Professional acting is not a meritocracy. There are countless talented actors who toil in obscurity while bona fide hacks saw the air too much nightly across living rooms throughout the land. It has always been thus, and shall always be thus.
Professional ball players might get paid too much, but if you can’t throw strikes, you’ll be sent down the minors pretty quickly. Not so with entertainment. If somebody up there likes you, they’ll make the strike zone fit whatever you’re chucking down the pike. Your only talent could be in getting people to believe you have talent. Read more…
The first Noble Truth of Buddhism tells us that all beings encounter suffering. The first step on the Eightfold Path towards the end of said suffering asks that a practitioner acknowledge that this is true. This is Right View, and, yes, I spent years ignoring this basic idea as it related to my life as an actor. Read more…
A quick perusal of the self-help/psychology sections of bookstores reveals a distinct trend: the word “mindful” is finding its way into a lot of titles. The significance is inescapable. Mindfulness is now fashionable, and is being used to sell products, which can only lead to a corruption of its meaning, the way westernized yoga today bares scant resemblance to the original practice. Accessorizing your wardrobe with $100 shorts from Lululemon is not yoga, it’s Sex and the City. Read more…
2009 was dedicated to making massive change on every level. Will 2010 hold more of the same? The pursuit has made me feel more alive than any time I can ever remember. My mind felt as if it were shot out of a canon, and my skin tingled as if the nerve-endings had been attached to a live wire. I had no idea where I was going when it started. All I knew at the beginning of the year was that if I didn’t change, I would die. You’ll forgive the dramatic turn of phrase, but I felt the “diamond bullet,” as Colonel Kurtz put it in Apocalypse Now, the moment of binding pain, beauty and clarity that turns everything on its ear. Read more…
Though there’s thankfully less holiday bunting this year than usual, it will certainly not slow down our mad belief that we are somehow to be happy because, well, it’s happy season. As a child who endured one Christmas more miserable than the next, I always felt like Exhibit A that this was, in fact, the least wonderful time of year. And what I found particularly horrifying was the idea that I had to buy gifts for people who couldn’t stand me. Read more…
Professional acting is not a meritocracy. There are countless talented actors who toil in obscurity while bona fide hacks saw the air too much nightly across living rooms throughout the land. It has always been thus, and shall always be thus.