Saturday, June 20, 2009 @12:52 AM
Wow... I never really thought about the bigger picture before. But piece by piece, i'm looking further and away from just me, and viewing all the possibilities. And just out of curiosity, I did a bit of research on a famous person because, well, they're the easiest to find a biography on :P
So, for Nicole Kidman:
"[on
Birth (2004)] This is a film about love. What is a great love? Is there a love of our life? Do you ever recover from the loss of somebody that was so important to you?
Stanley Kubrick taught me to believe in myself artistically. I spent my 20s raising my children, and wanting to, and being married. That was my driving force. And then he said to me, "No, you have to respect your talent, and give it some space, and give it some time." Which was a lovely thing to be given. And my children were a little older then.
It was by chance that
The Hours (2002) came along. Was I in a place where I could say, "I'm going to go to England and make this?" Yes. Could I do that earlier, when I was married? No, I couldn't travel like that. We had a thing where we couldn't be separated for more than two weeks. So that made a lot of work just not possible. Which was fine by me.
I have moments where I've said, "Don't tread on that crack in the pavement, don't have a black cat walk in front of you." Deep down am I superstitious? No. Do I believe in trying to be as kind as possible and as compassionate as possible because ultimately you're alone with yourself and your own conscience, and you want that to be as clear as possible? That's not superstition. You have to just try and stay pure and know what you value.
Usually, a young actress can't deliver because she doesn't have the emotional baggage, really, to play those things. That's something that's very beautiful about becoming a woman, and becoming a woman in your 30s. If you've lived your life, and lived it where you've said, "I want to be a participator and not a voyeur", then you have an enormous amount to pull on.
I'm still just finding my way through. I don't actually see a path in front of me. I can see not ever doing it again, and I can also see other things pulling me away from this. It's strange, because I know it's in my blood in terms of having to somehow act or express myself creatively, but I'm willing to do it different ways if need be. And I think that's partly because when I went through my divorce I dealt with the idea of never ever working again, and never being here and never able to be an actress, and went through an enormous amount of soul searching, and at that time, I was very ready to give it all up, and dealt with that emotionally. I was going, "Well, I'll never be able to do this again." And that was OK. And, strangely, as life is so strange, that was when everything exploded.
I never feel like I'm in control. There's a certain type of actor that relinquishes control when they act, and then there's another type who ends up being a producer and director and they're more someone that likes to take control. I fall in the first category, where I like to relinquish control, and fit into somebody else's world. And that's just lately, but you never feel like you are making choices. You feel like they're finding you in a strange way. That's why when people say, "What role do you want to play next?", I say, "I don't know". I never know. It's about responding to things rather than planning.
I think someone said my career defies all logic [laughs]. Because I choose the sort of strange little films, and somehow they're the things that make my career.
So if you talk about a box-office career, then I'm a disaster. But somehow, you know, I still manage to find my way to work.
I think actors are getting so much more power these days, but I'm not. I stay very much away from the decisions, the way in which things are orchestrated, what's been changed. I just try to stay completely in the role as the actor and as the character.
I'm at a time of my life now where, for me to want to go back and work, it'd have to be something that I really feel passionately about.
Regrets are ridiculous, so I don't regret, no."
And:
"[speaking of her father Antony Kidman] He's a great father, I can call him at three in the morning and he's there for me.
By the time I was a teenager, I had developed skills as a writer, and my father encouraged me to think about a career in journalism. I began keeping a diary, which I maintain to this day. I used to fill whole notebooks with my writings.
My parents thought it was nice to develop my imagination, but they never seriously thought that anything would ever come of it. They said that I couldn't be an actress because I would be taller than all my leading men, so I thought I would be a writer instead.
It was very natural for me to want to disappear into dark theater, I am really very shy. That is something that people never seem to fully grasp because, when you are an actor, you are meant to be an exhibitionist.
Do you know I'm always scared that one day I'll look back and say "God they were the best years of my life and now what?" There are moments when you feel as if you have been blessed for a while, moments when you think this is perfect, moments when you start to believe that even for an hour, even for a year, it might all happen. So I'm determined to keep making it get better and better.
It's a very brave thing to fall in love. You have to be willing to trust somebody else with your whole being, and that's very difficult, really difficult and very brave."
And again:
"I'm a person that carries everything that happened to me in my past, with me into the future. I refuse to let it make me bitter. I still completely believe in love and I remain open to anything that will happen to me."
Lastly:
"You're either going to walk through life and experience it fully or you're going to be a voyeur. And I'm not a voyeur."
Theeenn, there's Keith Urban (hey, there was a link. Why not?)
"For me, my gift is music, and I would probably play a song for them and let them find something in there that they connect with, because everybody's struggles are different. It's easy for someone who's not going through it to say, 'Oh, well just hang in there,' but I think it's okay to be hurt and crushed and cry and be angry and frustrated - that's all part of it. I think people stopping you from doing that is not helpful at all. It's important to rally around people that love you, because you tend to -- I certainly tend to isolate myself away from people so as to not worry them, but the people that love you worry anyway, so, you may as well rally yourself around them and let them be there for you 'cause there's a huge chance that they'll need you sometime too."
"I'm really a one-day-at-a-time kind of person, especially now in my life. I read this quote recently: 'Every day, you get better or you get worse. What did you do today?' It's so blunt, but it resonated with me. I think about that before I go to bed each night. It's great to be able to think, 'Today, I got better.' It's great having that sense of accomplishment at the end of the day."
Meryl Streep: (lol, why not pile some more up while im at it? :D)
"Sometimes under-preparation is very good, because it instills fear and fear is galvanizing. It makes you break out of yourself. If you're prepared, then you think you're ready, and if you think you're ready, then you're not ready."
"I try to lead as ordinary a life as I can. You can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing."
"Listening is everything. Listening is the whole deal. That's what I think. And I mean that in terms of before you work, after you work, in between work, with your children, with your husband, with your friends, with your mother, with your father. It's everything. And it's where you learn everything."
...so, upon reflection...
Life is unique to everybody, but you can always find links inbetween. Its nice; it means that everybody can be themselves but also as a group.
Like you said, Tim... a family is a group of individuals. We're there for each other, and it's like a club joined by blood.
Meanwhile, I'm also learning to cope with this emotional stress... I'm annoyed at myself for neglecting my piano... And I'm still learning "All of Me" - not just because you recommended it to me, Tim - oh no, now I can really appreciate it for myself.
Because its my fingers that this music is coming from, and nothing can change that. :)
Ps. I hope you're doing well... Because now that you've put a wall between us, I can't tell. I guess I never really could in the first place, because you didn't let me.
But that's ok. I'm learning to let you go too.
Maybe one day we'll meet again.