Thoughts on Celebrity and Media

[Katy]

I read a very interesting interview with actress Michelle Williams the other day. In this interview, she offers several thoughts on the boundaries of talking about her work and her life. I thought they were very apt and might be extended towards our own speculation in how JM behaves with the media, and celebrity for that matter. I have included some excepts below.

As she spoke over a long lunch at a restaurant near her home in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, Ms. Williams occasionally paused and smiled wryly as if to acknowledge the unspoken connections with her off-screen life. “It’s all so personal, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s hard to talk about work without talking about things that are personal. Work is personal. I don’t want to talk about my personal life, but it’s on my mind, and it’s in my work.”

Confessing to being apprehensive and out of practice, she thought long and hard before answering questions, searching for the right words — “I want to actually represent how I feel,” she said at one point — but also taking care to avoid unintended disclosures. “It’s a fine line between wanting to be known and understood but also knowing what’s sacred,” she said.

“When I work again maybe it should be a comedy,” she said. “I’ve always had a tendency for darker, more lifelike material. I think I had this sense that important things are heavy things. I don’t know if that’s true any more.”

In an e-mail message a couple of weeks later, Ms. Williams said she had been mulling over the questions that came up in the interview. “I’ve started thinking more clearly, my head hasn’t been so switched on recently,” she wrote. “I’ve always identified with loners and outcasts, I don’t know why. I guess this is why I found a home in independent film.” She added: “I wanted to work outside the system, which is why all this fame is a real brain teaser. What am I supposed to do with it? Can you work the system without it working you?

“Acting sometimes reminds me of therapy in that the more you talk about a traumatic or profound event, the more it loses its emotional tension. Switch on a bright light and find there is no boogeyman in the closet. So it is the same with a scene. Never tell the other actor or the director what you are ‘doing.’ ” The trick, she added, was to allow herself “to live in so much mystery, to rely on a feeling, an instinct, on faith, really, that everything I need is already inside me, and best I just don’t block the exit.”

Any thoughts?

Katy

[PantherPassant]

Well first of all,sorry for being absent for a while.

I had to think about this a bit.I think Michelle Williams is a very thoughtful actress,and person.She has always been a standout.She is just a natural.
I know that I have very little insight into what makes actors tick.I just don't begin to have the "Drama" personality type.I'm just willing to enjoy what the actors,and writers,and directors have to share.
I can only imagine how they get it out of themselves.Particularly the actors.I'm not surprised when they have emotional problems.It is amazing what they put themselves through sometimes.

It does impress me that Williams made the effort to think over the questions and get back to the reporter.She didn't just come up with a glib response.
What she was saying about instinct was very interesting.That whole part about trusting herself,and letting it come out.I've heard actors saying something like that a number of times.I remember Simon Williams saying "You never know,I don't think,with acting;how much of what is transmitting is something inherent in you,or something that is built into the story.And it's best you don't know."
I have to think that is the biggest emotional question for the actor,where do they get it from?How much do they pull out of themselves?
So it's always interesting to hear an actor address that issue.Though I respect the performance no matter how the actor approaches it.

Do you think if JM was this forthcoming about herself she might have something similar to say?Has she ever talked that much about how she feels about her acting technique?
The only thing that I can think of at the moment is when she was doing the commentary on FAC.Poliakoff asked how she managed to perform so well in a scene,and she said after just a seconds pause.."concentrate".
I don't think she trusts to mysterious instinct as Michelle Williams does.But she is every bit as much of a natural talent.

Do you particularly like Williams Katy?

[Katy]

I am not particular about Williams. I'm only really particular about JM. But I have enjoyed several of MW's performances. She is a good actress. I would not say otherwise. I also really respect her range. Her comedies are really quite entertaining. I love Dick, for instance. And, her drama is usually very intense and subtle.

Like you, I quite enjoyed MW's thoughtfulness in this interview. I was really struck, and forgive me to direct this back to JM, that her ideas --of how much can you give to media before it's not your work but your life-- might reflect JM's reluctance, at least partially, to engage with her audience and the media. I think it must be a fine line, as you suggest, because where do the actors end the story begin? It must be delicate.

There are plenty of examples of this balance going tragically wrong. So, for me, when people lament or resent that JM is so contained, I think about this. It makes sense to me to be protective of the balance. I think I even understand that. And, while I would loooove to hear about her technique and how she crafts a performance, I realize that opening to that conversation, opens herself. I don't know if there can be such distinct compartments in a person that would ensure no intertwining of these things.

From my years of observing JM's career, I do know she is masterful at one word answers and deflection. I do tend to agree with you that JM would probably be a little more grounded and practical in her own understanding. Then, again, I was totally surprised that as an alternate career she would sail around the world, or some great adventure.... I guess that just might be an associative linking between what she currently does... it must be a grand adventure-- the ultimate tourist.

Katy

[janehstein]

I believe I wrote that JM is an intensely private woman and she wants to keep it that way. She truly draws the line when it comes to her career and personal life. She wants to walk down the street and not be recognized and I think that's why there are very few pix of her available online. She is hardly known in this country as she does all of her work in the UK where it's broadcasted only on the BBC. We don't see this work on BBC America, at least to my knowledge. I can honestly say that I do NOT know if she has anything in her private life that she wants to conceal. If she does that is HER choice, not the media's. One thing is for sure is that she she will NEVER have the Britney Spears/Lindsay Lohan dog and pony shows following her around! However, if she ever visited Portland OR I would love to meet her and would ensure that her visit would be very discreet.

Good for you Jodhi, if you happen to read this.

[Katy]

Hi, again,

Thanks for your thoughts on JM and her behaviour on media. I too think she is a private person and smartly protects herself from media. Part of the fun I derive from this community is speculating about her reasoning behind this. It's perfect, isn't it? An actress who is so reticent with the press creates an enigma. So, we do have more of a game with it. None of us here, I don't think, has ever really had much resolution to this game. But we play it anyway. I think to a certain degree, it motivates us, and allows us to engage with her work.

I've also posted a few comments to your other post about finding her work. A majority is available here in the States. You should have several things to get you started.

Well wishes.
Katy

[janehstein]

Here's something I posted to another JM message board today:

While I do have respect for Jodhi May's desire to have her personal life remain personal, the extreme effort to do so is part of the act. LESS IS MORE! She must have in her employ a "privacist", as opposed to the standard publicist (as all people in the entertainment industry have) to keep her name OUT of the mouths of VJ's, gossip column writers/bloggers, and any kind of media person. This privacist must work 24/7 to keep JM's costars, directors and anyone else who deals with her, totally quiet and zipper lipped. The LESS her fans and other curious people know about her the MORE they will clamor to see her in movies, TV or on the stage. It's almost like Greta Garbo's "I want to be alone" stance. This is also quite evident by the lack of, or very few, publicity photos that can be found anywhere on the internet. Her extremely rare journalist interviews are done in her agent's office, on a radio station or in a theater but NEVER at her home which is stated only to be somewhere in North London. She is as elusive, if not more, than the modern day Barbra Streisand, who was never shy about publicity in her early to middle career. We knew about Streisand's difficult family life growing up in Brooklyn NY and her school days at Erasmus Hall High School, class of 1960. We also knew about Streisand's dating life and her issues with other people that she worked with. Now, as Mrs. James Brolin, she has disappeared into the woodwork. I believe Jodhi May's privacy act could be a role in itself. She is at the top of her game. My opinion does NOT detract from the fact that she IS a terrific actress regardless of what role she chooses to play.

[Maria]

There is a poem by Boris Pasternak (who is mostly known outside of Russia as the author of Dr. Zhivago, but here he is MUCH more loved for his poetry and translations of Shakespeare into Russian).

The poem it's about how ugly and shameful it is to be famous. JM would love this, I think.

Here is the translation, it's not nearly as clear and elegant as the original, but you can get the general idea.

It is not seemly to be famous:
Celebrity does not exalt;
There is no need to hoard your writings
And to preserve them in a vault.

To give your all-this is creation,
And not-to deafen and eclipse.
How shameful, when you have no meaning,
To be on everybody's lips!

Try not to live as a pretender,
But so to manage your affairs
That you are loved by wide expanses,
And hear the call of future years.

Leave blanks in life, not in your papers,
And do not ever hesitate
To pencil out whole chunks, whole chapters
Of your existence, of your fate.

Into obscurity retiring
Try your development to hide,
As autumn mist on early mornings
Conceals the dreaming countryside.

Another, step by step, will follow
The living imprint of your feet;
But you yourself must not distinguish
Your victory from your defeat.

And never for a single moment
Betray your credo or pretend,
But be alive-this only matters-
Alive and burning to the end.

1956
Translated by Lydia Pasternak Slater


Ironically, very soon after that he did become famous (through Dr. Zhivago and the Nobel Prize), and suffered a lot from this.
A bit about all this:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/13842042.html