By chloe hares
“Did you see her at her last job?” “She will surely have some award nominations next year.” One of the most accessible forms of entertainment for most of us is watching movies, these visual art stories that only come together with the cooperation of a large team of people assigned to different roles to ensure that the finished project is a seamless spectacle. At the head of this team are the actors who act for us, they are the ones who entertain us. This entertainment is first evaluated by directors, producers, and writers, some of whom can be notoriously cruel. My discussion will focus on the treatment actors receive on film sets and the toll this can take on their mental health, as well as the expectation of repressing this torment while being publicly praised for the performance they gave.
Shelley Duvall was once a promising young actress who caught the attention of many casting directors after her first appearances in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Y thieves like usShe even hosted an evening of Saturday night live signs of real progress in America. In 1980, she was cast as the female lead in Stanley Kubrick’s film. the glow, adapted from the novel by Stephen King. Recently, a rare photo of Shelley Duvall resurfaced in which she looked almost unrecognizable. Duvall retired from acting 20 years ago and has remained out of the spotlight ever since, but she has always spoken out about the abuse she suffered on the set of the glow.
The question that remains unanswered is…did you give up the profession you loved for your own well-being?
During filming, Kubrick expected Duvall’s character to be constantly in a state of anxiety and fear; his body was constantly in a state of hysteria. To prepare for days of endless crying, Duvall would listen to heartbreaking songs on her Walkman and relive the saddest memories of her life in her head, and while this was torture for her, Kubrick didn’t praise her dedication once, in fact often. she told other crew members to ignore her. Her perfectionism would not allow sincerity. The film is now one of the most critically acclaimed films of the last century and most viewers agree that Duvall’s performance is so raw and heartbreaking; Martin Scorsese claims it’s one of his favorite movies of all time, but the creative genius behind the story, Stephen King, hates the adaptation and claims that Duvall’s character, Wendy, has been given a misogynistic performance, which he never did. It was what he had intended in the book.
Despite the notoriety and admiration she gained from being a part of this project, Duvall was traumatized by the job and acted very little after this, instead moving to the production side of the industry. A photo of her with a fan just a few weeks ago is the first seen of her since a 2016 interview with Dr. Phil, in which she discussed her struggles with mental health, so the question remains unanswered. answer is how How much help have you received over the years? And she had to give up the profession she loved for her own good?
Perhaps we should think of the sacrifices these stars make for their work as being totally mandatory in the profession.
Coming back to the contemporary, the movie currently causing concern among viewers is the Netflix original biopic. Blond, starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe. The film depicts the life of the blonde bombshell, however it is largely based on a fictional book and much of its content is not shown to have actually happened in Marilyn’s life. Including the heavy themes of rape and miscarriage, we wonder why we can’t let Marilyn rest in peace. Her Hollywood treatment is known to have been nothing short of horrendous, and yet, sixty years after her death, filmmakers still feel the need to expose her. While at first glance the cinematography may be fantastic, does this ‘entertainment’ (a term I use loosely) justify exposing what may or may not be the fictional life of a woman who is no longer here to defend herself?
‘Christian Bale lived on an apple and a cup of coffee a day for months to prepare for The Machinist‘, ‘Angelina Jolie completely isolated herself from her friends and family to get into the character of Gia’, ‘Marilyn still had to work with her ex-husband Arthur Miller after their divorce.’ These are not just trivialities, but traumas for the actors. While it’s not something we often stop to consider, perhaps we should think of the sacrifices made by these stars for their work as completely mandatory in the profession.
Image: Masha Reymers via Pexels
