Women Men Acting and Image

I woke up this morning with a mixed feeling of happiness and dread.  I went out last night and listened to some really good music and talked with an actor I've admired and I should feel elated this morning, but instead there is a part of me that has finally woken up to something that really bugs me about the whole acting experience- image.  Hollywood thrives on it.  Tabloid and magazines and photos and film all deal with looks.  After awhile it wears on you.  Are you good enough?  Pretty enough?  And under it all is this sense that if you are not you have to change something or you fail?  I think for me that sense that I am lost somehow really hits home. As it is I deal everyday with what cancer took from me and I wonder if I will ever have a sense that I am a woman who is worth something ever again.  The crazy thing is I don't submit or audition much and yet I get about 50% of my auditions.  I can act.  But that does not change that what i still get, is a sense that I am inadequate. 

The art and craft of acting, and work and talent it represents gets pushed aside for how someone seems on the surface and how someone looks on the outside.  I'd never be seen with certain people cause I don't have it, and it is simply looks- not brains, heart, or a gift to act beyond measure.  It is enough to rip the heart and soul out of anyone.  I get that feeling sometimes when I walk into one of the Hollywood hot spots in town- jet setting and money overshadow meaning.  I know I am single today cause I will never settle, yet this town has broken me so much that I will never have even close to what my heart knows it not only needs but wants.  I have learned though that when someone tries to make them yours and you are not, it just does not work.  Emotions can be controlled, but not forced.  I can make myself not love someone, or at least walk away, but you can't make someone care. I wish men got that.  It annoys me when someone wants me to care and yet i can't.  I was this girl who loved to smile, but the games people played to get what they want has pushed that girl into a box.  I may never get what I want and I may have missed an opportunity to have someone special some where along the way, but that does not mean you can force yourself into my world today.  I have been abused by others beyond measure.  I am not driven by money or power.  I was happy on sets.  I will never have love and I will never be held again by anyone.  I can't afford the pain.  And even my fantasies have been tainted by those who want to make me something I am not-  some crazy person willing to kill for a part wants to make my innocence into a mark of shame and my need to do right into a crime.  I don't know if I have a future anymore. I have aged in looks 10 years in 2, but I know I will never ever have the opportunities I had two years ago again and walk sets and studios, and I will never have a man look at me as though he sees my heart.  I am very sick of men looking at me with their body and not with their mind. 

I am making a promise to myself to be honest from now on - on how I feel and what it means.  No matter what.  I carry torches for men I will never see again, and this town punishes me for it.  I don't care.  I would rather feel a true emotion than be forced to being held by anyone I will never love.  I have never had love my entire life.  I have never had a relationship without abuse.  I only had 5 years of freedom from it and that was ripped away by more abuse, and lies and games and the only reason I chose to survive cancer.  Men you lose.  And those of you who hurt me will never know.  I wanted to help others with my acting and some wanted me to with the law.  Wasn't it my choice?  I need to act like some need to breathe.  I am tired of people who say I lie.  I am tired of parents who want me to be their trophy daughter and I am tired of people who can't see that sometimes parents are very wrong and they need to not be respected and a child needs to be allowed to grow up and move on.


Even George Clooney, who has been my hero for a long time, has lost his shine.  But that does not mean I am interested in anyone.  If these games were about owning me, I want to be free.  Let me be.  All you will get is the sting of my tongue and the click of my shoes and the slam of the door cause I don't need ownership anymore.  I just want to go back to working on sets and be left alone by the high school brats who think acting is a club for the popular and pretty- why is it that some of the most criminal and cruel are externally beautiful.  I yearn for a world with kindness and hope and love and sunshine and laughter.  I yearn for an acting world where craft and art and good work get you where you need to be, and not some strange game to get your face on People Magazine. 

Maybe I have not accepted my scars yet?  Maybe this all stems from inadequacies I feel after losing what men use to define a woman?  Yet this is something many of us in acting have to deal with.  that monster that resides in our head.  the one that screams we don't have it.  the one that screams we are not good enough.  the one that screams no one will ever cast me.  For me my fear is compounded cause I don't have anywhere to go and I will not sell my body or soul.  Others did not listen when I practically screamed- you take away what got me through the worst nightmare of my life and somehow it was the best for me?  I have been fighting my entire life to hold my head up and be proud of myself.  I finally like me and I have an accident and mess up my knee.  Almost 10 years later, after years of therapy and diet and exercise, I finally am getting to do what I want, and I lose my breasts. I was actually OK though. I accepted it.  But then I came down with celiac disease and I was tripped and injured both my knees.  I fought so hard the first time, and now I just want to know, that if I need to and some man tries to hurt me I can run.  I need to know I am safe from my own family.  None of this was for my best.  Someone even said the second accident was so I would not get into trouble for fighting 7 years to get my knee back from the first.  How insane is that?  My family and everyone should be proud of me.  Three times in my life I almost lost the ability to walk, and three times I found a doctor to help me.  I am a woman with a pure heart.  I will not sell my body.  I will not sell my soul.  And though I know my future will not be one of love or happiness with someone else, I will not give up being me and I will not give up fighting for what is right in my soul and heart.  NEVER. 

Because of the games, I will never completely trust that anyone truly has my best interest at heart.  I don't think that teaching that life is a game helps anyone.  It does not raise the bar or maturity or integrity.  I wish my hope would return to me.  

Skybar Networking and the $18 Tequilla I did not want!

For years I have attended network events in Los Angeles.  I love ones with live bands or activities that help break the ice.  I am not a wall flower, but combine loud noise and lots of people and I don't know how people get to know each other.  Anyways, I met two gentlemen, one of whom I think I met before at another mixer event I used to go to in Beverly Hills.  Well the one gentleman who had a Scottish or Australian accent to his voice- it was a rough dialect as opposed to a more lilt or upper crust vocal quality.  The kind of accent you would find in a bar with dart boards and pool tables and drafted beers, as opposed to the hanging lights and perfectly still pool of the Skybar.  I had no intention though of leaving with him, and that I am glad to say I did not do.  He told me his name, though I have forgotten.  Did I mention I hate these events when there are no activities to do? I am a doer, not a rub elbows and smooch girl.

This man I will call Jack, tells me I am 80% there as an actress, and then he says 19% not, and then adds, but 1% there- I guess in addition to the 80% from before.  He then challenges and tells me how much do I want it.  I tell him it is my passion.  We banter a bit, though not much.  Frankly he made me mad.  Why do we women get drawn to men who makes us mad?  No matter what though I was determined to keep things professional.  I was looking for people to work with, not date or play with.  Well his other friend starts to pull him away, and I tell him something, and he says he will be back, and then ends up telling me to go with him.  Somehow I get introduced to his friends and it turns out they are producers.  I will probably never work for any of them after telling this story, but I ask his female friend if this guy is safe to go with.  He wants to get a drink but the bar in the main party area is packed.  I give him a hard time about it.  In the course of the conversation he takes off.  I look at his friends and they tell me to go find him, but he moves on quick, but that he is honest and I will be in safe hands.  At this point though I think he is a bit of a jerk and I am not sure what to make of him.  Something about him screams talent to me, but at the same time danger.  Just when I am about to just walk on, Jack comes back.  His friends and him insist that he is about work.

I end up going to the next bar with him.  We sit and he insists I sit closer.  Jack tells me he thinks I gave up something and that life has hit me hard and that I have probably seen it all in LA.  He also asks if I gave up my body to survive.  I get agitated at this point and tell  him NO I never have and I never will. I hint that what I lost nature took and I had no choice.  I tell him I volunteer and he tells me if I want to really volunteer I should work with Aids victims.  I have- kids.  It breaks your heart.  He orders drinks. I told him I was not going to drink. He orders a beer for himself and a tequilla shot for me, though I tell him I really don't want to drink.  I tell him that he will have to drink both.  When the waiter arrives with the drinks and the check he raises a huff about the fact that the drink was $18 and says he will not pay for it.  the waiter looks at him and says that security may have to be called and fnaly takes money for the beer but tells the guy that he will remember his face and he will not serve him again.  the waiter takes the money and Jack drinks the tequila.  Well he previously told me that he had friends who he was giving money too, and that he had one friend who was starving.  He also pulls out a wad of bills to pay for the beer.  I told him I did not want a drink.  I certainly did not want an $18 tequila shot.

At this point, Jack tells me there are two things he hates- those who abuse power and those who are cruel.  Well I look at him and tell him that what he did was both.   I told him I did not want to drink, and to be honest part of me thought he was trying to get me kicked out, like if I had taken the drink.  Cause when the waiter put the drink down he told me to pay for it, but I told him I did not want a drink.  I basically then told him that the waiter may have 5 kids at home to feed and that what I witnessed just now was both a power move and cruel, and he tells me he did it to entertain.  I then tell him that what I lost were both my breasts to cancer.  I got up and left.  I went to the bar and apologized to the waiter and told him he also had drunk the drink.  Jack swore to me he was a good businessman and he would pay it.  I don't know if he did.  As I was walking away he smiled at me strangely though.  Then when I got in line to go back to the main party I heard him behind me say something about- is that Drew Barrymore ahead of me.  I am not sure who he was talking about, but I went into the ladies room, circled the pool once and then left and went home.  I asked the waiter if he had paid before I left, but he said no, but that the gentleman was at the bar.  I told him I hope he did.  He said he would. 

One day I may go to an audition and have to work for this man, though I told him I would not want to work with someone who did something so intentionally cruel to another human being.  I met some other people but we will see. The most interesting person I met was a woman from Hungary.  I need to see Europe some day.  I want to shoot things there though.  We will see.

And if any of you reading this, thought I quit the acting, you are the monster and one day when you get cancer remember I said this- when you think you are dying and fighting to live- the only thing that can help you are the things that you love to do so much that the pain and the anger get forgotten.  I have fought years to build up a reputation as a work horse in the industry.  I had a background casting agent tell me recently that she is my fan for my work ethics and work- you don't know me and have not lived in my shoes and I will keep fighting to be back on sets- cause that was the only place I felt I belonged and the last time I felt God really was a part of my life cause I was happy and not bitter and angry.  I made choices to live in poverty and work on sets- and I would not change those choices for anything.