{"id":9339,"date":"2009-05-08T06:42:02","date_gmt":"2009-05-08T10:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9339"},"modified":"2025-01-13T09:51:09","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T14:51:09","slug":"essence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9339","title":{"rendered":"The Essence of Old-School Female Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/precodecinema.blogspot.com\/2009\/04\/assorted-beauty.html\">Pretty faces<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Kay Francis as a platinum blonde!<\/p>\n<p>Some of my faves there. Sylvia Sidney, too. They&#8217;re all so <i>individual<\/i>, aren&#8217;t they? You would never mistake Clara Bow for Barbara Stanwyck. It would be impossible.<\/p>\n<p>There can be a sameness to the up-and-coming starlets today &#8211; because creating a specific <i>persona<\/i> is not what is in vogue now. What is in vogue now is versatility: I&#8217;m a gorgeous young starlet, yet watch me play a limping Inuit from the 15th century! Now watch me play a rumpled itinerant fruit-picker from 1935!  Now watch me play a jacked-up crack addict in Seattle!<\/p>\n<p>Awesome! Great! But WHO exactly ARE you?<\/p>\n<p>No reason to be angry at the trend of today (more on this theme <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9316\">here<\/a>) &#8230; it&#8217;s just a trend. Like any other trend, it will pass. I find it more <i>interesting<\/i> that that is what is in vogue now, as annoying as I sometimes find it. The thought seems to be: If you are an actress, then you should be able to play <i>everything<\/i>. A silly-putty nose and CGI can fill in the gaps in your work. But you can see in the results of this kind of work (phone call for Cate Blanchett) &#8211; not everyone can play everything, nor SHOULD everyone. There is something to be said for knowing what your essence is &#8211; and playing THAT.  Those actors still exist. Mickey Rourke. Gene Hackman. Ewan McGregor (when he&#8217;s used well). Gena Rowlands. Susan Sarandon. Jeff Bridges. I&#8217;d put Angelina Jolie on that list. Kurt Russell. Anyone can learn a dialect. There are tutors for that. But there are no tutors to help you understand and bring out your own essence. You either have it or you don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>So looking at <a href=\"http:\/\/precodecinema.blogspot.com\/2009\/04\/assorted-beauty.html\">compilation of pretty faces from the past<\/a>, what I am most struck by is each woman&#8217;s individual essence. You would never mistake one for the other. Personality is a fingerprint. A snowflake unlike any of its sisters. A mark made by one particular hand in indelible ink.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pretty faces. Kay Francis as a platinum blonde! Some of my faves there. Sylvia Sidney, too. They&#8217;re all so individual, aren&#8217;t they? You would never mistake Clara Bow for Barbara Stanwyck. It would be impossible. There can be a sameness &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9339\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[2326,347,1996,385,195,382,284,2744,332,291,1699,392],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9339"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196576,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9339\/revisions\/196576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}