Hannah Murray experiences an overpowering thought at least weekly that she is no longer an actor, accompanied by total bodily relief and a surge of joy. The relief comes from multiple pressures she no longer faces, including stripping for camera roles, relentless focus on her weight, and invasive questions about her health and parents’ concerns. She also no longer deals with being recognized everywhere, negotiating contractual exposure of body parts, and the emotional swings of landing roles followed by being pushed back into auditions. She describes the lifestyle of acting as including alcohol, drugs, and reckless sex, which she links to desperation and the temporary feeling of being chosen for a role.
"At least once a week, Hannah Murray has this one overpowering thought: Thank God I don't act any more. She might be climbing her stairs, mug in hand, or at her desk opening her computer, she might be taking a casserole from the oven, or browsing the high street in the East Anglian town where she now lives. The thought will arrive along with what she describes as a sort of total bodily relief. She tries to hold on to this I'm not an actor any more feeling because it's accompanied, she says, by a real surge of joy."
"It's not just because she doesn't have to strip for the camera any more, although there was plenty of that, starting with Cassie, whom she played aged 17 in the E4 hit show Skins, mostly in underwear. And it's not because she doesn't have to cope with the relentless focus on her weight, though there was plenty of that too, accompanied by questions from journalists: was she anorexic in real life? Were her parents worried about her weight?"
"Nor is it having to negotiate which body parts she will contractually agree to show. Or contending with the highs of landing a great part followed by the lows of wrapping the shoot only to be thrown back on to the audition carousel and told: Please go in looking nice. They need to believe Benedict Cumberbatch could actually be attracted to you."
"It's a mixture of all these things. Plus, the lifestyle, the booze, the drugs, the reckless sex (she once took a Kurt Cobain lookalike to a loo cubicle in a Detroit nightclub simply because, yes, he looked like the long-dead Nirvana singer). She knows it was all desperate, a bid to feel special. That was a big factor of being an actor: being chosen for a role makes you feel incredibly special. But it lasts only for that project."
#acting-industry #body-image-and-scrutiny #fame-and-recognition #lifestyle-and-substance-use #mental-relief-and-identity
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]