“I never wanted to be Marilyn – it just happened. Marilyn’s like a veil I wear over Norma Jeane.”

“I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night, ‘There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me dreaming of being a movie star.’ But I’m not going to worry about them. I’m dreaming the hardest.”

In many biographies, interviews and her own writings, Marilyn Monroe expressed a wide range of feelings and insights on being an actor that can still be meaningful for performers and other artists.

[Photo: Portrait of Actress Marilyn Monroe on Patio of Her Home, by Alfred Eisenstaedt.]

That first quote, about ‘Marilyn’ being a ‘veil’ she wore over her earlier identity, comes from a Vanity Fair article: The Lost Marilyn Monroe Nudes: Outtakes from Her Last On-Set Shoot Revealed in June’s V.F. (May 1 2012), which includes excerpts from Lawrence Schiller’s memoir Marilyn & Me: A Photographer’s Memories.

Acclaimed for her portrayal of Monroe in “My Week With Marilyn,” based on extensive research, Michelle Williams commented: “The biggest discovery I made was that Marilyn Monroe was a character she played.”

[From my post Michelle Williams on Interpreting Marilyn Monroe.]

Also see quotes by other actors in my related post Actors on building identity.

During a photography session, Marilyn Monroe told writer Schiller, “I always have a full-length mirror next to the camera when I’m doing publicity stills. That way, I know how I look.”

Schiller asked, “So, do you pose for the photographer or for the mirror?” “The mirror,” she replied without hesitating. “I can always find Marilyn in the mirror.”

But, the article continues, “Marilyn’s attitude about her sex-symbol status fluctuated wildly. While she was at times boastful of her looks and what they procured for her, she was also by turns insecure and angry.

“It’s still about nudity. Is that all I’m good for?” she demanded of Schiller. “I’d like to show that I can get publicity without using my ass or getting fired from a picture,” she continued.

“I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

[Photo from webpage: Norma Jean Dougherty before Marilyn Monroe [has quotes with multiple photos - some nudes].

An earlier article, Marilyn and Her Monsters, by Sam Kashner (Vanity Fair, Nov 2010) includes many quotes from the book Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters – by Marilyn Monroe, edited by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment.

Kashner writes about her shyness or insecurity as an acting student.

“She was always late for class, usually arriving just before they closed the doors. The teacher was strict about not entering in the middle of an exercise or, God forbid, in the middle of a scene. Slipping in without makeup, her luminous hair hidden under a scarf, she tried to make herself inconspicuous.

“She usually took a seat in the back of one of the dingy rooms in the Malin Studios, on 46th Street, smack in the middle of the theater district. When she raised her hand to speak, it was in a tiny wisp of a voice. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself, but it was hard for the other students not to know that the most famous movie star in the world was in their acting class.

“A few blocks away, above Loew’s State Theater, at 45th and Broadway, there was the other Marilyn—the one everyone knew—52 feet tall, in that infamous billboard advertising Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch, a hot blast from the subway grating causing her white dress to billow up around her thighs, her face an explosion of joy.”

Monroe “began working with Lee Strasberg and embarked upon the psychoanalysis that was de rigueur for taking classes at the Actors Studio.”

Mental health and challenging relationships

Her mother, Gladys Monroe Baker, “was a schizophrenic who spent years in and out of psychiatric hospitals… Marilyn was virtually abandoned, raised by various foster families and by Grace Goddard, a close friend of her mother’s.”

When she was just 16, the article notes, she married James Dougherty.

“My relationship with him was basically insecure from the first night I spent alone with him,” she wrote in a long, undated, somewhat rambling memoir of that marriage, probably written by hand after undergoing analysis…”

She wrote, “I was greatly attracted to him as one of the [“only” is crossed out] few young men I had no sexual repulsion for besides which it gave me a false sense of security to feel that he was endowed with more overwelming qualities which I did not possess—on paper it all begins to sound terribly logical but the secret midnight meetings the fugetive glance stolen in others company the sharing of the ocean, moon & stars and air aloneness made it a romantic adventure which a young, rather shy girl who didn’t always give that impression because of her desire to belong & develope can thrive on—I had always felt a need to live up to that expectation of my elders.”

In one of her notebooks, the article notes, Monroe wrote about being punished by her great-aunt Ida Martin, a strict, evangelical Christian paid by Grace Goddard to look after Norma Jeane for several months from 1937 to 1938.

Marilyn wrote,

Ida—I have still
been obeying her—
it’s not only harmful
for me to do so
but unrealality because
life starts from Now

And later:

working (doing my tasks that I
have set for myself)
On the stage—I will
not be punished for it
or be whipped
or be threatened
or not be loved
or sent to hell to burn with bad people
feeling that I am also bad.
or be afraid of my [genitals] being
or ashamed
exposed known and seen—?so what
or ashamed of my
sensitive feelings—

~ ~

Do you relate to some of Marilyn Monroe’s struggles with identity and esteem?

I certainly do. One of the challenges many of us share is in developing healthy self concept and esteem.

I am not a clinical psychologist or analyst, and am not attempting here to “explain” her complex inner life.

The majority of actors and other artists may not have had a schizophrenic parent and the level of abusive, traumatic childhood Monroe had, but many of the talented actors and other artists I have researched (over the past 15 years and more) talk about at least some of the same kinds of feelings, personality traits and mental health challenges.

Even highly talented and accomplished people have insecurities around self esteem issues, and sometimes difficult experiences dealing with parents, caregivers and other authority figures – like movie directors.

Here are a couple of my related posts:
‘I’m a Fraud’: Gifted and talented with insecurity
Artistic confidence – Insecurity and acting

Most of us have felt insecure to some degree, and have developed beliefs about our worth based on our early lives.

Many psychologists and others provide at least some helpful explanations for how these self perceptions and feelings develop, and what to do about changing them.

George Pratt, PhD and Peter Lambrou, PhD developed an approach called Emotional Self-Management for overcoming limiting feelings and beliefs. In their book “Code to Joy” they provide insights on their contributions to the new field of energy psychology, and provide strategies.

The book notes: “There’s hardly a child alive who hasn’t been told that he or she has been ‘bad’ by someone he or she trusts and respects. For a young child, still struggling to carve a sense of identity out of the welter of everyday experiences, simply being told ‘No!’ or ‘Don’t do that!’ can be received as the message, ‘You are wrong!’ ‘You are bad!’ That’s normal; it happens to all of us. For some, though, the accusation sticks.”

[Photo: Emily Browning, Jim Carrey, Liam Aiken in "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" (2004) - from article Why Does The World Suffer From An Epidemic Of Low Self-Esteem? by Morty Lefkoe.]

In another article of his, How To Change “Human Nature, Lefkoe describes some of the common sources of negative self-esteem beliefs of the kind Marilyn Monroe expressed, that grow out of relationships with parents or caregivers.

Maybe you can relate to some of these ideas on how we can develop self esteem issues:

If I trust my parents and they must know what they are doing, and if they are angry with me, it must be my fault. I’m not good enough.

If I can’t get them to spend the time with me that I want or if they are physically around but not paying attention to me, it must be my fault. I’m not important.

If I can’t get them to give me what I want most of the time, it must be my fault. I’m not worthy or deserving.

Morty Lefkoe is president and founder of the Lefkoe Institute, which teaches and publishes methods to “help people free themselves from their self-imposed limitations” and self-limiting beliefs.

You can try the Lefkoe Method free at ReCreateYourLife.

~ ~

At her death at age 36, acting teacher Lee Strasberg noted in his eloquent eulogy:

“In her eyes and mine, her career was just beginning. The dream of her talent, which she had nurtured as a child, was not a mirage.”

A Wikipedia page states: “In 1999, Monroe was ranked as the sixth greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute. In the years and decades following her death, Monroe has often been cited as both a pop and a cultural icon as well as the quintessential American sex symbol.”

The Wikipedia article also says: “The circumstances of her death, from an overdose of barbiturates, have been the subject of conjecture. Though officially classified as a “probable suicide”, the possibility of an accidental overdose, as well as of homicide, have not been ruled out.”

~ ~

Article continued: Marilyn Monroe: Her complex Inner Life – Part 2

~~~

“This is a ridiculous thing to say,” she admits, “but I never liked being a teenager. I never felt comfortable being in a group of giggly girls. I always felt embarrassed and frightened by it.

“I couldn’t quite handle the high school thing, and I wanted to leave as soon as I could. So I suppose I never really wanted to explore it, whereas I did want to be a woman. Some of the teen flicks can be great, but it wasn’t the story I wanted to live in.”

She added, “Apart from Natalie Wood’s character in ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ [1955], where she plays a teenager, I just couldn’t imagine doing it. I wish I could have. I think I would have been a much better person for it.”

[Interview mag., Dec/Jan 2008; photo from 'Atonement']

Many other talented and creative people “couldn’t quite handle the high school thing” and felt like outsiders, finding their teen years to be difficult and emotionally challenging.

“The passage through adolescence was a lonely, involuted time for me,” said writer Maxine Kumin. “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.”

[From book: Jane Piirto. My Teeming Brain: Understanding Creative Writers.]

“Maxine Kumin (born June 6, 1925) is an American poet and author. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1981-1982.” [Wikipedia]

Anthony Hopkins 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:

“It gave me the fire and anger to become an actor. I wasn’t afraid of anything. The acting covered up the loneliness.” [imdb.com 1.30.01]

As a teen, Nicole Kidman towered above most of the others in her class and has said she thought of herself as “the ugliest person alive on earth.”

On weekends, when most kids were at the beach, Kidman was often alone on the stage of the school theater. “I would just lock myself in there,” she says.

“I thought it was fantastic having that stage all to myself. I’d be teased about going off to the theater instead of the beach with everyone else. I felt like an outsider, but it is character building not to be a pretty child who just bats her eyes and gets her way.”

[Cosmopolitan, Jul 1991]

One of a number of my posts about her: Nicole Kidman on fame, and actors as highly sensitive people.

~~

Claudia Puig writes in USA TODAY about Williams’ “bravura performance.”

Roger Ebert thinks “What happens during the famous week [in the movie] hardly matters. What matters is the performance by Michelle Williams.”

A number of those reviewers refer to her exceptional performance as “channeling Marilyn Monroe.”

But I think that idea discounts Williams’ intense emotional and intellectual work in realizing such a complex and powerful performance; Williams is not a passive “channel” – she is a very actively engaged artist.

Continued (with trailer video):

Michelle Williams on Interpreting Marilyn Monroe

~ ~

That is a quote by Christina Ricci from a 1998 Rolling Stone interview.

Studies typically find that about 6-8 percent of adolescents and young adults report current, chronic self-injury. Most self-injure for emotional regulation.

Continued: » Mental Health Day: Self-Injury – The Creative Mind
~ ~

[From my post Gifted and talented but with insecurity and low self esteem, and a longer quote in the post The Self-Esteem Supercharger.]

In his article I work to build self-confidence in myself and others, entrepreneur Stephen Pierce points out that self-confidence is “extremely valuable. Because I believe in myself, I can show others how to have faith in what they can accomplish.

“I see my dreams realized because I have the self-confidence to pursue them without giving up.

“I avoid surrendering my dreams. Even if I feel sad or afraid, I know that those emotions are only temporary. I can do anything I put my mind to. Belief in myself helps me to move forward in life.”

He also notes that “By showing others that they can be self-assured and brave, I learn a great deal. When I help others, I help myself.

“My confidence grows when I see others succeed after I have helped them.”

Confidence exists on a continuum

In his post How to build confidence, Morty Lefkoe admits he knows very well this experience many of us (most of us?) have had:

“I had very little self-confidence for most of my life,” he writes – adding, “but now I consistently experience a high level of confidence.”

So how did he make that shift? He explains:

Confidence actually exists on a continuum, ranging from a very low to a very high belief in our own abilities, a sense we can handle whatever life throws at us.  Very few people are totally lacking in confidence and very few feel confident that they can handle almost anything.  So the issue for most people is where they currently are on the continuum and how they can improve their confidence.

This is a very helpful point – it is not a simple, binary matter of having confidence versus not having. There are levels and degrees – and changes from one situation to another, or even day to day. Lefkoe continues:

It is important to distinguish between confidence about being able to perform a specific task (such as fly a plane or speak a foreign language) and confidence in yourself. One might not be confident about being able to perform a specific task even though they have high level of self-confidence.  Such a person knows that her inability to perform a specific task means nothing about her as a person.

But that may not be so easy to realize or put to use, especially when you are in the middle of feelings of self-criticism and low confidence.

As a teen and college freshman (many decades ago), I had the ambition to “be a doctor” – but failed organic chemistry. Like many people with a certain level of intellectual ability, I had managed to get through high school with good grades, but without really trying hard.

Failing a class was devastating to my confidence. Of course, there have been other experiences in my life of confidence deflation.

Lefkoe suggests “the way to gain confidence about specific abilities is to learn those skills and practice a lot.”

The key is our beliefs:

The way to improve our internal level of confidence that we apply to life in general is to eliminate our limiting beliefs.  Every negative belief we have lowers our internal level of self-confidence – beliefs such as I’m not good enough, I’m inadequate, I’m powerless, I’m not capable, Nothing I do is good enough, and I’m not worthy.

Once you understand that a lot of negative self-esteem beliefs lowers your level of self-confidence and getting rid of them raises it, you will understand the myth that self-confidence comes from succeeding or failing at specific projects in life.

Another way limiting presumptions and beliefs can affect us is when we experience impostor or fraud feelings.

See the post Dealing with self sabotage: Getting beyond impostor feelings.

~~~

More articles by Morty Lefkoe — author of the book Re-create Your Life: Transforming Yourself and Your World.

To experience The Lefkoe Method, go to ReCreate Your Life where you can eliminate one limiting belief free.

Also see his Natural Confidence program.

dealing with self-criticism, building self confidence, self esteem confidence, building self esteem, impostor feelings

~ ~

Jonathan Safran Foer – about his novel Everything Is Illuminated, which made The New York Times best-seller list.

He also commented, “The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible. Profound, bottomless self-doubt: it has no value, what’s the point? In a way, that takes up as much time as anything else.”

Do you relate to those ideas and feelings? Or these:

* Do you secretly worry that others will find out that you’re not as bright and capable as they think you are?

* Do you tend to chalk your accomplishments up to being a “fluke,” “no big deal” or the fact that people just “like” you?

* Do you hate making a mistake, being less than fully prepared or not doing things perfectly?

* Do you tend to feel crushed by even constructive criticism, seeing it as evidence of your “ineptness?”

From the longer Impostor Syndrome Quiz on the site for the Overcoming the Impostor Syndrome program.

~~~

The Psychology Today article, Field Guide to The Self-Doubter: Extra Credit, by Susan Pinker, excerpted below, brings insight into the thoughts and feelings many people have about being incompetent or impostors:

Not giving herself credit

Rosalyn Lang has a Ph.D. in molecular biology, has just completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University, and recently launched her own consulting firm. In other words, she’s a walking advertisement for what it takes to be successful in science: smarts, opportunity, and perseverance.

Yet when she looks back, she takes little credit for her successes. “I felt inadequate the entire time I was in graduate school. If I got a nice compliment, I just felt, ‘What? They’re trying to pull my leg! I can get kicked out at any minute.’”

Feeling like an impostor

Lang now realizes she wasn’t really an impostor. She just felt like one. Like many highly accomplished women, Lang suffered from “impostor syndrome.” On the outside, she was a star and a role model.

Secretly, though, she chalked up her successes to powers beyond her control, and meanwhile felt personally responsible for any failures—a feeling shared by 93 percent of African-American female college students, according to one study.

External success. Internal agony

According to recent studies of medical, dental, and nursing students with impostor feelings, the phenomenon is linked to perfectionism, burnout, and depression. This was true for Rosalyn Lang, whose impostor feelings drove her to work harder. “The work ethic was great. That’s the kind of focus you need to get everything done in graduate school,” she said. But “internal agony” was how she described her psychological state.

Read the full article.

Six steps for matching perceptions to reality.

• Separate your self-assessments from objective evaluations of your skills. Group-based evaluations, promotions, and letters of reference are less biased than the world seen through “impostor”-colored glasses.
• Give yourself opportunities to compete. Don’t let your self-judgment prevent you demonstrating what you know.
• Reduce your isolation. Talk about your feelings with trusted friends and colleagues. Seek out a mentor or advocate in your organization who believes in you.
• Enjoy your successes and acknowledge praise when it comes your way.
• Resist the impulse to deny and deflect compliments.
• Remember that those who project an air of confidence may not know more than you do. Research shows that most people overestimate their abilities.

See Overcoming the Impostor Syndrome for more.

Also see the Impostor syndrome page for more quotes, articles, books etc.
~~

imposter phenomenon, impostor phenomenon, dealing with self sabotage, impostor feelings, perfectionism, fraud feelings

eeing a TV bio of Taylor Swift a while ago, I was very struck by her self-assurance and belief in her abilities from an early age, and her assertiveness to realize her exceptional musical talents.

In her recent performance on the CMA Awards (the 44th annual Country Music Association Awards), she impressed me even more with her confident presence and grace – and talent.

In fourth grade, she won a national poetry contest with her poem “Monster In My Closet.” At eleven, she went to Nashville to try to get a record deal by distributing a demo tape of her singing to every label on Music Row..

She started writing songs and playing 12-string guitar at age twelve. At fifteen, she “rejected a development deal with RCA Records because the company refused to allow her to record her own songs.” [Info from Wikipedia.]

A profile in The Week magazine (March 20, 2009) notes, “Taylor Swift is determined to avoid the pitfalls that have tripped up other precocious stars, says Matt Allen in Q.

“The key, says the 19-year-old country music phenom, is to stay focused on her art and to always remember that the myriad distractions that attend fame and wealth are just that—distractions.

“Such determination has been apparent since she was a musical prodigy growing up in Hendersonville, Tenn. “When I was 13, I was told that country music didn’t appeal to anybody other than 35-year-old women. I decided to prove them wrong.’

“So Swift began grinding out songs, playing guitar so relentlessly that her fingers bled. She turned down invitations to dances and other typical teenage activities if it meant missing a gig.

Home schooled and avoiding destructive habits

“She graduated high school with a 4.0 grade-point average after finishing her junior and senior years in just 12 months of home-schooling. Swift still leaves nothing to chance, saying she neither drinks nor smokes—nor is she tempted to.”

A recent interview in The Independent [UK] adds more:

“I don’t drink because I don’t really feel like it. It’s not like I judge people who do [or that] I don’t hang out with people who drink. I just don’t really feel like it. Plus, it’s not [been] legal.”

Does she not like being out of control?

“I think that the reason I haven’t really experimented with drinking is because I don’t like to feel like I might say something that could hurt somebody’s feelings. Or I might come off in a way that I can’t control. Maybe I should just lighten up!” she says, smiling.

“But for me, I just kind of do what feels right.” She insists that, “I don’t live by all these rigid, weird rules that make me feel all fenced in. I just like the way that I feel like, and that makes me feel very free.”

Songwriting, she says, her eyes shining with bliss, is her other liberation. “I write songs to figure out how to feel about something. And then that helps me get past it. I’ve been writing songs since I was 12, and when I started I would write about how my days at school were really lonely. And I would get through those days by saying to myself, ‘It’s OK cos I can write a song about this later, and then I’ll feel better.’

“I’ve applied that saying and that phrase and that thought process to my entire life and every single intense shocking, nationally televised curveball that has happened.”

[From Taylor Swift: 'Maybe I should just lighten up' By Craig Mclean, The Independent, 24 October 2010]

here are other examples of highly talented young women with focus, drive and assurance.

Maybe you can think of examples.

~ ~

Related section: Teen / Young Adult Talent

Taylor Swift homeschooling, home-schooling products, homeschooling books

She says, “This college experience is really important to me, and I won’t give it up for anything.

“I’m not going to school just for the academics – I wanted to share ideas, to be around people who are passionate about learning.

“Being at Brown has totally taken me out of my comfort zone.”

Continued in The Inner Actor post: Emma Watson on how college is “empowering and liberating”

“I think being different, being against the grain of society, is the greatest thing in the world.”

That’s actor Elijah Wood (“Lord of the Rings”), quoted in my post Exceptional and out of bounds – eccentrics and society.

Being unusual and eccentric may be easier for some people. It may not be so easy for many of us who are different on account of being highly sensitive – but we can choose to embrace our exceptional qualities as valuable.

In her post Why it’s hard to be a highly sensitive (HSP) introvert, Susan Biali, M.D. writes about what many of us HSP people can relate to: “A handful of years ago I was so relieved to discover that there’s a name (Highly Sensitive Person, aka HSP) for what I thought were uniquely weird sensitivities.

“I also finally understand and now even celebrate the fact that I’m highly introverted. Thanks to these new insights into my personality, I’ve come to appreciate that the traits that make me seem ‘strange’ are also the reasons that I’m an effective personal coach and a successful writer and author.”

Being different is not a disorder

Dr. Biali adds, “For most of my life I felt that if people knew what I was really like, they’d write me off as strange or different. What a thrill to discover I’m not alone: 15-20% of the population are thought to be highly sensitive (according to HSP expert Dr. Elaine Aron), and around 20% of all people tend towards introversion. Of the 15-20% who are HSPs, 70% are introverts.”

As an HSP and introvert, I fit into that group – and have often felt “wrong” or “weird” during periods of my life, and at least uncomfortable, if not downright anxious on account of being so different than mainstream, extroverted society.

But it’s important to distinguish introversion from shyness, or its more extreme ‘cousin’ social anxiety – see my post Shyness, Introversion, Sensitivity – What’s the Difference?

Also see the article How about a new approach towards Social Anxiety?, By Rob Shapiro, AnxietySecrets.

Learning to celebrate being an HSP

Jenna Avery, CLC, MCP, MLA, is a Creative Vision & Life Purpose Breakthrough Coach, and Sensitive Living Expert, who counsels HSPs – highly sensitive people.

She describes her Self-Study Classes for Sensitive Souls as “the product of my many efforts to find ways to be a happy, healthy, highly sensitive soul.

“I have investigated everything I could get my hands on about energy skills, energetic boundary strengthening, interpersonal boundaries, flower essences for sensitive souls, empathy, intuitive development and more.

“I wanted to find out everything I could about how to feel happy about my life without feeling so assaulted by it — other people’s energy, emotions, and criticisms, and the life stresses and challenges that go along with day-to-day life.”

So, celebrate being one of the unusual people who have a highly sensitive nervous system, but take care of your emotional needs – such as relieving anxiety.

highly sensitive people, highly sensitive and stressed, sensitivity and stress, energy sensitivity, relieving sensitivity, protection for sensitivity

But there are also many strengths and values, both personally and socially.

Writer Rosalie Smith points out:

“We’re the thinkers, the cautious ones, the conservative people; the ones that say Hey, wait a minute. Let’s think this through before doing something rash.”

She adds, “Every society needs highly sensitive people, just as we need the warriors, the leaders who are ready to take the risks. However, we’re the ones that help to temper the not-so-sensitive types, the ones who can be bold, rash and impulsive and may have not thought things through to the consequences of their actions.”

From her article Highly Sensitive People – Traits and Characteristics.

Jewel – in her song “I’m Sensitive” – sings:

“Oh please be careful with me, I’m sensitive

And I’d like to stay that way…

I have this theory, that if we’re told we’re bad

Then that’s the only idea we’ll ever have…”

We are not bad if we are not the same as the majority, and it can really help to remember that.

high sensitivity personality, highly sensitive people, highly sensitive books, high sensitivity resources, highly sensitive people and creativity