Self Destruction and the Actor

I leaned over to the two Australian actors visiting me and said in all sincerity… “they break my fucking heart… actors… they do it every time.”

Many actors seem driven down a path which includes self-destructive acts. It’s as if their pressure release is always over-indulgence in something.

I have seen them lose themselves in drink, drugs, unstable relationships, and bad behaviour. The damage to their credibility often greater than any success they have had to date.

I have seen them make terrible decisions to take part in awful plays, with terrible writing, produced by idiots and directed by abusers… It’s as if they have a masochistic streak. I have seen them act in almost pornographic films to ‘get noticed’.

Many times, when they are gaining great momentum in their career or training, they seem to step off the curb, straight into on-coming traffic, and stand like a rabbit in the headlights, waiting to get slammed.

So many lovely, sensitive souls, seem magnetically drawn towards behaving in ways that can only end in pain.

And the world doesn’t care, the over-abundant supply of actors means no one cares.

But I do, despite my desire to be hard to their almost inevitable demise, I take their fall almost as heavily as they do.

Maybe over the years, I will become inured to it. Maybe not.

They break my heart.