early life: page 2

Talent Development Resources...........early life: page 2

Being at an all girls school was the best time of my life. ... it was cool to excel... to be the best in everything. ... you never really are taught or made to feel like you need to diminish your voice. ... I guess I just learned over the years to really embrace my voice and not feel like I need to downplay who I am or what I believe.

I think that sometimes if a woman has a voice she's perceived as bitchy or headstrong rather than just being bright and articulate. Laurie Holden****[Venice magazine interview] << more quotes in article: The Company of Women

photo of Holden as Adele Stanton in The Majestic by Ralph Nelson for Castle Rock and Warner Bros.

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Sir Anthony Hopkins' lonely youth gave him the confidence to become an outspoken star. The Welsh actor was dyslexic and hated rugby, and so was treated as an outcast in his native land - but he claims the treatment from his peers gave him just what he needed to become a movie star.

He says, "It gave me the fire and anger to become an actor. I wasn't afraid of anything. The acting covered up the loneliness. "A few weeks after I arrived at the National Theatre I marched into the production office and said, 'Who do you have to sleep with to get parts at this place? I don't just want to carry spears in an Olivier production.'" [imdb.com 1.30.01]

*related pages:*learning differences**social reactions

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I grew up in Harlem, New York City. That's when art was part of the core curriculum in our school. Looking back in retrospect, art saved my life because it afforded me a way of expressing myself. It literally kept me off the streets.

Hector Elizondo - speaking on behalf of The Creative Coalition at Arts Advocacy Day, Washington, D.C., March 11-12, 2002 / photo from Nosotros website: nosotros.org

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[How old were you when you were watching a movie and said: I want to be up there?]

Probably 8 years old. It probably happened before that though because I was doing shows since age 5. I didn't know where it was going to go or necessarily that it would manifest it in the movies. I just knew that I needed a lot of attention from a lot of people and I needed to prove to the world that I was magic. That was the underlying factor in everything. It's the underlying reason why I do this.

Jim Carrey [DarkHorizons.com interview] photo from book: Timothy White: Portraits

**bio: Jim Carrey: Funny Man by Joan Wallner

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The passage through adolescence was a lonely, involuted time for me... I had no one to eat lunch with, and took my sandwich to the locker room, where I pretended to be busy writing an article... I took refuge in scholarship... At Radcliffe, epithets with which I had been branded -- bookworm, greasy grind, brain trust -- became a badge of honor.
writer Maxine Kumin - from book: Jane Piirto. My Teeming Brain: Understanding Creative Writers.

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An intellectually gifted child begins life receiving feedback that she is a surprising delight
to her family. She receives positive feedback for her speech and vocabulary and for how
quickly she figures things out and learns to do things.
I believe many gifted people spend much of their remaining life trying to recreate this
positive feedback and wondering what they are doing wrong.
from article Social & Emotional Needs of the Gifted by Deborah L. Ruf, PhD
~ ~ ~ ~

I was thinking about normal kid stuff. Being an astronaut or a policeman or a fireman or whatever. I read this thing in the newspaper about an audition for the Micky Mouse Club. I got it. ... They gave us this great sense of focus. I think it's the main reason why all the kids from the Club are doing as well as they are.

Ryan Gosling ... [eonline.com] [his castmates in The All New Mickey Mouse Club included Keri Russell and Britney Spears]

~ ~
I like movies so much more if I'm not in them. [Growing up,] I never left the house, I never had any friends. I just went to the movie store. I basically watched the whole store. Ryan Gosling ... [Vanity Fair-June 2002]

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Corey Feldman has been in the spotlight since he landed a McDonald's commercial at age 3. By the time he was 8 he had made his movie debut (in 1979's "Time After Time"), and by his teen years, he had become one of Hollywood's busiest young actors, starring in movies such as 1985's "The Goonies" and 1986's "Stand By Me."

The constant work was an escape from an abusive household, says Feldman. "I couldn't be abused too badly when I was working because they didn't want me to have bruises, you know," he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in June. At 15, he was granted legal emancipation from his parents, Sheila and Robert Feldman.

But the young actor's troubles didn't end there. A growing addiction to drugs culminated in a 1990 arrest for heroin possession.

"It took people a long, long time to forgive me. I was just a kid making mistakes like any other kid," he told the Phoenix New Times in 2000. Feldman has been drug-free for more than a decade.

Despite his clean-and-sober status, getting his career back on track was tough. "It took about six years for me to get my foot back in the door," Feldman told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "And then once I did get my foot back in, the work was there again, but it was just in drips and drabs," in low-profile films such as 1994's "National Lampoon's Last Resort."

Today, the L.A.-based Feldman is still acting: He has appeared in independent films such as the recently released "Bikini Bandits" and as a guest on CBS's "The Guardian." He plays himself in the upcoming David Spade comedy "Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star."

In addition to the acting work, Feldman is busy touring to support his album,Former Child Actor ... [PEOPLE, Jan 8, 2003]

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My childhood has been wonderful, due in part to acting. Acting is so much fun and a unique opportunity for anyone who is lucky enough to indulge in it. It is creative and takes me places personally and professionally that I would otherwise not have known. ...

Balance is the key and my family and I work to maintain a healthy balance. For child actors who have had tough times personally, my feeling is they were probably headed for tough times anyway. I feel grateful to be a part of the biz and wouldn't have it any other way.

Kimberly J. Brown [from interview on showbizkid.com]

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I've always been the nerdy, geekish outsider who still remembers how a lot of my classmates used to torture me. Buffy made me a stronger person. Growing up, I always felt different from other kids and they would always tease me about my work in commercials or TV as a way of putting me down. All the success that the series - Buffy - has enjoyed has erased a lot of self-doubts that I grew up with. I don't feel like the nerd or the loser any more.

Sarah Michelle Gellar [imdb.com / wenn.com 8.1.01]

*********************

~ ~ ~ ~

**************
"I never really fit in at school. I had been an only child for so long
that it made me a bit of a loner. I ran free in the woods and spent hours
playing by lily grandmother's lake. I entertained myself by drawing, dancing,
and play-acting in the attic.
I found that creating characters and wearing costumes let me become
someone far more dazzling than the girl I thought I was. Because I was
so shy, I was easy to bully and wasn't a good fighter. And sometimes
that would come back to slap me in the face."
from Delta Style : Eve Wasn't a Size 6 and Neither Am I by Delta Burke

~ ~ ~

Growing up an only child with a single parent is probably why I'm an actor. My father read to me from the time I was born and I skipped kindergarten, because I could read at the age of 4. Literature just sparks your imagination.

Lauren Graham ("Gilmore Girls") [Copley News Service, December 18, 2000]

~ ~ ~

"I couldn't be a Real Artist (I supposed), because the kind of authentic, self-centered and bohemian life that
an Artist lived was not (remotely) like my own. Nor could this be a realistic ideal for a young girl growing up
in the suburbs -- no matter how much she hated them."

Christine Battersby, DPhil [Lecturer in Philosophy, England] quoted in book: Women, Creativity, and the Arts

her book: Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics

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She took us to the opera, which I hated at the time but appreciate now. She was always dragging us to see underground dance troupes and to bizarre theater performances in converted churches in the village. She wanted to show us the world and its possibilities. She wanted us enriched, and I love her for it."
Gwyneth Paltrow, about her mother Blythe Danner [Parade Magazine, Jan. 17.99]

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*******

"Acting class was followed by mime class which was followed by fencing class
and so on. Yoga, voice, aikido, scene study, dance, tai chi, theatre history,
dialects, and then rehearsal for the plays we put on at night.

This was the most intense two years I've ever lived through. But when you come
out the other end you have more than just an MFA in your hand. You feel you can
take on just about anything this business can throw at you."

William Sadler [about studying at Cornell University] [from bio on his site]

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************ "I learned not to be ashamed of a real hunger for knowledge,
something I had always tried to hide."
   Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis    (1929-94) -
    in her essay for Vogue's Prix de Paris writing contest, 1951
video biography - Jackie O.: In a Class of Her Own

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"Allen.. acknowledges that, for as long as he can remember, he was a loner,
hiding out in his room from the arguments of his parents, and the readiness
of his mother in particular to respond to any provocation with a slap."
   from Woody Allen : A Biography by John Baxter

~ ~ ~

After the book came out, I started to think about it, and I realized that I always felt different. Let's face it,
I came from a family that was extremely different. I grew up in a very clan-oriented way. It was 'us' against the world. In my formative years, the '60s, my family was a huge focus of attention.

People would ask, 'Which one are you?' No matter which way you cut it, you're a Kennedy and that's your identity. That in and of itself makes you unusual. That's why I wrote 'What's Wrong With Timmy?' so much broader than just being about a disabled kid.

I think that we all - if we acknowledge it - have felt isolated in some way. Certainly, I identify with that feeling of not fitting in. I was never the cheerleader. I wasn't in Girl Scouts. My parents weren't friends with all the other parents in school; they weren't part of the group. So I identify with [book character] Timmy... in feeling out of the ordinary. Many of us have felt like we're pointed at, or whispered about, or out of the circle. Maria Shriver[LA Times Nov 14 2001]

books by Maria Shriver: **What's Wrong With Timmy? ****Ten Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Went Out into the Real World

*related page:**developing identity

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*******

"When I was 9 or 10, I felt strong and free, but then the female role
came down upon me. The feminine role tries to make us into fractional
people, because to be feminine is only part of being human. Sometimes
we don't get out of that role until we're 50."

Gloria Steinem
[O - The Oprah Mag., Mar.2001] book: Revolution From Within

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*******

"Growing up... In the military, it was tough going through as a kid. It was a very tough
way to grow up. But I've gained a lot from it, I believe. You become very adaptable.
You become very open to change and new situations and new people. And it really
lends itself to the life of an actor, I think, because it's a sort of nomadic existence."

Jeri Ryan

[from interview on site of The Collective - A Jeri Ryan and Sci-Fi Appreciation Society]

~ ~ ~

"Yale was an incredibly important time for me, and I think that's probably true of anything you do
between 17 and 22. Those are the seminal times that really make up who you are, when you
figure out how you really feel about things ... The truth is, I don't remember a single thing I learned
there, and yet it was the contact with other people -- especially other people my age that were
different from me -- that shaped me in ways that I can't even imagine." Jodie Foster [women.com, 12.99]
"I was one of those laser-focused kind of kids... I was really serious about experience
and thinking about what people did and why they did it. And who they were.
I think in some ways it's made me remote as a person... [sometimes] I can't get involved
because I see a little too much."
Jodie Foster [also see interview]
~ ~ ~
"I felt absolutely great in that atmosphere [Vassar]. I blossomed.
Suddenly, I felt accepted by the entire other half of the human race...
I learned to believe in myself. I acquired a genuine sense of identity."
Meryl Streep [more in article: The Company of Women ]

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