous wants it, and then their life [...]
Comfortable being alone In an interview about “Tristan and Isolde,” James Franco commented about how acting relates to being someone who is more comfortable being alone. Question: You talked about being a loner when you were at school. How hard is it going from being a loner to putting that aside an being an actor [...]
Ellen Page and Diablo Cody on taking risks Ellen Page, to “Juno” screenwriter Diablo Cody: You have to take risks and go against conventional wisdom and structure. What was that like. Diablo Cody: I guess I didn’t see the point of adding another conventional story to the pile; there are so many. I guess I [...]
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] [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Rebecca Brooksher plays Kelly in Dying City, at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. In a Backstage.com interview [by Simi Horwitz, April 04, 2007] she talks about her decision to apply to Juilliard: “I’m not one of those people who finds the idea of [being] a starving artist acceptable. I felt that if I did [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
[Q: I really want to be a singer/actress, but how do u get started?] Hayden Panettiere: First, I would make sure that you really love it because it makes you happy and not because you love what you think you might get from it. It is hard work, but if you set your mind to [...]
Weeding out the weak? In a Backstage article [Crossing the Line by Nicole Kristal] acting coach Carolyne Barry comments, “I think that there are a lot of teachers out there who are on power trips and ego trips and truly believe that by demeaning people they can make [actors] work harder. Well, that will work [...]
Too embarassed to say ‘No’ Many actresses choose to promote themselves and their films through revealing and sexy magazine spreads. Much as we may enjoy them, for the “stars” of those sexy photos, it may not always be so positive. Jessica Biel [left] wrote a letter that appeared in the Jan. ’04 edition of Seventeen [...]
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