Talent Development Resources.....................anxiety : page 3

 

Every time I star in a film, I think I cannot act. I've tried to pull out of almost every one I've done because of sheer terror. I can always come up with a list of actresses who would do better and try to convince the director to cast someone else.  My mother keeps telling me to call it quits. She thinks my nature is too fragile for acting. She'd love it if I was a writer and had a more secluded life. I agree. Nicole Kidman ..... [Reuters Feb 17 2003]

...related pages: ....impostor feelings.......introversion / shyness........On Fear

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We [actors] are such a sorry lot. We're all so insecure and pathetic! Earlier this week, I went home after rehearsal and basically cried on my pillow, saying, "What have I gotten myself into? I'm not good enough to do this play." ... I came back the next morning and Donald Sutherland looked at all of us and said, "I've been vomiting." Wow! I thought, OK, we're all feeling that way. We're all just a bunch of insecure puppies. Julianna Margulies  - about being in the play Ten Unknowns at Lincoln Center, in 2001 [Interview mag., March, 2001] / photo: as counter-terrorism director Maren Jacksonin TNT series The Grid (2004)

**related page:......impostor syndrome : page 1

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Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it.  If we're frantic, life will be frantic.  If we're peaceful, life will be peaceful.  And so our goal in any situation becomes inner peace.  Our internal state determines our experience of our lives; our experiences do not determine our internal state. Marianne Williamson  - from Intuition Newsletter [site], April 2004  photo from her site marianne.com  ---Everyday Grace - by Marianne Williamson

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I think it does help you as an actor if you have a hard time communicating, but you do have to be somewhat of a watcher to be a good actor.  That feeling of being different, or that you don't necessarily fit in, helps that. Basically, social anxiety leads to an acting career. Ryan Gosling  ... [Hollywood Reporter, Mar 24 2004]  /  photo from The Notebook (2004)

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Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do it. It is easy and interesting. It is a privilege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and the fear of failure.  Brenda Ueland....[1891 - 1985] - quoted in the newsletter of National Association of Women Writers naww.org *Brenda Ueland.  If You Want To Write: A Book About Art, Independence and Spirit

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people reported to have  struggled with anxiety: .. * Isaac Asimov (author)  * Donny Osmond (entertainer) * Naomi Campbell (supermodel) * Kim Basinger (actress) * Barbra Streisand (singer - actress) * Alanis Morisette (singer) * Charles Schultz (cartoonist) * Sir Isaac Newton (scientist) * Aretha Franklin (singer) * Abraham Lincoln (president) * Lucille Ball (comedian) * Earl Campbell (football player) * John Steinbeck (author) * Nicholas Cage (actor)

* Naomi Judd (singer) * Winston Churchill (prime minister) * John Candy (comedian - actor) * Carly Simon (singer) * Michael Jackson (singer) * Burt Reynolds (Actor) * W.B. Yeats (poet) * Howard Stern (radio host) * Anne Tyler (author) * Edie Falco (actor) * Oprah Winfrey (host) * Howie Mandel (comic) * Pete Harnisch (baseball player) * David Bowie (singer) from anxiety treatment site:  ConquerAnxiety.com

 

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Even today, Mr. Nicholson says, he is always nervous before filming. "There's a period of time just before you start a movie when you start thinking, I don't know what in the world I'm going to do," he says. "It's free-floating anxiety. In my case, though, this is over by lunch the first day of shooting." In one case, though, it was not. In 1997, Mr. Nicholson was so convinced he was giving a bad performance as a curmudgeonly novelist in "As Good as It Gets" that he offered his close friend, the director James Brooks (who had also directed him in his Academy Award-winning performance in "Terms of Endearment"), the opportunity to replace him. "I didn't feel I was satisfying what he was after," says Mr. Nicholson, who went on to win his third Oscar for the film. "We were having a lot of trouble with a scene. Jim is a tough bird and I like those kinds of people. It was one of the toughest movies he and I will ever do." from Nicholson on Age, Acting and 'Being Jack' by Dana Kennedy, NY Times, September 22, 2002 ---Jack's Life: A Biography of Jack Nicholson by Patrick McGilligan

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I still have pretty much the same fears I had as a kid. I'm not sure I'd want to give them up; a lot of these insecurities fuel the movies I make. Steven Spielberg .... [paraphrased from CNN tv biography 12.28.02]

*related page:**self-esteem / self concept

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Cherry Jones.. as Josie Hogan in A Moon for the Misbegotten.. radiated both rock-solidity and heartbreaking wistfulness. ... seemed utterly in command of the role, which netted her the third Tony nomination of her career.. No one would have guessed that behind the scenes she was suffering -- nearly paralyzed by a profound case of stage fright. What caused it? "Living up to the greatest performance I have ever seen," Jones explains. In 1973, she'd been blown away watching Colleen Dewhurst's Tony-winning portrayal of Josie. The impression Dewhurst made was so strong that when Jones assumed the part, crippling feelings of inadequacy crept up. Onstage every night, she recalls, she felt she was "wrestling with this ghost." She compares her experience to that of the Yankees' former second baseman Chuck Knoblauch, who suddenly found himself unable to execute a simple throw to first. "We both had been doing something well for a number of years, and suddenly couldn't do it anymore," Jones says. "It's creative panic."  ****[from Time Out New York article: Cherry On Top by David Cote, 2002]

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The acting student and teacher relationship must be based on trust, for the actor must feel comfortable enough with the teacher to expose their most vulnerable areas - which are usually the areas of fear and anxiety.  It is an essential ingredient for an artist's growth, because you're exploring human behavior and you're exploring your own process, your own psyche, your own emotions, sexuality and intellect.  Daphne Kirby******photo from Daphne Kirby Acting Workshops site ---from book:--- The Actor's Guide to Qualified Acting Coaches : Los Angeles

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"When I was little, I was so uninhibited I could do anything in front of people, but now I have terrible stage fright," says Natalie Portman. .. "I'd love to do a play, but I have nightmares about missing lines onstage, even though the first job I ever had was onstage as the understudy in the original off-Broadway production of Ruthless." "The anxiety I now feel about acting has nothing to do with movies, though -- it's just a part of getting older. You become aware of your body changing and of the fact that people are judging you -- and you're really aware of that when you're in the public eye."     ... [LA Times, approx. 1997]

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When a performer goes out on a stage, they may feel the audience is judging every aspect of them and their life. In fact, all that poor audience is doing is waiting to be entertained a little. They aren't commenting on the actor's looks, politics, hairstyle, or intelligence.  These things are really the furthest thing from their minds. When they applaud, they are just telling the performer that they liked what she did at that particular moment, in that particular place. That's all. The rest, quite honestly, they don't even care about, nor should they be expected to.Suzanne Falter-Barns ---How Much Joy Can You Stand : A Creative Guide to Facing Your Fears and Making Your Dreams Come True her site HowMuchJoy.com

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A creative person obsesses and compulses about her creative work. She is pulled in its direction, thinks about it, dreams about it, and wants to do it. It should follow that she would actually do the creative work that she is dreaming about and desiring to bring into existence. But only a small percentage of creative people work as often or as deeply as, by all rights, they might be expected to work. What stops them? Anxiety or some face of anxiety like doubt, worry, or fear... anxiety is the great silencer of the creative person. There are many different kinds of anxiety reactions. Sometimes anxiety manifests itself as confusion and a weakness of mind and body. Sometimes it manifests as persistent worry.  But one of the most common anxiety reactions is a phobic reaction.

There are scores of phobias -- fear of flying, fear of spiders, fear of crossing bridges, fear of public speaking, and so on -- and each is a certain kind of violent anxiety reaction to a particular situation or stimulus.  What hasn't been investigated yet is the idea that many cases of creative blockage -- perhaps most -- are phobic reactions to the creative encounter. ...... These real, painful, persistent phobias affect many creative people and help us better understand why creative people are prone to addictions.  If I have desire (or energy, passion, etc.) and begin to obsess about a creative project, but then recoil because I have a phobic reaction to the blank page or the blank canvas (or the very thought of the blank page or the blank canvas), I will find myself in a state of heightened desire but thwarted intention, which is a state that cries out for some large anxiety reduction maneuver like sex, alcohol, shopping, Internet surfing, drugs... I build myself up to a fever pitch but can't create and so HAVE to release the built-up tension some way. If this becomes a regular pattern in a creative person's life, an addiction becomes likely. from Eric Maisel's Creativity Newsletter #14, August, 2001, Part 1

---related book:---Fearless Creating : A Step-By-Step Guide to Starting and Completing Your Work of Art

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.. .. I carried [my demons] around with me for years. I always tried to be good and pure and right and be all things to all people, and it completely exhausted me. I got a lot of help from therapists over the years, to help me deal with the insomnias and panic attacks and neuroses. They'd keep me glued together, to get me to the next gig, or to the next march. ... One night, I woke up at two o'clock in the morning, and it was like that cartoon, where the light bulb goes on over your head.

I realized that I was working on yet another album that no one would hear because I'd always put my career second, and I'd sort of been 'retired' by the public. I decided that, instead of being content to be this '60s person who'd done all these interesting things, I had to update myself musically. And that meant giving up everything else. Once I changed that pattern, of putting my musical career on the back burner, I was confronted with this onslaught of phobias, fears and anxieties. But I've worked hard for six years, and I feel I've really freed myself from a lot of that stuff.   Joan Baez  ... [Detroit News, February 22, 1996] ...Joan Baez. And a Voice to Sing With : A Memoir

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Cameron Diaz has been taking breathing lessons to combat the nervous stomach aches which plague her every time she starts a new film. Cameron was so terrified when she landed her first movie role in The Mask, she developed a stomach ulcer. And she admits she still suffers from stomach problems every time she signs up for a new movie and has had to learn breathing techniques to help her cope. She says, "Everyone deals with their stress differently. Birds pull their feathers out, I just get a very painful stomach. Every film is still very stressful. But I handle it differently now because I learned how to breathe."        .. [imdb.com/PeopleNews June 26, 2001]

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Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University director, psychologist David H. Barlow, is one of the leading researchers in the field of fear... [His] method for treating anxiety disorders is surprisingly simple, although its philosophical and clinical implications are anything but.  He aims to reduce anxiety not by teaching customary relaxation techniques involving calming mantras or soothing imagery, but by doing just the opposite: forcing the patient to repeatedly face his most dreaded situation, so that, eventually, he becomes accustomed to the sensation of terror.  Barlow claims he can rid some people of their symptoms in as little as five to eight days. His treatment promises to be psychotherapy's ultimate fast track, but while many clinicians praise its well-documented results, others take a dimmer view of what one clinician calls ''torture, plain and simple.'' from article The Cruelest Cure - by Lauren Slater [NY Times Nov 2, 2003] ---Anxiety and Its Disorders: The Nature and Treatment of Anxiety and Panic by David H. Barlow Stress Management for Busy People by Carol A. Turkington, David H. Barlow

.. .. "One way of curing your claustrophobia,  using the Barlow method." Photomontage by Josef Astor

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"If you tell yourself you're a winner, a great champion," the cellist Lynn Harrell said, "you're going to close yourself off to some aspect of the vulnerable, soft-belly side of what music is about.  "There's a need to feel a great deal of confidence, but you have to be very sensitive to the inward, frightened, timid side of human nature." Harrell suffered extreme stage fright some 30 years ago in the Cleveland Orchestra, where, with George Szell as music director, he became the principal cellist.  "Szell had a way of making people very nervous," he said. "He wanted to control them, and he knew so much more than any musician I'd ever known, he was rather intimidating. "In very subtle ways he helped you to develop, but at the expense of feeling this natural self-assurance.

.. .. "There were times when I got so nervous I was sure the audience could see my chest responding to the throbbing. It was just total panic." .... Recovery, he said, involved developing humility -- recognizing that whatever his talent, he was fallible, and that a marred concert was not a disaster. He also worked on focus. from article Taking Arms Against Stage Fright

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more: ...anxiety : page 1.....anxiety : page 2.......

..anxiety relief : sites.......articles: anxiety......books: anxiety relief....

related pages:......mental health: main page.......mental health : teen/young adult

...nurturing mental health..........positive psychology resources : articles / sites / books......

.............depression resources : books / sites.......articles.: mental health......books: nurturing mental health..

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