The strike is over! Hallelujah, hallelujah!
Let’s celebrate by focusing this week on hope.
What if a powerful news-gathering entity were able to profile fifteen film actors that delivered breakthrough, career-defining performances in 2007? Not necessarily superstars but rising talents that are now coming into their own and achieving major recognition– folks like Paul Dano (”There Will Be Blood”) and Ellen Page (”Juno.”) What if the profile were supplemented with quotations from long-established actors as they remember the performances that launched them into the highest of career strata?
Your wish has come true. Last weekend’s New York Times Magazine presents us with a truly invaluable resource. Read the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/magazine/10Oscars-t.html?ref=magazine
and then, if you can, watch these performances one by one. See great talents deliver performances that will cement their futures in the cinema. The paths that you and I travel to our own acting success will be different from the ones described by the Times. But by learning from people who have most recently walked down that path we can get a clearer understanding of where we need to go and what we need to do.
