“You go to work, and sometimes what is demanded of you is that you break your heart.” Jurnee Smollett
“Then all the terrible things I’ve had to go through surfaced after we’d finished shooting.” Maggie Gyllenhaal
After one particularly violent scene, Summer Bishil remembers going back to her dressing room and “having a little emotional tantrum and crying. And being very sad…really tired too.”
“Lady Gaga also described the feeling of being out of touch with herself, feeling as if she was still on the set while taking a walk in the city.” Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz
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Jurnee Smollett talks about playing characters who are experiencing trauma.
“We ask our hearts to break,” she says. “You go to work, and sometimes what is demanded of you is that you break your heart.
“And at the end of the day, you hope that the spirit can help you put it back together. It’s a very mystical thing, artistry.
“But it’s absolutely therapeutic for me.”
She adds, “There are for sure moments that it’s just like, even after ‘Cut,’ even after they wrapped, I’m still on the floor of my trailer crying.
“But because I still believe in the art of storytelling, and I do believe in bringing your body and your spirit and your mind to the altar, it’s a part of the sacrifice.”
(From article Jurnee Smollett’s Storied Road to ‘Lovecraft Country’ + Making Art With a Message, Backstage Mar. 11, 2021.)
(The photo is a scene with Smollett as ‘Leti’ from the HBO series “Lovecraft Country.”)
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A way to express your deepest emotions
Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz helps creative people in TV/Film, performing and fine arts.
She writes about art offering “a way to express your deepest emotions, thoughts, and life experiences.
“It allows you access and communicate stories that you’d otherwise never tell.
“It’s almost like you have a creative treasure buried deep in your mind, a place you’d not dare to touch or go to without your art.
“Your art is the key that unlocks that treasure, and it also gives you the courage to dive deep.”
- “But diving deep to bring to life characters can also tap into traumatic experiences, sometimes unconsciously.
Dr. Holtz continues:
“You need that secret part of your mind to tell the stories.
“When you go there, it feels real and surreal at the same time… You’re also scared of what’s there.
“That treasure box holds those memories you’re trying not only to make sense of, but also to protect yourself from.
“As much as it’s a treasure of creative material, it’s also a dark and dangerous place that controls you in ways you can’t fully understand.
“Many artists live with unhealed emotional trauma.”
Read much more in article Dealing With Intense Emotions and Trauma To Release Creativity.
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In another article, Dr. Holtz writes about challenges actors go through to embody a character:
It’s through the authenticity of your acting that a story can be told.
You are the vehicle through which that story comes alive to reach others’ minds and hearts.
With all this in mind, your acting has the greatest impact when it is delivered through your fully felt artistic expression.
And, this is why you, the actor, set out on a journey to really embody and become a character.
Recently, Lady Gaga opened up about her experience of “becoming” and “unbecoming” her character Patrizia Reggiani in The House of Gucci.
She allowed herself to be very vulnerable when she talked about the emotional challenges of going through such a process and how she felt she lost touch with her own reality.
She described her experience,
“You end up sounding and looking like them… It’s not an imitation, it’s a becoming… I knew I had become and the greater challenge was to unbecome.”
Lady Gaga also described the feeling of being out of touch with herself, feeling as if she was still on the set while taking a walk in the city.
She experienced a “disconnect” from her own sense of self and people in her personal life.
Many other actors have spoken out about the sacrifice and the challenges they go through to embody a character and to make their performance real.
Some found themselves behaving like the character in their private life, long after filming was done.
Some may have described that the experience made them feel like they were “losing their mind,” experiencing panic attacks, anxiety, and a sense of emptiness and confusion.
Other actors have reported going into deep depression, related to the nature of the character they played, particularly after a long and very dramatic show.
The Emotional Risks of Becoming a Character: How To Recover the Self After an Intense Role by Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Psy.D., LMFT.
(Lady Gaga quotes are from “It’s Not An Imitation, It’s A Becoming”: Lady Gaga On The “Delicious Madness” Of Inhabiting Lady Gucci, British Vogue December 2021.)
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Being Highly Sensitive can include being more emotionally reactive
As an actor or other artist, you are probably a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) – among the 20% of us who have the personality trait Sensory Processing Sensitivity.
How do our brains create strong feelings and how can we stay emotionally healthy and balanced?
Actor Gloria Reuben has commented about experiencing strong emotions:
“I am the kind of person that feels so much that if I didn’t have acting (and music), I would burst from all of the emotion inside!”
She has also said, “My sensitivity is my superpower.”
From article Working With Our Emotions To Be More Creative.
But it can be very challenging at times to embrace our strong emotions, especially “negative” ones like anxiety.
Or emotional overwhelm.
Working with a sensitive nervous system
Sensitivity expert, therapist and author Julie Bjelland explains some of the neuropsychology of emotions and sensitive people.
Bjelland explains :
To put it simply, there are two parts in our brains: the emotional/ irrational brain (limbic system) and the thinking/rational brain (cognitive brain).
When our emotional brains are activated, our thinking brains basically go to sleep.
This sets up a system that prepares our brains for the flight-or-fight response, which is meant to protect us.
Research shows that most HSPs spend more time in the limbic system (emotional brain) than non-HSPs.
We usually experience the following symptoms when we are in our limbic systems:
- Feelings of anxiety
- Activated fight-or-flight response (wanting to run away, hide, or fight)
- An “icky” internal feeling
- Irrational emotional messages that feel real in the moment
- Adrenaline surges that cause a racing heart and shaky feeling
- Increased sensitivity and emotional reactions.
See more in my article Why are we more emotional as a highly sensitive person?
Learn about one of her online courses: HSP Brain Training — Techniques to Reduce Anxiety & Overwhelming Emotions.
Here is one of her many podcasts. The show notes page includes:
“Highly sensitive people (HSPs) have differences in their brains that can create some challenges, but fortunately, you can train your brain to reduce challenges and access more gifts!
“Feeling things deeply is a good thing if you understand how to support your experience.”
Episode 18: HSPs Have an Overly Activated Emotional Brain Response & That is a Challenge!
See more about this episode and many others at The HSP Podcast.
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“The terrible things I’ve had to go through surfaced after we’d finished shooting.”
In SherryBaby (2006), Maggie Gyllenhaal portrayed Sherry Swanson, who returns home after serving a prison sentence to reestablish a relationship with her young daughter.
She commented in a magazine interview, “We shot Sherrybaby in 25 days. I was never in my own clothes. I would get into her clothes, be her all day, come home, fall asleep, wake up, go back to work.
“I do better in that kind of work.
“What I found with Sherry was that she was in such a rough place that she didn’t have the luxury to feel any kind of self-pity or to fall apart at all, or she would not have been able to survive.
“So I shot all these fucked-up scenes that were really horrible, but I didn’t experience them that way.
“Obviously, I understood that all the things that happened in the movie were painful for her, but I didn’t let that into the work.
“Then all the terrible things I’ve had to go through surfaced after we’d finished shooting. And I got over it.
“I don’t think I could play that part now. I don’t know that I could be okay with the things I had to be okay with in order to play her.”
Interview mag.: Were you in therapy when you did that film?
Maggie Gyllenhaal: “Mm-hmm.”
Interview magazine: “So was it exorcism? Catharsis?”
Maggie Gyllenhaal: “Well, that stuff is private, but every role I choose – whether consciously or unconsciously – there’s something in it that I have to think about and work through. . .
“For a while, I got into taking someone really fucked-up and showing the audience how they were beautiful and lovable. That’s a way of practicing compassion.
“But now I want to play a queen! I want to play someone who’s thinking and elegant and not so wayward. I feel like a big change has happened.”
From article Maggie Gyllenhaal By Tim Blanks, Interview November 17, 2008.
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A role that resonated, but was also emotionally challenging
Summer Bishil starred in “Towelhead,” about a Lebanese American girl’s coming of age in Texas during the first Iraq war.
In an article about the film (released in 2007), 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 the novel by Alicia Erian.
Abramowitz describes the story as exploring “Jasira’s burgeoning sexuality and the fear it instills in her Lebanese single father who wishes she’d remain 9, and the desire it stirs in Jasira’s next-door neighbor, a 35-year-old Army reservist played by Aaron Eckhart.
“To some, the film — with its comic-horrific tone — will be shocking, but to Bishil it was a relief to find a part that not only suited her ethnically but actually resonated with her.
“It was like, finally, I’m reading something that holds a lot of truth in it, and means something. I was so relieved,” Bishil says.
Sexual curiosity and innocence combined
“I was really attached to [Jasira]. It wasn’t so much that I had gone through what she had gone through because I never did, but I understand her quest for understanding of herself and the people around her.
“And not having full control over her life. Over her body. Over her decisions. And not knowing what it means to own them.”
Bishil plays Jasira not as a budding Lolita, but as an inquisitive naif.
“Just because she’s provocative doesn’t mean she’s not innocent,” Ball says.
“Just because a child is sexually curious or is looking for pleasure or a sense of power in her existence doesn’t mean they’re not innocent. [Summer] really got that. I didn’t ever want [Jasira] to seem like she was being manipulative. It’s a much purer response. Summer is such a pure person, and I think it really translates to the camera.”
The role took a toll
In “Towelhead,” Bishil must imply — and occasionally perform — a range of sexual activity on camera, though Ball wound up cutting most of the graphic sex out of the film. “Summer was a pro,” Ball says. “I think it was much harder on Aaron than for her.”
Still, Bishil found one particularly violent scene was upsetting.
“I knew this stuff would have to happen eventually but I didn’t think about it,” Bishil says.
Afterward, however, she remembers going back to her dressing room and “having a little emotional tantrum and crying. And being very sad. I was really tired too. I wasn’t sleeping a lot. I was working 16 hours a day and operating on four hours of sleep. I’d come home and couldn’t sleep.
“Everyone was so nice about it. There wasn’t any reason to be crying,” Bishil recalls.
“But just living in Jasira’s mind was sometimes hard. I didn’t realize the toll it took on me, until now.”
From article “In suburbia, a world of woes” By Rachel Abramowitz Los Angeles TimesSept. 3, 2008.
Hear my audio conversation with Summer Bishil (Private, for subscribing members – follow link to learn more about memberships.)
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Acting as therapy
Many actors recognize what a powerful and releasing experience acting can be.
Eva Green, for example, has commented,
“It’s a way to exteriorize all my shit. To scream and cry and laugh on-screen, it’s almost like black magic. For me, acting is like a therapy.”
But it can also be emotionally challenging, and even dangerous – physically and emotionally.
Nicole Kidman has pointed out,
“You live with a lot of complicated emotions as an actor, and they whirl around you and create havoc at times.
And yet, as an actor you’re consciously and unconsciously allowing that to happen.”
[From Nicole Kidman – a brief annotated profile.]
Speaking of her intense preparation and portrayal of Virginia Woolf in “The Hours,” she said,
“Unfortunately the thing that makes me want to be an actor, in terms of wanting to be consumed, is also what can destroy you because it becomes almost too hard. At a stage of life, you have to say, I have to walk away from this.”
Other gifted actors like Kidman may also be very emotionally vulnerable and highly sensitive, which can make self-protection and stress relief especially important, to continue being creative at high levels.
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Douglas Eby (M.A./Psychology) is author of the The Creative Mind series of sites which provide “Information and inspiration to help creative people thrive.”
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