What did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be a nurse. It didn't pan out. Of course, it's not like my mom is Florence Nightingale.
We hear a lot from famous people's parents about how their kids were natural performers, loved attention, and used to pretend everything was a microphone.
I believe there is such a thing as star-quality, charisma, or stage presence but guess what? Every kid is a natural performer, loves attention, and pretends everything is a microphone.
I have 4 shy, introverted kids who will almost surely grow up not to be actors or singers—And they do all of this too.
Allison Williams of Girls, (I don't watch it but I'm intrigued by it and I've read a lot of TV criticism on it) said in Harpers Bazaar, “My childhood was stamped with this one certainty, that I knew what I wanted to be, which I realize now was very unusual. Most of my friends are still figuring it out. I only knew one other kid like me; she wanted to be a singer, and in first grade we’d have sleepovers, and she dressed up like a Beatle and I dressed up like Marilyn Monroe.”
She's certainly no slouch, she went to Yale. I liked her on the Mindy Project. I just think stars are so often out of touch.
I know many driven, passionate, failing actors. They have wanted to be actors since they were little, too. Most people do want to be famous when they are little. It's not that unique. Some of those people stick with it and work hard and/or get lucky and some of those people have Brian Williams as their dad.
At least Allison Williams acknowledges this, “It is apparent to anyone that there are fewer steps between me and Hollywood than there are for the average person. But at some point you are asked to stand and deliver, and people can be pretty ruthless in their judgment toward people like me… I operate with this sense of needing to live up to what I am asking of people. I am, by far, my own worst critic.”
I don't think I'm being ruthless in my judgment toward her. It just seems rude to say that about your childhood friends. That's all. Like they are slackers or something.
Photo Credit: Blossom Berkofsky
Yep. I hate it when famous actors talk like they "own" being funny and wanting to perform as kids. It's so self-indulgent. Like, I'm a mom, so I probably sat around all day putting diapers on dolls and pushing a grocery cart around my living room and my parents pointed it out to their friends and they all said, "How cute!", right? No, not right. I was singing and dancing like you tools.
ReplyDeleteAlso, how did I miss the Goop post? Great.
("You tools" was not addressed to Kacy and her readers, but rather the self-indulgent actors.)
ReplyDeleteAnd who is dressing up like Marllyn Monroe as a first grader? Gross.
ReplyDeleteI spent all my childhood wanting to be an actor. And I was going to be discovered, and it was going to be amazing....yup, I'm a stay at home mom, which is almost (not) the same thing. I also went through a long period of wanting to be an author, a botanist, and a psychiatrist, and none of those panned out either. But if I'd been a botanist, I could have talked about how I went on this week long trip with my friend and her bigshot botanist father with the U when I was in sixth grade to study the bear claw poppy in Southern Utah, and it was at that moment that my fate was set....but it wasn't, and I didn't become a botanist and I moved on. I think we tend to look at all the people who do grow up and do what they always wanted to. Like this book I just read, Cutting for Stone which was a great book, but I couldn't understand how all the main people knew they wanted to be doctors from the time they were children. Really? There are that many directed children out there? (Excepting for being actors and perhaps teachers - I think every child wants to do this at some point, although my daughter has a spin on the actor angle - she wants to be in the circus, on the tightrope.)
ReplyDeleteI'm a dancer (which sounds made up but just replace "I'm a dancer" with "I make well below the official poverty line" and it all makes sense again) I used to hate when people would say "oh how fun!" when I told them what I do, because "hey it's a lot of (underpaid) work!" But then I realized that EVERYBODY wanted to be a dancer (or actor) at some point in their life but most of them wisely decided doing something that could also pay the bills would be nice. So when they responded with "how fun!" they were really just reliving a childhood memory for a moment which is actually kind of nice, even it doesn't pay for a trip to Hawaii. But I agree it is naive navel gazing to think you "made it" because you decided when you were a kid that you would, there are plenty of extremely talented people out there that made that decision and are not even making below poverty line.
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