I've spent the last few years of my life tinkering with a question that is asked of me so frequently it's surprising.
"Who is your favorite actress?"
"Al Pacino, Anthony Hopkins, Denzel Washington. Top 3."
"But those aren't actresses."
"I don't have a favorite actress."
"Why?"
"I have yet to find one that is truly remarkable in more than just talent."
"What do you mean?"
What do I mean? What do Al Pacino, Anthony Hopkins and Denzel Washington all have in common? All were made, not born. All were born the furthest from the entertainment Industry as humanly possible. Pacino-raised by a beautiful single mother in the Bronx, was also homeless for a while. Hopkins- father was a fish monger. His mother once said to his father: "There's something very wrong with this boy." Washington-father was a minister, mother ran a beauty parlor. He attended Fordham and played Othello before he ever stepped foot in films.
All had a dream that they refused to give up on. None of them had wealthy parents. None of them had connections. All of them realized and accomplished one very important thing: They were fearless and relentless in their work-which made them unforgettable. All of them made themselves who and what they are today, by burning snapshots of their souls within our eyelids.
I'm not saying that there aren't actresses out there that may have done the same, merely that I have yet to find one-and yes, I've searched. Other than Norma Jean (who I have the greatest respect for) and Clara Bow, I have yet to find a struggle that strikes and inspires me in any of the past or present moments in the lives of the major female celebrities of today. I believe that without that struggle, you will always lack what Anthony, Al and Denzel manage to deliver us. They are simply more fascinating because they've lived so much more in so many ways. There's so much more to them.
In my travels as a young girl as a ward of the State I had the honor of being commited to a Level 5 facility due in part to the incompetence of my social worker and my own antagonistic behavior. Karma is truly a bitch, my friends. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the term 'Level 5', allow me: Lockdown. Constant Supervision. Removal of all sharp objects-including a pen (I might as well have been raped) and paper. See where I'm going? Institution.al.ized.
Though the nurses and psychiatrists could find nothing wrong with me, most of the staff didn't want to deal with me. At the time I was also antagonistic towards my fellow patients. I found them fascinating. I thought it great amusement to push a button and see how an unstable person reacted. Some of them avoided me. One eventually got sick of it and calmly walked over, looked down at me with what seemed to be quizzical indifference, and then proceeded to beat the shit out of me, calmly and methodically.
After that I observed from a reasonable distance. I grew even more entranced with them. Some of them were literal geniuses. The man that taught me chess would mutter equations to himself. The sex addict down the hall was beautiful, even in her white gown. Sometimes on nights when she heard me crying she'd sing softly to me through the wall. She would recite the most beautiful poetry I had ever heard.
One of them helped me arrange our failed escape. I say failed because only a few of us made it over the wall. I feel badly about it to this day, wondering where those poor souls are.
Due to further idiocy on my social workers part, I ended up staying there for about a year and a half, as I would watch new patients come in. I watched with a morbid fascination as a boy about my age stared at a wall, muttering to someone he was convinced was there, as he pulled his hair out, strand by strand. Though he didn't always see bad things. There were days when he would go into ecstatic fits of joy because he saw such beauty, beauty that no one else could see. I envied him on those days, wishing I was where he was. Then the nurses would shove his pills down his throat and that envy dissipated.
You may think it odd that this was when I chose acting as my profession of choice. It seemed so easy to create a world and live as if it were so-everyone around me was doing it, and there was such escape in it. When they'd shut me in solitary for resisting my meds I would entertain myself and the four stone walls became a rainforest, the steel door my bungalow. (I was twelve, I didn't know a bungalow didnt belong in a rainforest at that time.) There, no one could reach me. There, no one existed but me.
I tell you all of this because I feel that in order to truly stretch an audience, to truly move them, you must be willing to stretch every corner of every piece of your mind. Anthony Hopkins made us shiver and heave in Hannibal because he never allowed a limit to his imagination. Everything was justified and carried out with surgical determination, so we believed it. How was he able to do that? Is there a part if Anthony Hopkins capable of such things?
Well, isn't there a part of all of us that's capable of such things?
Yes.
We don't want to believe it, but yes. Most people-most women-have never been granted an opporunity to play such roles. Why? If we are to speak plainly, I believe that women have an enormous barrier when it comes to such a possibility-a barrier instilled by society to ensure we have good mothers to raise a good generation and so on and all such swill. As a graduate of finishing school, I get it.
However, I haven't forgotten what I've seen. I'll never forget the depravity I know men-and women-to be capable of. Nor does the justification of said depravity escape me. Is it right? Of course not. But with man right and wrong has always been subject to perception. So why limit my imagination when it comes to my work?
Geniuses are never born-no matter what 'high-class' (perception, indeed) mothers assure themselves of, or how much they've paid for school, or how many extra-curricular activities are shoved down a childs throat. No amount of money or 'good breeding' or expectation buys ambition. In all career fields, geniuses are made and the weak catch up or die.
I plan on being around for a very long time, just like Hopkins, Pacino, and Washington. I truly believe the only way to ensure that is to live. And not the slice of cake living I see most women consign themselves to (again, my perception from limited experience-my lack of feminine company is no secret) but the kind of life that I moved to New York for. The kind of life I'm used to. Blood, sweat and tears, love, joy and wild abandon. So that when I'm dying I can say: "You see? It matters not what one is born as, but who they chose to become. Remember that when you remember me."
