Once, I asked a young actor if he thought he could be a professional athlete. He was silent for a moment. Then his eyes narrowed and he spoke in a serious tone. “If I really set my mind to it,” he said, “if I really committed, I think I could still do it.” How would you start, I asked. “I’d get up tomorrow at five in the morning and work out twelve hours a day.”
Was he working this hard as an actor?
I like the term, “Suggestibility.” It sounds a bit like “Vulnerability,” and reminds me of hypnosis. It makes me think of dreaming while I’m awake and taking actions.
Everyone’s suggestible. You had a guest for dinner last night, remember? And she ate too many of those olive appetizers you set out. She loved them and ate nine or ten.
shooting a co-starring role on NBC TV’s “The Mysteries of Laura”
November 2015
