He has portrayed many powerful and intriguing characters, including Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series. In this video about Deathly Hallows: Part 2, he acknowledges author J.K. Rowling for “laying out such a kind of sure roadmap” with her writing of Snape. “You know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

Loving the language

In his article Alan Rickman: Truly, deeply appealing (Los Angeles Times, November 20, 2011), Patrick Pacheco says “What really excites Rickman is the English language.”

“It’s so rich and cruel and beautiful, like a fireworks display, and yet it can be so subtle and so crude,” says the 65-year-old classical actor and director. “Marry that to the stage and something mysterious happens. Don’t ask me what. It’s magical.”

He is currently playing Leonard, “the caustic and embittered novelist at the center of Theresa Rebeck’s new play, ‘Seminar,’ on Broadway.

“Theresa’s writing is incredibly demanding,” he says in silky tones that belie his British working-class roots. “She’s like a Restoration comedy writer. It’s high style. The words are extremely well chosen, and sometimes you wish that word had not been chosen right next to that word because the equipment’s a bit rusty.” …

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In this video about the play, Rickman comments, “You’re throwing yourself into a bear pit being a writer.”

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The article continues:

“I can only see my limitations,” he says with a resigned laugh. “That’s just who I am. I was working with [director] Peter Brook once on Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ with Glenda Jackson, and he said, ‘The thing is, you’ll never be as good as the text.’ And that came as a kind of relief, really. I’m fascinated by my friends in the acting profession who can’t wait to get out there. I’m not on that list.”

Rickman’s wry insecurity is all the more surprising given his professional image as an assured, sexy and often enigmatic figure with a penetrating gaze and the ability to deliver the most innocuous phrase with sneering contempt. “I don’t see it at all like that. They [his characters] are just people to me,” Rickman says. “I’m a lot less serious than people think.”

Sam Gold, the director of “Seminar,” says: “Alan obviously has the ability to play imposing and intimidating characters, but what makes him special is his deep, deep well of empathy. You see the humanity.”

Emma Thompson wrote in an email that during her frequent collaborations with Rickman, “It’s very difficult not to giggle, we laugh a lot, often in the wrong places.” Their most recent one is the BBC teleplay “The Song of Lunch,” which aired recently on PBS, in which Rickman plays an alcoholic poet trying to rekindle a love affair.

The actress, who wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for “Sense and Sensibility” and starred with Rickman in that movie, noted that his performance in that film as Col. Brandon “… was everything I wanted for the role — virile yet sensitive, powerful yet quietly, slightly dangerous and miles more interesting than he is in the book…. There’s no one like Alan for a rich, mysterious inner life.” …

But whether he is playing Hans Gruber, Le Vicomte de Valmont, Severus Snape or John Gabriel Borkman, Rickman sees his primary duty as that of “storyteller.”

“I suppose with any good writing and interesting characters, you can have that awfully overused word” — here he pauses before adding with a roll of the eyes — “a jouuuuuurney.

“It might not be great, it might not be perfect, but it does answer the human need to sit there together and to be told a story.”

Rickman discovered just how powerful a story can be with the Harry Potter films.

He’s especially grateful for their youthful following. “I suppose if I plan to work well into my 80s, I’ll need them,” he quips.

Daniel Radcliffe, the movies’ Harry Potter, is now appearing on Broadway in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” He calls Rickman “an invaluable and incredibly generous” mentor.

“When I first met Alan, I was completely intimidated by him,” he says. “We had some very intense scenes together. At times, he’d actually scare me. But while he was always so strong and powerful, I also came to know him as self-deprecating, vulnerable and silly.”

Watching him onstage, says Radcliffe, is to see a “virtuoso” in action. “He’s taught me that acting onstage demands a ruthless honesty, listening very carefully in a way that you lose your self-consciousness. When I was in ‘Equus,’ Alan actually cut short a vacation in Canada to return to see me for a second time and then took me out and gave me some simple, practical and yet profound advice. I’ve a very self-effacing attitude toward what I do, probably from a place of guilt for having so much success so young, but Alan has a deeply felt respect for the importance of acting.”

Rickman says the Potter epic provided a novel acting challenge. “It was tricky, because only three of the books had been written when we started. Though I had a clue about what his final story might be, it was only the smallest clue, and therefore there was a sense of playing two things at once, just in case you have to shift. ” Asked whether he was happy with the evolution of his character, Rickman said he thought that “Potter” author J.K. Rowling got it “dead right.”

Now, he is looking forward to the release of the comic film caper “Gambit,” in which he costars with Cameron Diaz and Colin Firth. “God knows, we put ourselves out on the line with that, comedically,” he says a bit nervously. “It’ll be interesting to see how that turns out on the screen.”

He hopes to do more comedy, seeing the ridiculous as a reflection of the human condition. “I think there should be laughs in everything,” he says. “Sometimes, it’s a slammed door, a pie in the face or just a recognition of our frailties.”

For Rickman, it’s all part of the job description. The accompanying fame, money and acclaim all strike him as rather “obscene.”

“Our abilities are nothing we can really take credit for,” he says. “Yes, there’s training. But I’ve worked with some great actors who didn’t train at all. You do your job, push your abilities as far as you can take them and hopefully, you can actually do something with this” — here he again pauses before adding — “this accident.”

That’s an appealing thought, isn’t it? – “Push your abilities as far as you can take them.”

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Max Ehrman

From LOVE IS IN THE AEROSOL, Text by Denise Kitt, SOMA magazine.

When artist Max Ehrman is not completing privately commissioned works, he is zealously spray painting the walls of start-up companies in the SOMA district of San Francisco. Don’t recognize his name? Perhaps you know him as Eon75, a pseudonym Ehrman uses that stands for “Extermination of Normality” (and “75” denotes the year he was born).

Despite Ehrman’s affinity for San Francisco, he has worked around the world and has mentioned that he may move abroad in the future. “I loved Germany,” Ehrman said of the country in which he earned his Master’s. “I moved my happy little self to Berlin as quickly as possible and lived in that amazing city for two years. [It was] one of the best experiences of my life.”

Ehrman painted every day, met people from all over the world and relished in Berlin’s “great art, music and everything in between.” Ehrman plans to stay in San Francisco for some time but is considering moving to Barcelona in a few years.

When asked how creating art makes him feel, Ehrman answered in a raw and resounding manner: “Art is my air. Without it, I would drown. It’s also my therapy and way to stay sane in this crazy city and world. If I couldn’t create, I don’t know what I would do … paint with my toes or something? I would say that any artist who loves what they do is obsessed with it. What’s the difference between obsession and passion? Who knows?”

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Travel is cited as a way to enhance creative imagination – and creative achievement often depends on experiencing a fairly high level of obsession. Here is one of my posts on the topic:

Creative Obsession | The Creative Mind Jul 4, 2010 … See my related video Creative obsessions: Adam Savage and Stanley Kubrick, in which he talks about his passion for making this sculpture, … blogs.psychcentral.com/creative-mind/2010/07/creative-obsession/

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Elizabeth Olsen

From Elizabeth Olsen Interview MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE
by Christina Radish :

Your famous sisters, Mary-Kate and Ashley, were child actors, but you decided to wait until later, and you went to college to get your degree. Did your sisters influence your decision to act, at all?

OLSEN: I’m still trying to get my degree. Maybe somehow they did influence me, but I never made choices based on the choices they made. I just always made choices based on following how my path was going. Obviously, your family influences you, in every choice you make, in some way or another, but it was nothing that was really thought out. It was just something that I always wanted to do, and I went about it a different way. I was in a position where I could go about it in a different way.

Did you always want to be an actress?

OLSEN: Yeah, I did. I was a theater camp kid. It’s all that my friends and I did. We were always creating movies and plays on the playground. Instead of playing on the playground, we were rehearsing musicals that we wrote.

I was always surrounded by creative people, growing up here in the Valley, and I just had teachers who were really great in high school and that gave me the confidence to pursue it for real, as opposed to a fun fantasy.

…

From interview: Sean Durkin and Elizabeth Olsen by Scott Tobias October 19, 2011

[Olsen]  I read the script during my first six or seven months of auditioning for roles. And I really enjoy auditioning, first off. I just think it’s a really amazing point in the process of creating a character, because it’s completely yours at that point. So I love it. I don’t think anything is weird about it, or scary.

But when I read the script, I was completely obsessed with it. And since I was an unknown, I wasn’t able to read very great scripts, you know? [Laughs.] And so immediately, I responded to the narrative and the way the story was told.

I’m a fan of playing with linear structure. And I really enjoy it when people don’t feed the audience so much information.

I think a lot of films do themselves a disfavor by putting in way too much information, and everyone knows what’s gonna happen next, and no one can actually discover things as they go. So I really responded to that.

And I really loved how complicated and difficult and fun the character seemed to me. And I really just thought I understood her, and just came in with a few specific choices, and something that I was constantly trying to change.

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One of the reasons I wanted to include Elizabeth Olsen here was the prevalence of critical acclaim for her acting in “Martha Marcy May Marlene” - her feature film debut.

Many other talented actors talk about putting on plays as kids, and how that got them started in a way as an actor. But how many children are encouraged to think of play-acting (or other creative activities) as a potential adult pursuit, if that is what they want? How did you play as a kid? Is it merely something you “got over”?

I also appreciate her comments about “playing with linear structure” – which some of the most interesting films do (as well as some other creative projects, like novels) – and about always changing the development of her character. That is also something many writers talk about: that the process of writing “reveals” and allows characters to evolve.

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Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron is a teacher, author, poet, playwright, novelist, filmmaker, composer, and journalist. She is perhaps most famous for her book The Artist’s Way, and has written many other non-fiction works, short stories, and essays as well as novels, plays, musicals, and screenplays.

From The Creative Life: An Interview with Julia Cameron by Annette Fix, Women on Writing / WOW:

WOW: “Write what seems to want to be written” is a piece of advice you gave one of your students. Should that always be the practice or should some consideration be made for writing what is marketable?

JULIA: “Write what wants to be written” is sound advice, guaranteeing we will have passion and enthusiasm for our subject matter. When we write with such fire, our work is persuasive and often marketable.

When we try to write “to the market” with no thought given to our enthusiasm, we run the risk of sounding stale. But it’s important to note that what we want to write, and what the market wants to buy, may well be the same thing.

WOW: Discipline can be both a writer’s best friend and her antagonist. In your opinion, how can commitment (planned writing) and creativity (inspired writing) co-exist?

JULIA: It is important to write for the love of writing, and that love may well be exercised on planned writing as well as our creative forays. It is important to realize that we can write salable work, and that our inspiration may come quite freely when working on a commercial piece. I believe that when we write from a spirit of service, it frees our writing and allows us to write with clarity, precision, and passion.

WOW: You talk about the importance of having an emotional compass. How does that help with your creativity and your writing?

JULIA: I believe that we all have a source of inner guidance that moves us in right directions if we are willing to listen to it. I call this inner guidance “True North,” and it is a strong, inner sense that we are moving in the right direction.

WOW: In The Creative Life, you say the key to success lies with open-mindedness—being willing to change and improve a piece rather than being stubborn and insisting on its genius. How does employing that open-mindedness affect your personal creativity?

JULIA: Early in my career, I was not very teachable. I had a lot of ego invested in being “good.” As I matured, and my work matured, I became willing to be open-minded. I found colleagues whose opinion I valued.

I would show them my work and listen carefully to their feedback. Now, it is routine for me to show my work to a close circle of friends whom I call “Believing Mirrors.”

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Photo from my post The mind of gifted adults: Julia Cameron on her mental health challenges.

Julia Cameron is leading an online teaching course – see my post Developing Creativity: the Julia Cameron Live online program -

or visit the program site: Julia Cameron Live online course.

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From the program site:

“As author of The Artist’s Way, The Vein of Gold, and The Right to Write, her bestselling works on the creative process, Julia Cameron is credited with founding a movement that has enabled millions to realize their creative dreams.

“Julia eschews the title creativity expert, preferring instead to describe herself simply as an artist.”

She says about her online teaching program, “Artists have always mentored. I just do it on a wider scale.”

Learn more about Julia Cameron Live

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More information from the site:

“The Artist’s Way began with Julia sharing her ideas with a few artists in her living room. Now after selling almost 4 million copies of The Artist’s Way and teaching her creativity tools around the world in lecture and workshop form, she’s taking her teaching online.

“The online course will complement The Artist’s Way, offering unique insights into the 12 week program from Julia, who has more than two decades of experience teaching the creativity tools.

“Artists taking part in the creativity workshop at Julia Cameron Live will have the intimate experience of watching Julia teach from her home in Santa Fe. The web-based creativity workshop will give users the flexibility to watch video lectures and join discussions from their living room, kitchen table or morning commute.”

Julia Cameron Live

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She said, “I let my emotions and feelings be my guide. I find the things that trouble me the most, the things I wish I could change, are what I need to explore. And it’s always good to start with something that scares me.”

Being scared may be indispensable for creative expression

Fear is a simple label for a variety of experiences, some helpful for artists, but others – like anxiety – limiting or corrosive.

Continued in post: Creating and Fear.

Creating art has always been a way to channel emotional intensity.

In a world where destructive acting out is all too frequent (and meticulously documented and sensationalized on the news and TMZ), sublimating painful feelings by expressing them in the form of artistic expression allows the artist to choose to “act out” in a way that is constructive.

Many creative people carry the belief that their pain is the locus of their creativity, and worry that they will lose their creativity if they work through their inner conflicts or let go of suffering.

These artists hold onto their pain as if it were a lifeline, even finding ways to enhance it, leading to some patterns of behavior that won’t “turn off” even when they want them to. The “source” becomes the obstacle.

Continued in her article Affect Regulation and the Creative Artist.

[Photo: "King of Pain" musician Sting.]

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“Everything you do as an entrepreneur, whether it’s writing, speaking, coming up with innovative ideas, etc… is sourced from your creativity.

“Unfortunately, many of us have lost our connection to this infinite source of creativity within us… and it’s time to RECLAIM it!

“Watch this video where I share with you an extremely powerful strategy that I’ve been implementing in my own business to truly unlock your creative potential…”

> Read more and see video in post A Powerful Strategy To Unleash Your Creative Genius

Andy Warhol was able to develop art-making into a very successful business, but we’ve heard of many great artists who sold hardly anything in their lifetimes.

Stories of starving artists seem to have more currency in literature and the media than the many examples of artists who prosper, and can fuel distorted and limiting ideas about being a creative person, even if you aren’t yet an “artist” (however you define that).

The photo is Ewan McGregor in “Moulin Rouge” as Christian, an impoverished poet drawn to the Bohemian life of Montmartre.

One of the ideas about artists that I listed in my last post “Artists are Crazy; Mothers Can’t Be Artists, and Other Myths” was that “Artists must be poor and sacrifice their well-being for their art.”

That is one of the myths mentioned by Alyson Stanfield of Art Biz Coach (“Helping Artists Sell More Art”).

Continued in The Creative Mind post Creativity and Commerce.

“Artists must be poor and sacrifice their well-being for their art.”

“Artists are ‘bad’ at marketing.”

“Artists should accept the solitary life and find solutions on their own.”

“You can’t be a mother and a successful artist.”

“Artists are right-brained and aren’t very good at left-brain stuff like running a business.”

Those are a few of the kinds of self-limiting beliefs and myths that Alyson Stanfield of Art Biz Coach says her membership program Artist Conspiracy is designed to help artists overcome, to achieve more effective personal and business success.

Gendered conceptions

Sally Reis, PhD. points out that “female writers, artists, scientists and creators in all domains deal with male conceptions of creativity and a creative process that has been accepted as the standard within that domain, but may only be the standard for male creators.”

Continued in my Creative Mind post Artists are Crazy; Mothers Can’t Be Artists, and Other Myths

That is a quote by Jungian analyst and author Marion Woodman, on a topic also addressed by Julia Cameron in her classic book The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.

“The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union… Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as the creator but seldom see ‘creator’ as the literal term for ‘artist.’

“I am suggesting,” Cameron continues, “you take the term creator quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist to artist, with the Great Creator.”

> Continued in Spirituality and Creative Expression

Personality characteristics he describes include:

* Humble and proud, both painfully self-doubting and wildly self-confident.

* May defy gender stereotypes, and are likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other as well. A kind of psychic androgyny.

The photo is Tilda Swinton, at the 2008 Oscars, where she won for her role in “Michael Clayton.”

Part of her power as an actor and many of her characters is in their androgynous looks and energies.

Swinton has said she is fascinated by the question, “How do we identify ourselves, and how do we settle into other people’s expectations for our identity?”

Read more traits of creative people in my post The Complexity of the Creative Personality.