#acting profession

Look at her! Red-carpet ready. And she doesn’t care if the carpet isn’t ready for her. She’s an actor and a protester, always ready to go on. She’s camp but she’s sincere. Don’t bother trolling her: she’s made of stone. Giacomo Serpotta, “Fortitude” 1710 – 17 White stucco and gilding, height 200 cm Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico, Palermo Elegantly dressed for the life she wants, in her…

“Acting for me was a salvation into which I fell, a piece of the family puzzle that was given to me, and I snapped it in place, and there was now a whole image, a fuller person, something where previously there had been nothing…. acting affords me the luxury of metaphysical time travel….of living within someone else’s skin… Acting is the only way I know of in which we can live the fantasy of…

The aspiration, and fatal flaw, of actors, is their desire to please. Behind our masks, we want to be understood. We want to be understood not as ourselves, but as a hundred other selves, some better than us, some worse. Our performances depend on making a connection with the audience, even if, in a crowded theatre, we only please one person. So imagine my pleasure, and fear, at reading this…

Don’t play me

Youth got too many dusty answers, heard too many lies, saw too many bad plays. Like all our younger selves, she deserved the truth. We all hurt her when we lie. Wear a mask. Act the truth. ‘Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul When hot for certainties in this our life!’ George Meredith Modern Love (1862) Photo of Pippa Rathborne: © Martin Huebscher

“What have you been doing?” By far the hardest part to act is being yourself. I have never been convinced that actors and writers should have to talk about themselves. While there is at least one actor refusing to wear a mask during the pandemic, some of us prefer to keep our masks on. It feels safer and more polite. In a recent video interview about the impact of lockdown on my work, there was…

LOS ANGELES | Alan Alda to receive SAG Life Achievement Award in 2019

LOS ANGELES  — Alan Alda will receive the SAG Life Achievement Award at next year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony.

The actors union announced Thursday that Alda will accept its highest honor on January 27. The award to given annually to an actor who fosters the “finest ideals of the acting profession.”

Alda’s long list of credits include 11 seasons as Dr. Hawkeye Pierce on “M.A.S.H.,” TV…