In her novel about a late-19th-century actress, “In America,” Susan Sontag wrote,
“She had loved being an actress because the theatre seemed to her nothing less than the truth. A higher truth. Acting in a play, one of the great plays, you became better than you really were.
“You said only words that were sculpted, necessary, exalting… You could feel yourself being improved by what was given to you, on the stage, to express.”
Penélope Cruz appreciates that power.
Asked in an interview what she likes best about acting, she said,
“I like how much freedom you have to use your imagination and discover your character and discover so many things about human behavior and yourself.
“You learn from life and relationships so there is always more and more to learn.
“We are all so complex and mysterious and I like to study that. There’s a beauty to human confusion.
“It’s very difficult to put into words, but to me it’s so liberating. It’s a big addiction.” [Venice mag., Dec 2006/Jan 2007.]
(Photo: at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, March 2022, honored for her acting in Parallel Mothers.)
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Daryl Hannah said what she loves about acting is “you discover how that person, your character, would respond to those circumstances, not your imposition of how that person would respond.”
She got into acting, like many other talented people, because she was “really shy,” she said.
“I wanted to live in my imagination. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to be and acting gave me the opportunity to do a lot of different things.
“And I wanted to disappear from myself, be in disguise.. I like to watch people, I like to analyze behavior, I don’t like to be watched.”
(From article: Hannah’s ongoing role is aplomb By Peter McQuaid Los Angeles Times July 13, 2003; photo: Daryl Hannah in Sense8, 2015.)
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Juliette Binoche thinks,
“As actors, I think we are responsible for making people more aware of their inner world.”
[Read comments about her drawing and painting by actor, dancer, poet, painter Juliette Binoche in post: Multitalented Creative People.]
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Acting coach Larry Moss once noted, “Acting is about showing people what it is to be human, both the beauty and the ugliness.
“If that interests you, and you want to be able to pay the price to feel all that, and educate yourself, and work hard, and do it when you don’t want to, then you have a chance to be a working actor.”
He is author of The Intent to Live: Achieving Your True Potential as an Actor.
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Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Psy.D., LMFT helps people in TV and film, performing and fine arts.
She also writes about the pleasures and emotional challenges of being creative on her site Creative Minds Psychotherapy.
Here is an excerpt from one of her related articles on the site:
As a creative or as a performer your mind is inhabited by ideas, images, musical sounds, lyrics, and shades of color that come and go, like a story, a dance, a song or, or a movie…
Deeply engaged with what’s going on within, you’re often on a quest to express your inner world in your art.
When inspiration flows, you live in the emotional creative space of ideas, feelings, thoughts.
Your mind becomes the story, the music, the dance, the acting, the lyrics… And them, your visions must be transformed from fantasy into reality.
When you are fully present there, in your creative emotional space, your personal experiences become one with your yearnings, passion, and talents to bring to reality what you feel the world needs to see, be touched by, or transformed by.
Thus, your creative emotional space is the source of your inspiration.
Yet, in this emotional space you can get trapped by some emotional pain or conflicts.
See more in article Doing creative work with a confusion of emotion.
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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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