One Day I Want to Work With: Michael Shannon

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He got an Oscar nod for Revolutionary Road, starred in everything from big budget blockbusters like Man of Steel, to indie films like Take Shelter, and still finds time to get back to his theatrical roots onstage in NYC. Michael Shannon has been one of my favorite actors since I saw him in 2006’s adaptation of Tracy Letts’ play Bug. Like most actors, I have a list. My fellow actors will know it well. It’s a mental list comprised of people we dream of working with. We want to act with talented people. We want to spar with them, connect with them, act our hearts out with them. Well, he’s one of those actors. He’s on my list. Boy he’s one of those actors that just makes me go, “I want to study more. I want to get even better. I want to get to be as good as him/her.” His subtly in  Revolutionary Road was so good, that there were moments where I forgot he was playing a character.  He has a range that is hard to match nowadays and is someone who knows when to get back on the boards (the stage) and stretch his acting muscles to keep them sharp.

Everyone has someone who they want to work with. I love working with interesting actors who make me want to strive to be better. As a character actress, I love watching other character actors. I love wanting to push myself to not necessarily be like the actor I admire, but emulate the kind of intricate characteristics that make up the people they play. Michael Shannon’s performances are complex and it’s those complexities that make him a fantastic actor.  Michael Shannon, if you ever read this, I want to work with you. Seriously. We need to make this happen.

 

Tony Awards 2013 Nominations Announced: Which Film/TV Actor Has a Chance at a Theater Award?

Jessica Hecht and 2013 Tony nominee, Judith Light, in “The Assembled Parties”

The nominations for the 67th Annual Tony Awards were announced this morning by Broadway veterans Sutton Foster (ABC Family’s Bunheads) and Jessie Tyler Ferguson (ABC’s Modern Family.) Among the nominees are your standard theater performers, who have yet to make themselves known to a wider audience, but there are a lot of familiar faces from television and film as well. The late Nora Ephron received a posthumous nomination for penning the play, Lucky Guy, which stars fellow nominee Tom Hanks (who starred in Ephron’s films Sleepless in Seattle & You’ve Got Mail.) Broadway and film vets Nathan Lane, Tracy Letts, David Hyde Pierce, and Tom Sturridge vie for top honors along with Hanks in the Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play category. In my humble opinion, Alan Cumming was snubbed for his tour de force performance in Macbeth.

For Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play, television and film veterans fill a category where it’s clear they all started in the theater. It includes the stellar works of Laurie Metcalf (The Other Place) Amy Morton (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) Kristine Nielsen (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike) and Cicely Tyson (A Trip to Bountiful.) The thing that I find most interesting about this category is the fact that Jessica Chastain was snubbed for her Broadway debut in The Heiress.

The most fun however, will come with the featured actors in plays (both male and female categories.) For the male category, it includes: Danny Burstein, Golden Boy, Richard Kind, The Big Knife, Billy Magnussen, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Tony Shalhoub, Golden Boy and Courtney B. Vance, Lucky Guy.  They are all theater veterans and well-known in television and film as well. For the female category it’s the battle of the Judiths with both Judith Light and Judith Ivey getting nominations. Carrie Coon, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Shalita Grant, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Judith Ivey, The Heiress, Judith Light, The Assembled Parties and Condola Rashad, The Trip to Bountiful.

It will be interesting to see who wins in these categories considering most of them do theater, film and television. For a complete list of nominations you can go here.

Speaking From Experience: Losing a Role

Today, I lost a role. Normal. Because of my hair…Not normal to most people seeking employment in the everyday workforce, but it’s all too common in this industry. When I saw Jessica Chastain at an industry event, she had mentioned how crazy the business is, and how, for an industry that deals with the imagination, they really don’t have much of their own.  Every once in a while, I get fed up with how ridiculous this industry can be sometimes. When I told friends that I lost the part because of something as minor as my hair, their reactions went pretty much like this:

I know, right? Growing up, I loved when I’d see an actress with curly hair. I was seeing a part of myself reflected on the screen. Faces like Julia Roberts, Keri Russell, Julianna Margulies, and the previously blogged about, late Brittany Murphy, all had naturally curly hair. Key word: HAD. Since that time, they’ve all gone down the straight and narrow path of hair styling. I mentioned in my post about Brittany Murphy, that she had trouble getting roles because she was a brunette. Maybe it also had to do with the fact that her hair was curly. If you look at her work in the television series Almost Home, and movies like Clueless and Freeway, she had curly hair for all those projects. Take Julia Roberts as well. It was fine in the late 80s and early 90s to have curly hair like she did, because that was in fashion. Maybe I should have been up and coming in the 70s and 80s. I’d have cornered the curly-hair market. Nowadays, it’s all about silky smooth locks.  The fashion industry spends billions of dollars a year in order to tell me that my hair is too frizzy, curly, and needs to be “controlled” with straightening serums, creams and flat irons.

Just because you may not see a curly-haired gal in television and film all the time does not mean that we aren’t out there. I look up to my friends Eileen Galindo and Olga Merediz BECAUSE they remind me of myself. I really do hope I get to act with my supremely talented and gorgeous friends. I have a feeling we could play relatives or something.

I’ve had roles where I had to straighten my hair, so why should that make a difference now? Well, this is a very very fast moving business, and I didn’t have what they needed in the moment to make them give me the job. I can ask questions and make myself crazy about this. But I chose not to go insane simply due to the fact that I know I didn’t fit what they were ultimately looking for. It wasn’t about my talent, it was  as simple as my appearance. My hair is a part of me. It’s part of my personality. It’s what sets me apart from everyone else. At least I know I’m not a terrible actress. Other things are on the horizon for me, and something great might be just around the corner.

I don’t want to be just another boat that gets lost in the ocean. I want to be the lighthouse, creating a glow that helps the boats find their way home to the shore. I want to blaze a trail with my curly hair.