The Great Acting Blog: "Charlotte Rampling's Example"

“ I could have been a superstar in America – I was certainly taken out there. But I said, “no way Jose, I'm not staying here in this madhouse”. So I left and said, “I'm gonna make arthouse films now”. - Charlotte Rampling. Whether you agree with Rampling's decision or not, the point is she made a choice, and crucially, her choice goes against the grain of our times; she used her head and listened to her heart and chose a life true to herself rather than becoming rich beyond her wildest dreams. It's also important that she has come out and articulated her choice in public, and it's important because it shows that actors can choose and define their working lives as oppose to being condemned to the cumbersomely unproductive casting process, and it's important because it's all too rare that young actors have this example before them, most mainstream actors seem to have contempt for what they do, and many others are frightened to speak in a serious way about acting because they fear criticism for being "pretentious" or being called a "luvvie". Rarely do we see an actor presented as an artist making aesthetic decisions, mostly we are bombarded by images and stories of actors as celebrities....now, we all enjoy a little bit of gossip but we must be careful not to mistake it for the work itself, because what happens is that this image of actor-as-celebrity encourages, each year, gazillions to become actors because they think acting will give them that celebrity lifestyle, and even more ludicrously, I see many young actors mimicking the behaviour of celebrity actors as if that is enough to get a career, and the net result is a devaluing of the currency - “there is an actor on every street corner”.   I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's not easy to stand your ground, the tendency is to fall in with the crowd and go with the flow which may be less exhilarating but it's also less terrifying, and the meaningless chattering cacophony will keep you from feeling alone. But I say the artist must stand his ground, for it is from there that art will come. “I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time” - Orson Welles If it's good enough for Orson Welles, it's good enough for me. NB – Of Rampling's films, I highly recommend The Damned by Visconti with Dirk Bogarde, and more recently, a British film noir, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, directed by Mike Hodges and co-starring Clive Owen and Ken Stott.