Eyes wide shut to true talent

'ACTING is the most minor of gifts," Katharine Hepburn said. "After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four." Steve McQueen shared this view, remarking: "I'm not sure that acting is something for a grown man to bedoing."

The point would appear well made. How difficult, after all, is it to act as though you were someone else? There are, of course, levels to the craft, ranging from gestural mimicry to the work of actors who give the illusion they fully inhabit a character.

But actors, these practitioners of what would seem a more minor art compared with, say, musical composition or painting, are among the most celebrated and recognised people on earth.

Pristine forests are pulped for magazines that recount their every love affair, dietary innovation and shopping excursion. Some members of the public seem to know more about the lives of actors than they do about their own families.

Why is it so? Is it that with the Google-eyed attention we give to acting, we are engaging in a kind of global vanity, that more than anything else we are interested in people who portray ourselves? Or is the explanation simpler, that the athletic near-perfection demanded for entry to the acting profession exercises a deep erotic pull for a worldwide culture of boredom, sloth and obesity?

The arc light glare of attention applied to the top echelon of actors can quickly become a blowtorch when the media pack turns, as it has in the case of Nicole Kidman.

Kidman has enjoyed a long summer in the media sun. So entranced for so long were they with her stature, figure and strawberry tresses, and her marriage cum imbroglio with another actor, Tom Cruise, that it passed almost without note that even on Hepburn's Shirley Temple scale of acting, she didn't rate.

She has always been less than arresting on the screen, wooden and pretty much sexless. If these words appear harsh, they are not directed so much at Kidman, who is an intelligent and it would seem dedicated though misguided professional, but at ourselves, who have for two long decades pretended the empress was clad.

Instead, for those decades we were massaged with froth, even in the serious press, with one of London's West End critics extolling her as "theatrical Viagra".

Readers must have been rendered pre-deaf, dumb and blind when they attended films in which she appeared. The mere mention of the fatuous Eyes Wide Shut, the ghastly Moulin Rouge! and the tedious The Hours should suffice to press the case.

She was as much Virginia Woolf in The Hours as Eeyore is happy: that she should have received an Oscar for it demonstrates how Hollywood has entirely lost all taste.

Now, with Australia, the media has turned. Scornful reviews from London and New York are recounted with relish, delight almost at the tearing down of one they once held high. Now her figure, weight, lips, all are grist to the media mill. The same pack that made her is gleefully breaking her.

The irony is that Australia is not a bad film, and as the big-budget, old-fashioned entertainment it's meant to be, it works. The irony is Kidman pulls off her part well enough - better in fact than she has almost any other role - and that she and Hugh Jackman make a convincing screen couple. But such details do not matter: her blood is in the water and the sharks are circling, exultant.

Perhaps it is time to remember that every actor is a child playing dress-ups in their parents' living room, desperate for approval. If we treat them as such, we might get our perspective right about their actual importance in our real world, and our real lives.

But, no - fat chance.

Larry Buttrose is an essayist and writer.


'ACTING is the most minor of gifts," Katharine Hepburn said. "After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four." Steve McQueen shared this view, remarking: "I'm not sure that acting is something for a grown man to bedoing."

The point would appear well made. How difficult, after all, is it to act as though you were someone else? There are, of course, levels to the craft, ranging from gestural mimicry to the work of actors who give the illusion they fully inhabit a character.

But actors, these practitioners of what would seem a more minor art compared with, say, musical composition or painting, are among the most celebrated and recognised people on earth.

Pristine forests are pulped for magazines that recount their every love affair, dietary innovation and shopping excursion. Some members of the public seem to know more about the lives of actors than they do about their own families.

Why is it so? Is it that with the Google-eyed attention we give to acting, we are engaging in a kind of global vanity, that more than anything else we are interested in people who portray ourselves? Or is the explanation simpler, that the athletic near-perfection demanded for entry to the acting profession exercises a deep erotic pull for a worldwide culture of boredom, sloth and obesity?

The arc light glare of attention applied to the top echelon of actors can quickly become a blowtorch when the media pack turns, as it has in the case of Nicole Kidman.

Kidman has enjoyed a long summer in the media sun. So entranced for so long were they with her stature, figure and strawberry tresses, and her marriage cum imbroglio with another actor, Tom Cruise, that it passed almost without note that even on Hepburn's Shirley Temple scale of acting, she didn't rate.

She has always been less than arresting on the screen, wooden and pretty much sexless. If these words appear harsh, they are not directed so much at Kidman, who is an intelligent and it would seem dedicated though misguided professional, but at ourselves, who have for two long decades pretended the empress was clad.

Instead, for those decades we were massaged with froth, even in the serious press, with one of London's West End critics extolling her as "theatrical Viagra".

Readers must have been rendered pre-deaf, dumb and blind when they attended films in which she appeared. The mere mention of the fatuous Eyes Wide Shut, the ghastly Moulin Rouge! and the tedious The Hours should suffice to press the case.

She was as much Virginia Woolf in The Hours as Eeyore is happy: that she should have received an Oscar for it demonstrates how Hollywood has entirely lost all taste.

Now, with Australia, the media has turned. Scornful reviews from London and New York are recounted with relish, delight almost at the tearing down of one they once held high. Now her figure, weight, lips, all are grist to the media mill. The same pack that made her is gleefully breaking her.

The irony is that Australia is not a bad film, and as the big-budget, old-fashioned entertainment it's meant to be, it works. The irony is Kidman pulls off her part well enough - better in fact than she has almost any other role - and that she and Hugh Jackman make a convincing screen couple. But such details do not matter: her blood is in the water and the sharks are circling, exultant.

Perhaps it is time to remember that every actor is a child playing dress-ups in their parents' living room, desperate for approval. If we treat them as such, we might get our perspective right about their actual importance in our real world, and our real lives.

But, no - fat chance.

Larry Buttrose is an essayist and writer.


'ACTING is the most minor of gifts," Katharine Hepburn said. "After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four." Steve McQueen shared this view, remarking: "I'm not sure that acting is something for a grown man to bedoing."

The point would appear well made. How difficult, after all, is it to act as though you were someone else? There are, of course, levels to the craft, ranging from gestural mimicry to the work of actors who give the illusion they fully inhabit a character.

But actors, these practitioners of what would seem a more minor art compared with, say, musical composition or painting, are among the most celebrated and recognised people on earth.

Pristine forests are pulped for magazines that recount their every love affair, dietary innovation and shopping excursion. Some members of the public seem to know more about the lives of actors than they do about their own families.

Why is it so? Is it that with the Google-eyed attention we give to acting, we are engaging in a kind of global vanity, that more than anything else we are interested in people who portray ourselves? Or is the explanation simpler, that the athletic near-perfection demanded for entry to the acting profession exercises a deep erotic pull for a worldwide culture of boredom, sloth and obesity?

The arc light glare of attention applied to the top echelon of actors can quickly become a blowtorch when the media pack turns, as it has in the case of Nicole Kidman.

Kidman has enjoyed a long summer in the media sun. So entranced for so long were they with her stature, figure and strawberry tresses, and her marriage cum imbroglio with another actor, Tom Cruise, that it passed almost without note that even on Hepburn's Shirley Temple scale of acting, she didn't rate.

She has always been less than arresting on the screen, wooden and pretty much sexless. If these words appear harsh, they are not directed so much at Kidman, who is an intelligent and it would seem dedicated though misguided professional, but at ourselves, who have for two long decades pretended the empress was clad.

Instead, for those decades we were massaged with froth, even in the serious press, with one of London's West End critics extolling her as "theatrical Viagra".

Readers must have been rendered pre-deaf, dumb and blind when they attended films in which she appeared. The mere mention of the fatuous Eyes Wide Shut, the ghastly Moulin Rouge! and the tedious The Hours should suffice to press the case.

She was as much Virginia Woolf in The Hours as Eeyore is happy: that she should have received an Oscar for it demonstrates how Hollywood has entirely lost all taste.

Now, with Australia, the media has turned. Scornful reviews from London and New York are recounted with relish, delight almost at the tearing down of one they once held high. Now her figure, weight, lips, all are grist to the media mill. The same pack that made her is gleefully breaking her.

The irony is that Australia is not a bad film, and as the big-budget, old-fashioned entertainment it's meant to be, it works. The irony is Kidman pulls off her part well enough - better in fact than she has almost any other role - and that she and Hugh Jackman make a convincing screen couple. But such details do not matter: her blood is in the water and the sharks are circling, exultant.

Perhaps it is time to remember that every actor is a child playing dress-ups in their parents' living room, desperate for approval. If we treat them as such, we might get our perspective right about their actual importance in our real world, and our real lives.

But, no - fat chance.

Larry Buttrose is an essayist and writer.


'ACTING is the most minor of gifts," Katharine Hepburn said. "After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four." Steve McQueen shared this view, remarking: "I'm not sure that acting is something for a grown man to bedoing."

The point would appear well made. How difficult, after all, is it to act as though you were someone else? There are, of course, levels to the craft, ranging from gestural mimicry to the work of actors who give the illusion they fully inhabit a character.

But actors, these practitioners of what would seem a more minor art compared with, say, musical composition or painting, are among the most celebrated and recognised people on earth.

Pristine forests are pulped for magazines that recount their every love affair, dietary innovation and shopping excursion. Some members of the public seem to know more about the lives of actors than they do about their own families.

Why is it so? Is it that with the Google-eyed attention we give to acting, we are engaging in a kind of global vanity, that more than anything else we are interested in people who portray ourselves? Or is the explanation simpler, that the athletic near-perfection demanded for entry to the acting profession exercises a deep erotic pull for a worldwide culture of boredom, sloth and obesity?

The arc light glare of attention applied to the top echelon of actors can quickly become a blowtorch when the media pack turns, as it has in the case of Nicole Kidman.

Kidman has enjoyed a long summer in the media sun. So entranced for so long were they with her stature, figure and strawberry tresses, and her marriage cum imbroglio with another actor, Tom Cruise, that it passed almost without note that even on Hepburn's Shirley Temple scale of acting, she didn't rate.

She has always been less than arresting on the screen, wooden and pretty much sexless. If these words appear harsh, they are not directed so much at Kidman, who is an intelligent and it would seem dedicated though misguided professional, but at ourselves, who have for two long decades pretended the empress was clad.

Instead, for those decades we were massaged with froth, even in the serious press, with one of London's West End critics extolling her as "theatrical Viagra".

Readers must have been rendered pre-deaf, dumb and blind when they attended films in which she appeared. The mere mention of the fatuous Eyes Wide Shut, the ghastly Moulin Rouge! and the tedious The Hours should suffice to press the case.

She was as much Virginia Woolf in The Hours as Eeyore is happy: that she should have received an Oscar for it demonstrates how Hollywood has entirely lost all taste.

Now, with Australia, the media has turned. Scornful reviews from London and New York are recounted with relish, delight almost at the tearing down of one they once held high. Now her figure, weight, lips, all are grist to the media mill. The same pack that made her is gleefully breaking her.

The irony is that Australia is not a bad film, and as the big-budget, old-fashioned entertainment it's meant to be, it works. The irony is Kidman pulls off her part well enough - better in fact than she has almost any other role - and that she and Hugh Jackman make a convincing screen couple. But such details do not matter: her blood is in the water and the sharks are circling, exultant.

Perhaps it is time to remember that every actor is a child playing dress-ups in their parents' living room, desperate for approval. If we treat them as such, we might get our perspective right about their actual importance in our real world, and our real lives.

But, no - fat chance.

Larry Buttrose is an essayist and writer.


'ACTING is the most minor of gifts," Katharine Hepburn said. "After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four." Steve McQueen shared this view, remarking: "I'm not sure that acting is something for a grown man to bedoing."

The point would appear well made. How difficult, after all, is it to act as though you were someone else? There are, of course, levels to the craft, ranging from gestural mimicry to the work of actors who give the illusion they fully inhabit a character.

But actors, these practitioners of what would seem a more minor art compared with, say, musical composition or painting, are among the most celebrated and recognised people on earth.

Pristine forests are pulped for magazines that recount their every love affair, dietary innovation and shopping excursion. Some members of the public seem to know more about the lives of actors than they do about their own families.

Why is it so? Is it that with the Google-eyed attention we give to acting, we are engaging in a kind of global vanity, that more than anything else we are interested in people who portray ourselves? Or is the explanation simpler, that the athletic near-perfection demanded for entry to the acting profession exercises a deep erotic pull for a worldwide culture of boredom, sloth and obesity?

The arc light glare of attention applied to the top echelon of actors can quickly become a blowtorch when the media pack turns, as it has in the case of Nicole Kidman.

Kidman has enjoyed a long summer in the media sun. So entranced for so long were they with her stature, figure and strawberry tresses, and her marriage cum imbroglio with another actor, Tom Cruise, that it passed almost without note that even on Hepburn's Shirley Temple scale of acting, she didn't rate.

She has always been less than arresting on the screen, wooden and pretty much sexless. If these words appear harsh, they are not directed so much at Kidman, who is an intelligent and it would seem dedicated though misguided professional, but at ourselves, who have for two long decades pretended the empress was clad.

Instead, for those decades we were massaged with froth, even in the serious press, with one of London's West End critics extolling her as "theatrical Viagra".

Readers must have been rendered pre-deaf, dumb and blind when they attended films in which she appeared. The mere mention of the fatuous Eyes Wide Shut, the ghastly Moulin Rouge! and the tedious The Hours should suffice to press the case.

She was as much Virginia Woolf in The Hours as Eeyore is happy: that she should have received an Oscar for it demonstrates how Hollywood has entirely lost all taste.

Now, with Australia, the media has turned. Scornful reviews from London and New York are recounted with relish, delight almost at the tearing down of one they once held high. Now her figure, weight, lips, all are grist to the media mill. The same pack that made her is gleefully breaking her.

The irony is that Australia is not a bad film, and as the big-budget, old-fashioned entertainment it's meant to be, it works. The irony is Kidman pulls off her part well enough - better in fact than she has almost any other role - and that she and Hugh Jackman make a convincing screen couple. But such details do not matter: her blood is in the water and the sharks are circling, exultant.

Perhaps it is time to remember that every actor is a child playing dress-ups in their parents' living room, desperate for approval. If we treat them as such, we might get our perspective right about their actual importance in our real world, and our real lives.

But, no - fat chance.

Larry Buttrose is an essayist and writer.


'ACTING is the most minor of gifts," Katharine Hepburn said. "After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four." Steve McQueen shared this view, remarking: "I'm not sure that acting is something for a grown man to bedoing."

The point would appear well made. How difficult, after all, is it to act as though you were someone else? There are, of course, levels to the craft, ranging from gestural mimicry to the work of actors who give the illusion they fully inhabit a character.

But actors, these practitioners of what would seem a more minor art compared with, say, musical composition or painting, are among the most celebrated and recognised people on earth.

Pristine forests are pulped for magazines that recount their every love affair, dietary innovation and shopping excursion. Some members of the public seem to know more about the lives of actors than they do about their own families.

Why is it so? Is it that with the Google-eyed attention we give to acting, we are engaging in a kind of global vanity, that more than anything else we are interested in people who portray ourselves? Or is the explanation simpler, that the athletic near-perfection demanded for entry to the acting profession exercises a deep erotic pull for a worldwide culture of boredom, sloth and obesity?

The arc light glare of attention applied to the top echelon of actors can quickly become a blowtorch when the media pack turns, as it has in the case of Nicole Kidman.

Kidman has enjoyed a long summer in the media sun. So entranced for so long were they with her stature, figure and strawberry tresses, and her marriage cum imbroglio with another actor, Tom Cruise, that it passed almost without note that even on Hepburn's Shirley Temple scale of acting, she didn't rate.

She has always been less than arresting on the screen, wooden and pretty much sexless. If these words appear harsh, they are not directed so much at Kidman, who is an intelligent and it would seem dedicated though misguided professional, but at ourselves, who have for two long decades pretended the empress was clad.

Instead, for those decades we were massaged with froth, even in the serious press, with one of London's West End critics extolling her as "theatrical Viagra".

Readers must have been rendered pre-deaf, dumb and blind when they attended films in which she appeared. The mere mention of the fatuous Eyes Wide Shut, the ghastly Moulin Rouge! and the tedious The Hours should suffice to press the case.

She was as much Virginia Woolf in The Hours as Eeyore is happy: that she should have received an Oscar for it demonstrates how Hollywood has entirely lost all taste.

Now, with Australia, the media has turned. Scornful reviews from London and New York are recounted with relish, delight almost at the tearing down of one they once held high. Now her figure, weight, lips, all are grist to the media mill. The same pack that made her is gleefully breaking her.

The irony is that Australia is not a bad film, and as the big-budget, old-fashioned entertainment it's meant to be, it works. The irony is Kidman pulls off her part well enough - better in fact than she has almost any other role - and that she and Hugh Jackman make a convincing screen couple. But such details do not matter: her blood is in the water and the sharks are circling, exultant.

Perhaps it is time to remember that every actor is a child playing dress-ups in their parents' living room, desperate for approval. If we treat them as such, we might get our perspective right about their actual importance in our real world, and our real lives.

But, no - fat chance.

Larry Buttrose is an essayist and writer.


Source: theaustralian.news.com.au