Epiphany

Classic Hollywood moment: At the screening of The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Rosanna Arquette sits directly behind us. Dan's chair had to be literally hitting her in the knees (the chairs are weird at the Pacific Design screening room - they recline back as soon as you sit in them).

As for the movie, well. I loved it. I loved Rebecca Miller's storytelling - both through her words and her direction of the film. I loved Robin Wright's performance and am jealous of both her ability and her chance to play a role like Pippa Lee. At this moment, if I were to be asked, what is your ideal role? I would have to answer "Pippa Lee." Sure, the character is double my age but she is having an awakening, she isn't sure if she is going insane and, as an audience, we don't know either so we are anxious to see where the journey leads. There is such a fragility and vulnerability to her character which, in turn, becomes her strength - and may have been her strength all along. You know how I said (in my last post) that I wish for Jennifer Garner's career? Well, I might have to change that wish to having Robin Wright's career. Not only did she get to be in my favorite movie of all time, The Princess Bride, but she has had a career that has been varied and constant. And this role seems like "just the beginning" for her - you'll understand my quotations if you see the movie. I'm kind of in awe of her.

Both Robin and Rebecca Miller were there for the Q&A after the screening. I didn't know that Rebecca was going to be there! She is certainly a writer's writer and I loved hearing her talk about this piece. She wrote it as a book first and then she adapted it for the screen. She got the idea for the book when she ran into an old friend when she was in Rome one summer. She had known this friend twenty years prior, when they were both living in NY. She said this woman was wild and "a bit casual with her life" when she knew her and now, twenty years later, she was this wife and mother of three - very put together and quite opposite of how she was in her youth. It got her to thinking about how we all seem to live several lives within our lives and how there is usually much more to a person than we may know, depending on when we know them. Talk about a running theme of my week: Broken Embraces begins with the explanation from our main character about how he guesses he became a writer because the idea of living one life just wasn't enough for him. Which made me start thinking...

"Why do I love acting?" I've never known the answer to that because it is something I've always wanted - I've never wanted anything else. And so it was a bit of an epiphany for me this week when I thought, "What drives me to be an actor?" and I realized that I think it is because I want to be able to live all of these lives. That one life isn't enough. That with acting, I get to climb into another person's life for a bit, without the consequences. I think that is why I always wanted to play Rizzo instead of Sandy in Grease. I am Sandy, in real life. I don't want to play who I am - I am that person day in and day out. The chance to explore the wilder sides of myself -or to be an FBI agent or a drug addict or a hooker or an astronaut - all of these things that I won't be in this one life that I am allotted...that freedom to explore is an addiction in itself. Even if I'm cast as "the Sandy" much more often than I am cast as "the Rizzo," I'm an actor. How lucky is that?