Couldn’t quite handle the high school thing
In a recent interview, Keira Knightley declares she was never interested in playing “girl” roles. “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. 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.]
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]
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July 12th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Many people have that same response to high school and growing up in general. I know I did and I hear it all the time from people in their teens. I, like so many, wanted to grow up as soon as I could. It’s such a shame - I never really wanted to explore it either. Great post.