We all have a suspicion and hope that we've just been part of something special, something that may eventually change our lives. That no one else knows this makes it seem like we are living with a secret that we would like to share, but can't, sort of like having a superpower that's not come online or being president elect. For the moment, our lives proceed as usual, but within a month, we think, everything will change. It's a frustrating, if exciting, disconnect.
American actor (born 1964)
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But whenever I’m feeling “over it,” that maybe I’ve been at this for too long and it’s all a little bloodless, I know what to do. I go to YouTube and type in “Alec Baldwin, always be closing speech.” And I’m fifteen again, in love with movies, with acting and feeling the full throttle of my abilities and passion to use them. I’m ready to walk through walls again.
Look, if you want to wear a blindfold and stumble around your house bumping into things to learn how to play ‘blind,’ you can do that. A lot of actors do. You can block your hearing and not speak. But great performances are based on truth. And the truth is that you, Rob Lowe, can hear and you can speak.
If you are fortunate enough to be part of a hit, particularly a transcendent one, all emotional ownership is transferred from you to the audience. They judge it and embrace it; project their own hopes, dreams, and fears onto it; take their personal meaning from its themes, and with these investments it becomes theirs. The significance of your participation pales in comparison to the significance the project has on their imaginations.
So I tell my boys that they need to say yes to life, just do it, get out and make their own memories. I tell them to think of it as a vocation; after all, we never think twice about toiling for money and yet when our time comes it won’t be our bank balance that comforts us. I tell them to not be afraid. Don’t fear the rejection that can come from putting yourself out there.
Nothing in life is unfair. It's just life. To the extent that I had any inner turmoil, I had only myself to blame. I also thought of my two boys and what kind of example I hoped to be. I would always want them to take charge of their own futures and not be paralyzed by the comfort and certainty of the status quo or be cowed by the judgment of those on the outside looking in.
I’ve never agreed with the conventional wisdom that ‘actors are great liars.’ If more people understood the acting process, the goals of good actors, the conventional wisdom would be ‘actors are terrible liars,’ because only bad actors lie on the job. The good ones hate fakery and avoid manufactured emotion at all costs. Any script is enough of a lie anyway. (What experience does any actor have with flying a spacecraft? Killing someone?) What’s called for, what actors are hired for, is to bring reality to the arbitrary.
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