22 Wasted

When I first met Greta Scacchi, as she took the first steps on her career as an actress, she exemplified that couldn’t-care-less attitude defined by the Italian word, sprezzatura.  Wikipedia tells me that the word originates from Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, where it is defined as "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it". But when everything comes easily sprezzatura can soon turn to sloppiness and conceit. 

Greta on set of Turtle Beach

Greta arrived in Hollywood in a flurry of publicity to play opposite one of it’s biggest stars, Harrison Ford. By that time she had  already played major roles in ten movies and an array of prestige TV series. Now, when it seemed all had fallen before her, her incipient grandiosity floated to the top. She bad-mouthed her Oscar-nominated director, and snubbed other Hollywood big names. Precipitantly, she started complaining about being typecast and was soon in an on-set row with, the legendary indie director, Robert Altman. Then. famously, she turned down the role in Basic Instinct  that would make Sharon Stone a superstar, and, by her own admission, let scripts being sent her pile up unread.

Greta at 47

In the meantime, she had an intense affair and, for the first time, it seems, learnt that you can’t always get what you want. Abandoned with a small child, she then compounded all her woes by portraying herself in the media as a victim — and there is nothing less charismatic than a victim. Greta thought that she had established herself sufficiently to be able to return to Hollywood at her choosing, but soon discovered that was not the case. The extreme reversals of fortune of John Travolta should have been warning enough; it was only after many years in the wilderness that he was rediscovered by, the cineaste from the video store, Quentin Tarantino, who enabled his considerable charisma to light up the big screen again.

Where Greta had once been so infectiously full of herself, she now retreated back inside her skin. She made appearances without a shred of makeup, her blond hair returned to mousey brown, wearing clothes that most young girls would not be seen dead in. I sometimes wondered whether these drab utility clothes were Greta’s version of sack cloth and ashes. Was this her being brave, or just masochistic? The shocked and dismayed reactions of her fans could be read in the comments left on-line. And, I felt much the same when I saw that this was how she appeared before the cameras when she, at last, got her chance of a Hollywood comeback, playing George Clooney’s wife, in Syriana. Sadly, her part was entirely removed from the final film.

Pia Miranda, Ellena Cotta, Greta Scacchi in
Looking for Allibrandi

Whereas once Greta had been radiant with the charisma of promise, her appearances now just created a nostalgia for what once had been. There have been many actresses who have parlayed their sexual mystique well into their sixties — Charlotte Rampling, Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren, to name a few — but Greta prematurely turned her back back on everything she had been and did some truly dreadful feminist films. The best of her post-Hollywood performances came in the Australian feature, Looking for Allibrandi in which Greta played a sad and withdrawn single mother of a sixteen-year-old girl. Set in the Italian community of extended families, her performance was touching, but demonstrated that the one type of character that a highly charismatic actor cannot play is a down-to-earth workaday ordinary person. It’s true that Greta, like Marilyn Monroe, may have been able to pass unnoticed when she chose, but “passing unnoticed” is not really what acting is all about.

By chance, one night, I caught Greta making a guest appearance on BBC 2’s The Review Show. They were doing a special edition on the Cannes film festival and had invited La Scacchi on to give a star’s point of view — and, no doubt, to bring a little glamour to the proceedings. On the contrary, Greta, dressed in her usual nondescript fashion, was behaving as if trying to wipe out any vestige of charisma which she might have left. Like a prudish old lady she defensively brushed aside references to her nude scenes, and, against the acerbic comments of her fellow panelists, gave the usual luvvie effusion of soft compliments to any film under discussion. Her voice, the earnest whisper of old, sounded as full of intimacy as ever;  but now there was no intimacy of content. She was refusing to interpret, refusing to personalise, as if trying to be as bland as possible. When it came to singling out her favourite film of the festival, she opted for a documentary — you could almost hear the producer’s heart hit the floor.

This fall from grace was momentarily broken when Greta suddenly espoused the plight of our declining fish stock and sought publicity for the cause. With a return of her old chutzpah she spontaneously stripped off to be photographed cuddling a large dead cod. The collision of hot and cold was whacky, bizarre — one might even say surreal, recalling Breton’s Soluble Fish, and Magritte’s Collective Invention — and, perhaps, because of that, it worked. Greta got more publicity than she had had for a long time, and a string of other stars followed suit, “doing a Greta” for the cause. The Eco loophole had allowed her to be light and flirtatious again, but this spirit was not to last.

The most brutal self-harm came in an interview with the Telegraph where she attempted to rewrite history, claiming that she had not been happy to do the nude scenes which brought her fame. This would certainly be a surprise to those of us who were present at the time, but Greta was now obviously out to completely erase her hot reputation. It transpired that her teenage daughter had been embarrassed when some of her chums, hardly surprisingly, discovered nude photos of her mother on the internet. Now, Greta was attempting to present an image which would be approved by the PTA. The interview, that took place in a Brighton café, was interrupted by the appearance of her son asking for money to buy chips. She then rattled on about the high cost of school uniforms. It would appear that the screen goddess now wished to be seen as just another school mum.

The photograph that accompanied the article, taken on the beach opposite, showed Greta, her hair chopped and style-less, her face scrubbed, her expression “right-on” — staring at the camera, looking sour and grim, no hint of a smile, no light in her eyes. In those early scenes, which she she had just disavowed, she had been very much alive; her eyes were now dead. She was the forlorn victim of a crass piece of miscasting — which she had perpetrated on herself. It was as absurd as her once being cast as Margaret Thatcher; but that had been a jest for the sake of satire. This new guise was clearly intended to pass for real.

Greta as Margaret Thatcher, Damian Lewis as Jeffrey Archer in 

Jeffrey Archer: The Truth

Charisma reveals a truth about our essential core beyond the accommodations we may try to make with our humdrum everyday lives. For some of us that core rarely sees the light of day, because we keep it carefully hidden away. A great actor must be prepared to risk all and take the opposite course. Beyond all the tricks of impersonation, the costume and the makeup, an actor must be prepared to expose the root of who s/he truly is. One cannot choose the why and wherefore of one’s core self any more than one can choose the colour of one’s eyes. An actor’s charisma is a force that springs from the unconscious, like the doppelgänger we meet in our dreams. 

Looking back it is hard not to draw breath when one realises just how much Greta has let slip. Compare her to the Italian actress, Monica Belluchi, perhaps, the only other actress in recent years to rival Greta's beauty. Certainly, both women have been included in numerous lists of the most desirable women in the world. Both began their working life modelling in Milan. And both used their spoils to pay their own way through drama school. From there Greta had a meteoric getaway, stepping straight into leading roles and making her breakthrough film, Heat and Dust, when she was just twenty-two. Even before that film was released she was being hailed in The Sunday Times magazine as a star. And, at that time, she was busy notching up further screen credits on several continents. 

Monica Belluchi at 49

By contrast, Monica, who is just four years Greta's junior, had to work far harder to get her career under way, not making her breakthrough film, L’Appartement, until she was thirty-one. It was also far harder for her to get her break in Hollywood than it was for Greta whose first language is English; but that was when it all started to go wrong for her. In the meantime, Belluchi carefully nurtured the fashion and cosmetic promotion contracts of the kind that Greta had repeatedly cold-shouldered. Hence, despite what Belluchi says in interviews, she has been careful to preserve her looks, while Greta, with sprezzartura now turned toxic, has persisted in behaving as if she couldn’t give a damn. 

Now, both women are in their fifties, both the mother of two children. Belluchi is soon to be seen playing the lead female role in Spectre — the new James Bond film; and where is Greta? Let's just say, she has dropped off the radar. She is still acting but no longer a star. Perhaps she prefers it that way.

21 Stardust

By middle-age Terence Stamp had got into the habit of rejecting offers and, by his own admission, ended up not working much at all. He was adrift in this transitional state when he worked with me

Anthony Calf, Caroline Bliss
in Deadly Recruits

on Deadly Recruits. It was apparently Caroline Bliss, one of his co-stars on that film who, later, inveigled him into accepting the role of an ageing drag queen in the Australian feature, Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

In view of his past, as a young buck whose lovers had included Julie Christie and supermodel, Jean Shrimpton, his transgender appearance in this movie seemed a total contradiction of his perceived image; but for that very reason it rang bells. It allowed Stamp from the vantage point of maturity to take an ironic stance towards his past. Through the guise of a preening, once famous, drag queen, he could revisit his past as one who had done it all, seen it all, and was now facing a lonely old age, from the safe distance of self-irony. Primarily through this casting the film gained a great deal of attention, and illuminated Terence Stamp, the sixties icon, in a sharp contemporary light.

It was however a film that came shortly afterwards that allowed him to cross the bridge into later years with his brilliant charisma still alight. That film was The Limey. Director, Steven Sonderberg, and writer, Lem Dobbs, had the inspiration, not just to cast Stamp in the lead role of a London gangster having just served a prison term, but to use extracts from his early film, Poor Cow, as

Terence Stamp in Poor Cow,
used as flashback in The Limey

flashbacks. (Had this ever been done before?) They were mindful that not all aging actors would want to appear on screen alongside their twenty-something self, but, when the proposition was put to him, Stamp had the good sense to go along with the idea. It enabled him to consolidate his acting career and burnish his star image. 

Critic Janet Maslin, in The New York Times, wrote of the film:

"Glimpses of young, dreamily beautiful Stamp and his no less imposing latter-day presence are used by Soderbergh with touching efficacy."

Terence Stamp in Steven Soderbergh's The Limey

Stamp’s whole trajectory had been away from his working class roots towards refinement, both in social manners and in spirituality. Now he turned round and embraced all that he had been from a point of maturity. Stamp had crossed the bridge from his twenties to his sixties, his charisma intact.

20 Too Beautiful for Words

Greta Scacchi was not only the most beautiful woman I had ever met but also the most charismatic. I had learnt from interviewing numerous models who wanted to act that the two do not necessarily go together. On several occasions I ended up wondering whether the vacant girl slumped in the chair before me could possibly be the sexy young woman in the pictures she had just handed to me. Patsy Rodenburg, who taught at many drama schools in and around London, has similarly commented:

“I would sit and listen to maybe 200 actors a week. I couldn't understand why some actors did everything right yet didn't engage me or make me clear. Some actors were very impressive, they were clever and displayed intricate skills, but after watching them I forgot their work - it didn't last in my memory. Some were very beautiful but not connected enough to be sexually attractive. What was missing?” (30)

The Hood and the Harlequin (Bergerac)

One day, when Greta was still completely unknown, I sat at a cafe table in Covent Garden and watched her coming across the concourse towards me. She was wearing flat shoes, no makeup, her hair pulled back, a kit bag over her shoulder, yet, as she passed every head turned to watch her go by. Her walk was without ostentation, and in it’s quiet grace quite beautiful. On several occasions prior to this I had called ACTION  and watched her walking before the camera. As she came towards me there was no discernible difference now. She was all of a piece. She had what Doe Lang has termed “bio-rapport”.(18) She did not just have a body; she was embodied. But, beyond that, she knew exactly who she was and where she was going. Like Bob Dylan’s girl with the Egyptian ring, she acted as if she was in need of nothing.

“When you’re centred, you’re in your body as much as your head. You flow through situations, at ease, natural rather than judging yourself. Your voice is relaxed and warm and you find it easy to connect with others.”(29)

Frances McDormand 

A Man in Love

Greta Scacchi’s screen career had the fastest lift off of any actor, bar none, that I have heard of, before or since. After being talent spotted in Milan she worked briefly as a model to finance her passage through drama school; and then, at 21 she emerged and stepped straight into leading roles in TV and films, first in the UK, then across Europe, Australia, and finally the USA. Just out of drama school, she had the freshness of the ingenue, but the confidence of the seasoned player. She knew exactly who she was and where she was going, and, so did everyone who came into her orbit — long before they could pronounce her name.

When Greta looked at you you were often left wondering whether she was saying something about herself, or something about you. She looked at you as if she expected to be recognised, expected to receive a response of a certain kind; and inevitably she got just that. On the few occasions where she scored a miss she would see it as a joke or a challenge that she was sure eventually to win. She was very flirtatious, as much with women as with men, and her appeal was often instant. She never wore makeup, unless it had been applied for professional reasons by a makeup artist.The only time her clothes were striking was when she had been dressed by a professional stylist. So, off-screen she always appeared totally natural, totally unaffected. 

But Greta was not as simple as she at first appeared. On occasion she would withdraw into her interior world and would have to gather herself before stepping forward. To be herself was a little like going on stage. Caught unexpectedly she could be too shy to look you in the eye; but when she was switched on she was not shy at all, with lingering eye-contact, little touches, intimate tones of voice. Because she was so careless about her appearance it came as a real surprise to discover that her blond hair was dyed. Greta was stepping out into a long line of bottle-blonds, with Debra Harry before her and Madonna still to make her breakthrough, in Desperately Seeking Susan, a year or so on. The most famous of them all, Marilyn Monroe, demonstrated on several occasions her ability to turn her sexual charisma on and off.

Marilyn Monroe at The Actors' Studio

“Marilyn Monroe was a classmate of mine when I studied with Lee Strasberg. After class, we would all go to Child's Restaurant on 47th Broadway in Manhattan. Marilyn wore no make-up at all and would dress very simply in low heels, with a scarf covering her blonde hair. No one paid attention to her. She blended in with everyone else. Once when we were talking about this magnetism she said, "Watch!" Whatever she did, she turned it on and everyone we passed, man, woman, and child, reacted to her.”(27)   Gordon Phillips

Paula Strasberg has similarly spoken of riding the New York subway with Marilyn and no-one paying her any attention at all; while on other occasions she would be mobbed as soon as she stepped into the street. Personal development guru, Andrew Leigh, assumes this was because when Norma Jean took on her superstar mantle she began relating to the people around her (19); but I very much doubt this was the case. This is not the way that stars behave except in controlled situations. I would rather suggest that it was brought about by an internal change, from being absent to being filled with the excitement of being her superstar self.

Sally Potter has, generously, suggested that the need to feel full of themselves accounts for much of the bad behaviour indulged in by stars.(29) Most of us live in a default state of vagueness, in chronic retreat from our own skin. The star has mastered the ability to bring themselves into focus, to fill up their being in the moment, and allow it to radiate out. The twin qualities that make this possible are qualities that both Marilyn and Greta had in abundance, those of vulnerability and boldness; it is the tension between the two, brought together in the moment, that leads to great charisma.

In her interesting book, Presence, Patsy Rodenburg outlines three circles of energy. In the First Circle the focus is inward, the energy withdrawn, the breathing shallow; it is the circle in which to be if you don’t want to be noticed. The Third Circle is the opposite stream, it is the Circle of bluff and bombast; the energy is moving out but is unfocussed. Clint Eastwood once said that he could walk anywhere he wanted in New York without being stopped by simply always looking ahead and never slackening his pace; this is Third Circle mode. The Second Circle is described by Ms Rodenburg as the energy of connection.

“In Second Circle your energy is focused. It moves out toward the object of your attention, touches it and then receives energy back from it. You are living in a two-way street - you reach out and touch an energy outside your own, then receive energy back from it. You are giving to and responsive with that energy. You react and communicate freely and spontaneously within the energy you are giving and receiving. You are in the moment - the zone - and moment to moment you give and take.”(30)

But the three circles of energy can be thought of, not just in space, but also in time. The First Circle is the past; The Third Circle, the future; and The Second Circle, the present. In moments of charismatic presence energy flows from a heart-felt past, to a purpose-filled future, through a spontaneous present alive in the here-and-now. Like Terence Stamp Greta seemed to experience intense sensation and could be stopped in her tracks by the impact of light and colour. According to research carried out by Elaine N. Aron on The Highly Sensitive Person, this is more than just a fanciful notion, but describes an innate trait that applies to 15% — 20% of us.(1) Greta’s touch could feel quite electric. The very first time I took her hand I was immediately aware of this.

Charisma is the result of this flow of aliveness in the moment. In Bernie Taupin’s immortal words, it is like “a candle blowing in the wind”.

References

1. Aron, Elaine, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You, Thorsons, London, 1996. 

27. Phillips, Gordon. Take It Personally: on the art and the process of personal acting, Applause Books, New York, 2000

30. Rodenburg,Patsy: Presence: How to use positive energy for success in every situation, Michael Joseph (Penguin Books), London, 2007

19 The Face in the Mirror

One day, in a music shop in Chester, I bumped into a group of young actors from the soap, Hollyoaks. They were all new recruits, playing the latest intake of students to the community college. Their storylines had only just started to play and so they were virtually unknowns. We all left together and I followed them up the steps and out the door. Eager to examine their new purchases they were not immediately aware of a bunch of youths coming towards them. To an onlooker there would not have been much to distinguish the two groups: they were both about the same age and similarly dressed. Until, that is, one of the on-coming party recognised the actors and let out a shriek. His companions were bewildered until he explained to them who the bunch of actors ahead of them were. And then, they all went wide-eyed, slack

jawed, weak at the knees. The actors, at first, were quite startled, not yet used to this kind of reaction, and then, taking cues from each other,  drew themselves, up, became bright-eyed, self-assured, glowing with charisma.

As I watched, as startled by this as any of the participants, what struck me was the way that the vitality of the fans seemed to be drawn from them by the presence of the tyro stars, who seemed now to have grown in stature. It was like watching Dracula suck blood from his willing victims. In fact, it occurred to me that the kids had fallen into the same kind of light trance they would be in if watching flickering images on a screen, while the young actors had turned into just the kind of larger-than-life characters they might be watching. They had put on the mantle of celebrity before my eyes.

Anyone who has been around the famous for any length of time knows that star quality is not just something  you have or have not, like the lines in the palm of your hand. Rather, it is something that can be worked, honed, perfected, and then switched on and off like the flick of a light switch. Celebrities are never quite the same when they are ON, as when they are OFF. Sometimes, in private, suppressed negative qualities can be unleashed, as in the lurid tales of gossip columns, but, more often, it is not that the celebrities become so very different; just that they are less definitely themselves. They fret, they dither, complain about nothing much, become crotchety and vague. Like Woody Allen’s brilliant conceit in Deconstructing Harry, their image goes soft.

An out-of-focus Robin Williams in Woody Allen's
Deconstructing Harry

The concept of self-image was popularised in the 60s by the plastic surgeon, Maxwell Maltz, who discovered that, sometimes, after carrying out significant cosmetic surgery on his clients they complained that they were just as ugly as they had been before. Even when shown before and after pictures they seemed reluctant to admit that there had been any significant change. Maltz concluded that the problem was not in the surgery, but in their sub-conscious self-image.(20) More often nowadays this is referred to as self-concept as it is the key to the kind of person we think we are. It is on this level that the inspired actor works. And it is on this level that stars are born. Some become stars from being good actors. And some become good actors from being stars.

One of the very few psychologists who has studied this inner sense of identity in terms of the sensory images with which an actor works is the Dutch NLP practitioner, Lucas Derks. He found that our core self-feeling, or “kinaesthetic self’, was at the centre of the constructed mental space in which internal relationships are formed.

“Normally, someone’s self-image accompanies the feeling of self like a satellite  — a cloud of imagery hanging in front of the person.”(9)

Arranged around this is a social panorama of internalised images of others ranked in importance in that person’s world. In social interaction someone whose self-image is weak, fractured, or nebulous, is liable to have it temporarily displaced by another; perhaps a domineering lover, or a feared authority figure, or, as in the case with the young fans, the media-reinforced image of a soap star. In such situations the subjects partially loses touch with themselves and fall into a light trance of adulation, as the central position of their self-image is usurped by the internalised image of the celebrities, who seem to draw power from them.

Terence Stamp in Deadly Recruits

The charismatic actor is one who has an immediate and firm grasp of who he is and how he sees himself. Self-awareness, then, is the very opposite of self-consciousness. The self-conscious person wants to lose himself but cannot; the self-aware person is fully at one with himself in the moment. Self-awareness is synonymous with “presence”.  And, we might say that a burnished self-image acts as an amplifier to that presence. Of all the actors I worked with this was true of none more than Terence Stamp. Stamp, as he liked to be called — following the public school practice of using surnames — generally had a reserved and thoughtful manner but would instantly get everyone’s attention in any room that he happened to enter.

The son of a tug boat stoker from Plaistow, in the East End of London, Stamp won a scholarship to Webber Douglas Academy where he mastered perfect RP (Received Pronunciation). It seems that from there he began a study of aristocrats, not just of the theatre, but in London society and then across Europe. In time he became an aficionado of manners, tailoring, wine, art, women. By the time I met him, Terence Stamp was a connoisseur of a lot of things, but, above all, he was a connoisseur of being Terence Stamp. On location with me in Oxford, he went off looking for a particular make of traditional shoe polish. Only to Terence Stamp would it matter to have exactly the right sort of polish to clean his shoes.

From the anecdotes he told then and writings since, it has become clear that Terence Stamp made a life-long study of famously charismatic individuals, such as Orson Welles, Federico Fellini, and Bill Clinton.

“My admiration is for those who turn themselves into an electromagnet and see what it attracts.”(33)

But, I feel quite sure that charisma is not something Stamp learnt on the hoof, but dates from even before he had thought of becoming an actor, from his early experiences of growing up, In a recent book of autobiographical fragments he describes incidents from his childhood, which we might describe as blissing out; incidents that arose from intense sensations, such as the smell of a grocer’s shop or the feel of a snowflake landing on his cheek.

“I have a tendency to increase sensation, which is so ingrained that I am no longer aware of it.”(33)

He simply had to be brought to a realisation of the significance of this. While he was working in Rome he was introduced by Fellini to the Indian sage, Krishnamurti. 

"There was a refinement in his being I hadn't encountered before. I went for a walk with him the next day. After a while he took my arm and stopped and said 'Look at that tree'. I looked at it. It wasn't even a beautiful tree. I smiled, he smiled, and we walked on. Then he stopped and said 'Look at that cloud'. I looked up and saw a cloud. That was my first encounter with him. He put the sound on for me. I was made to understand that before thought, I was!”(33)

Later, after the 60s had taken their toll on his health, and he was adrift with little work, he took himself off to Indian in pursuit of health and wisdom. There is a certain irony in the fact that one of the gurus he attended there did little more than repeat, in various forms, the one question: “Who are you?” That, no doubt, was something that Stamp had been asking himself for most of his life. Over tea at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, made his one elaboration:

Terence Stamp as General Zod in Superman

“The I Am is not it. But paying attention to it will allow a blossoming. You can’t see the eye without a mirror, because it looks. Same with the I Am …” (33)

The meaning is surely clear: by paying attention to your perceived identity, to the image in the mirror, maybe you will come to experience with greater clarity the here-and-now, within you and without.

References

9. Derks, Lucas, Social Panoramas: changing the unconscious landscape with NLP and psychotherapy, (trans Susan Hiller Smith), Crown House, 

20. Maltz, Maxwell, Psycho-cybernetics: a new way to get more living out of life, Prentice-Hall, New York, 1960

33. Stamp, Terence, Rare Stamps: Reflections on Living, Breathing and Acting, Escargot Books Online, 2012