"It's not a meritocracy..."

"It's not a meritocracy, you learn that very quickly. It's a business. It's really a business. And the most talented people don't always get to do the things that they should get to do." (Sarah Paulson)

Living/Acting "intimacy"

why Sarah Paulson loves acting

Unblind your eyes

"(...) we need to look at what scares us the most. We need to look at ourselves. What have we been willing to accept, out of fear, helplessness, a sense that things can’t be changed? What else are we turning a blind eye to, in all aspects of our lives? What else have we accepted that, somewhere within us, we know is deeply unacceptable? And what, now, will we do about it?" (Sarah Polley)

An interestingly bad year

“If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposters both the same…”  said Rudyard Kipling in his incomparable poem “If…”.   Well I can’t.  I pretend I can, but no, I prefer the triumphs.  Is that what they’re called ?  Those goals into the top corner.  Those victories.  Yes, I prefer those imposters to the failures.  But people always say wise self-help guru stuff like “you learn more from your failures”  or “crisis and opportunity is the same word in Chinese”  or even “I get knocked down but I get up again”.  You know?   I prefer not to get knocked down at all.   I feel like my life was built on crises.  But still they come.

 1994 was a watershed year for me, looking back.  After that incredible review in the LA Times I did not work for a whole year. I was going up for three films per week.  Everything that was made in 1994, I auditioned for.  Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead.  The Usual Suspects.  Crimson Tide.  Devil In A Blue Dress.  Heat.  Jumanji.   True Romance.  The Quick & The Dead.  And many many others lost to the mists of time.  Learning lines, forming character, turning up with well-chosen clothing and delivering the scene, over and over and over.  Fincher helping me with auditions sometimes.   Meeting after meeting.  No.  No.  No.  No.  No.  No.  No.  No.  No.  And No.   I’d hit the glass ceiling.  Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken were getting the gigs.  My gigs.  How could I break through that invisible barrier ?

I was so green, really, so innocent.  But I was certainly living life.   "Learning To Be."

Then as summer turned to late summer and even later summer (you don’t really get winter in Los Angeles) – our thoughts turned to work and I carried on getting NO from meetings.  They’ve gone another way.  They loved you but it’s not going to work out this time.  Or even worse : silence.  The dwindling hope that finally extinguishes.

I’ve thought about this moment many times, and I don’t know why I didn’t seize it.  His dream must have seemed so close that he could scarcely fail to grasp it.  He could not know that it was already behind him…wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald…The Great Gatsby’s final paragraph.

It was an incredible opportunity in retrospect.  If I’d been cast in that role, it would certainly have changed my career.  I absolutely under-anticipated the stress of that meeting, thinking in my foolishness that David holding the door open would be perhaps enough to swing it for me.   It was a harsh lesson.   Many times I have played it over in my mind, re-entered the room, better prepared, psyched-up, played the scene properly like I’d planned it.   But I didn’t get it.  Even today, writing this, it bites me.  It was a gift horse and I gave it a thorough dental examination.   Oh well.  I’m still here.  Some things are just not meant to be.  No regrets.  "Learning To Be."

Like all hinge moments one cannot eventually regret the way it went.  If I’d been cast in Seven we would have stayed in LA.  Or at least I would.  First and biggest problem.  We wouldn’t have bought a house in Brighton.  Tom, Millie and Lucy wouldn’t have moved down.   Scarlett and Tom wouldn’t have met.  Skye wouldn’t have been born.  I wouldn’t have played in The Brighton Beach Boys.  And on and on.  You cannot unmake a moment, even in your wishes.  And thus, once again, writing out one of my haunted moments in a blog post has allowed to me to understand the wound and clarify the misty darkness which surrounds it a little bit more.   And it becomes not a defeat but just another chapter in My Pop Life. " (Ralph Brown's blog)

The great difference between screen acting and theater acting

"The great difference between screen acting and theater acting is that screen acting is about reacting - 75% of the time, great screen actors are great reactors. When it comes to film, the director tells the audience what to look at. That doesn't happen on stage. When the dialog stops, people don't know where to look." (Nicolas Roeg)

Jodie Foster on acting commitment

“I’d really like to do something where I had to learn something hard. Like, learn to be a violinist. Or to be an Olympic athlete. Or speak Polish. I’d like to commit six months to really living in the world of something obsessively. I don’t know why I want to do that but I do. I’d like to just learn something.” (Jodie Foster)

Colin Farrell on acting the absurd

"I did go, “How the f–k do you say this s–t and be in these situations and have them be normal and not absurd?” But I had a bit of that with In Bruges as well. It was such extreme stuff and you’re going, “How do you inhabit this and make it seem like it’s run-of-the-mill or natural?” But it just ends up happening." (about the acting in "The Lobster")

"Frankly, my dear... I don't give a damn."

+ "Where should I go...? What should I do...?"

Stop asking Allison Janney about her acting in...

...”the greatest movie of all time”...

Bryce Dallas Howard crying on the spot

Marlon Brando's Secret A-List Acting School

featuring Sean Penn, Peter Coyote, Robin Williams, Tony Kaye and many more

Jeff Daniels' worst audition

Daniel Day-Lewis' test for enthusiasm

‘You’ve got to be like a greyhound in the slips at the beginning of a job because you’re sure as hell going to be crawling by the end of it.’ [ Time Out London interview ]

Essential Advice from 17 Inspirational Film Industry Professionals

...says the Kid In The Front Row

Daniel Day-Lewis’ rejection letter to Steven Spielberg

...and Steven Spielberg 10-years-later response

Reese Witherspoon's fan letter to Naomi Watts for ”The Impossible”

via Entertainment Weekly