We’re back to hypotheticals, goodmen & goodwives, though probably not a poll. If you don’t like these, try the game room or something.
Imagine that you’ve become friends with Karen, an actress & singer in her early 20s. You’ve seen her act onstage, and she’s hilarious in comedies and heartbreaking in dramas; she’s similarly gifted as a singer. She’s also gorgeous, regularly causing grown damn men to grow inarticulate in her presence despite her preference for modest dress, and when she is out jogging, she’s a positive traffic hazard. But despite her beauty and talent, she still hasn’t had her big break; she’s still working at menial jobs that frequently leave her both exhausted and struggling to put beans on the table.
Recently Karen’s agent expressed to her that her reluctance to show skin is holding back her career. Wanting to address that, the agent has arranged for her to do a Maxim photoshoot and is angling to get her a role in a movie that will show a lot of skin and some exploitative girl-on-girl kissing. Karen is ambivalent about this. She thinks of performance as an art; she knows some people think that is silly, but that’s how she feels. Part of her thinks that it would cheapen her calling to further herself by showing of her tits & ass. Her agent tells her that she is taking herself too seriously, that she should strike while she’s at the prime of her beauty.
As said above, you and Karen are close friends; she both admires you and respects your opinion. If she asks your advice on this issue, what will you say?
You just described Neve Campbell circa the mid-90s. By all accounts, it worked out pretty well for her and her disappearance from the screen lately has been by choice.
I would tell her that the biggest difference between the hobbyist and the pro is that hobbyists only do the parts they like. To be a professional means work, and all forms of work involve BS that you do just because you have to. I don’t care whether we’re talking about engineers and doctors or actresses and novelists. Successful novelists don’t sit around waiting on the muse - they schedule out time and they write whether they feel like it or not. House, MD is funny because we have a talented doctor who’s crap with the patients and we all recognize that real life (for better or worse) doesn’t work that way. Outside of a TV show, House is not a doctor… maybe he’s a researcher… but it’s probably most likely that he’s unemployed and miserable, whining about how smart he is, but nobody appreciates him.
So back to my friend: I’m not particularly inclined to encourage her to do the photo-shoot, but I’m not really inclined to recommend trying to become an actress at all, partly because photo-shoots like this are part of the reality of being an actress.
If she turns it down, then she needs to be honest with herself about how serious she is about the field she’s chosen. Nobody succeeds in acting because of talent. They succeed because of the connections in their field, which are partly formed by taking work that gets you noticed. That’s just how the game is played. All of her talent is pretty much irrelevant in the profession she wants to pursue.
So she has to pick: is it a hobby or is it a profession?
I have no idea how one goes about sexing up one’s image. It’s not in my wheelhouse.
I would point out to her though that reluctance to show skin is not necessarily what’s holding her back. Hollywood is up to its armpits in actresses and most of them will never amount to anything despite showing more skin than anyone is really interested in seeing. If she does the shoot, that makes her the latest sex puppet. There will be another one along next week. Which is not to say she shouldn’t do it - just that it wouldn’t make her stand out in anyway.
I would ask her what does she mean when she says she wants to be a successful actress. Does she want to be famous? Be a star? Does she just want to work steadily? Does she want to do movies or live theater? Does she want a career in sex puppetry? Does she want an international brand?
I think she should go back to her agent and ask him, specifically, which producers/directors, and which introductions, and which roles in which movies, which doors, he thinks are going to open here via this Maxim shoot. If he can’t name names, then it’s just some generic “maybe you’ll be discovered!” thing. She might as well go eat hotdogs at Pink’s all day.
Then I’d suggest that she stop waiting for someone else to make her a star, write her own movie, and make it happen for herself.
As her friend, I’m going to tell her she has to make this decision on her own (and that I’ll support her in whichever decision she makes). Even if I told her what I might do in the same situation, it doesn’t mean that would be the right decision for her. She’s an adult and she understands the issues and the consequences so she needs to make the decision for herself.
She actually showed no skin in that movie ( well…no normally covered-up skin ). She specifically had a much commented on no-nudity clause in her contract. Kevin Bacon, Theresa Russell and Denise Richards, not so much.
But it seems that there is a whole crowd of people trying to stand out from the crowd by heading in that direction. Why not try something else, like brains?
I would tell her that Angelina Jolie earned an Oscar, just like Anne Hathaway and Anna Paquin; that Annette Bening has been nominated for four, Amy Adams for five; and, so long as we’re sticking with the "A"s, I’d ask what they all have in common with Oscar nominees like Anna Kendrick and Angela Bassett?
They’re all professionals who say their lines the way their characters would? They react to their co-stars with plausible displays of the appropriate emotion? They dress for the part, perfect the right accent for the part, wear their hair like this for the part, walk like that for the part – oh, and, yeah, they show tits and ass too.
If you don’t want to do it – hey, that’s fine; I’m sure as hell not saying to do it because all the cool kids are doing it. I’m just saying they prove it’s not incompatible with being 100% serious about the craft while turning in realistic performances that merit acclaim.
A common fallacy. A woman may choose to go topless and all it means is she went topless. A performer’s choices are not being Merryl Streep vs. being Shae Marks. Plus also see the partial list in The Other Waldo Pepper’s last post. OTOH, nobody should ever feel she HAS to.
(Recently Majim Byalik of TBBT, in her blog, took exception to Ariana Grande posing for a lingerie line, and used a very similar phrase. But if you read the article to the end you realized she just did not want to explain to her kids why was Ariana on a billboard in nothing but her undies.)
I do have an old friend from college that got into some acting, ending mostly in DTV horror, who back when we were fresh out of college could have made some coin out of putting the tits on the screen (a true-life “they’re real, and they’re spectacular” case ). It was just her choice to stick to no further than merely suggestive dress, she was happy with it and with how far it got her.
Aren’t most of the pictorials in Maxim lingerie and bathing suit shots? I don’t believe they ever expose any areolas, nipples, or vulvas. I don’t think that kind of photo spread would damage an upcoming actress’s career.
On film, it sort of worked for Phoebe Cates. It didn’t much work for P.J. Soles. And after Angelina Jolie reached a certain point in her career, didn’t she say “Not any more”? I guess it boils down to whether the role is for a pretty girl who’ll show her tits or for an actress who is not fully clothed in a particular scene.
That’s my point. We have an actress (a fairly recent one at that) who followed Skald’s hypothetical to a T and took the “show some skin” route. She went on to have a pretty decent career and now only works sparingly by choice rather than some other reason. And it certainly didn’t hurt that Wild Things was a legitimately good movie. It’s possible to be in something that looks like exploitative trash on the surface that is actually deep storywise.
Another good point. Maxim pictorials aren’t exactly borderline porn and I can’t think of a single actress that has been “hurt” by doing one.
Her truly big success was the Scream franchise which started in 1996 ( and she was well established on the small screen with Party of Five from 1994 ). She didn’t do any nudity until 2004 by which time her film career had already mostly shifted to smaller independent features, Scream 4 excepted. Even Wild Things where she was involved in racy scenes but didn’t shed her clothes, post-dates the first two Scream films. It doesn’t appear that doing nude scenes damaged her career particularly, but it didn’t exactly enhance it either. As an example it is kind of a null, as doing nude scenes didn’t lead to greater success and she could probably have avoided them altogether without taking any career damage.
Having a Hollywood career as a pretty actress without showing some skin seems perfectly viable. I also don’t think it really hurts, either. But it doesn’t appear necessary.
Is it my understanding that she would not, ordinarily, want to show a lot of skin/kiss girls/etc i.e. has some sort of modesty thing on the go?
Because I’ll be telling her that there’s no conflict between showing skin and high art, in fact the two often go hand-in-hand, so that’s a misapprehension on her part.
But that I agree Maxim and cheap fake-lesbian titillation aren’t high art. That she should be comfortable, always, with her choices.
And to get a new agent. One that wants to sell her, not fit her into a common mould.
I’d have argued Both sides of it for her… laid out the Pros and the Cons and all within the hard truth of the fact that she lives the lifespan of a human being.
Yes, somethings she may look back on later in life and regret. Yes, she will age and her roles and parts will shift over time. I’d take my time; the conversation would be a slow process, because I’d want all the information
to be taken in and I wouldn’t want her rushed. Ultimately, of course its her choice… but if she was a friend, I’d make sure she knew that I supported her either way:
… from Awards and Accolades… to “Mr Skin” and 15 year olds (or radio DJs and their “crew” who just act that way) posting fap-gifs on REDDIT.
But hey, its pretty Easy for me to say all this. I’m not in that position.
). She specifically had a much commented on no-nudity clause in her contract. Kevin Bacon, Theresa Russell and Denise Richards, not so much.
). It was just her choice to stick to no further than merely suggestive dress, she was happy with it and with how far it got her.