Sunday is Oscar night and that’s when the Hollywood Glitterati turn out in force to wear pretty clothes and claim shiny statuettes as the reward for years of struggling. Fame and fortune can be a long strange road – like when Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds started out on TV westerns together (Rawhide & Gunsmoke respectively)! Back then they were good buddies and go out on casting calls together. Casting directors weren’t very impressed with the handsome young men since they’d tell Reynolds that he couldn’t act, and Eastwood that his Adam’s Apple was too big. Reynolds used to kid him about that by saying that “I can always take acting lessons but you’re stuck with that Adam’s Apple!” So sometimes fame starts small & unlikely, just like those oaks that grow out of little acorns.
Some of your favorite stars had some humble beginnings just the way Tom Hanks did. He had to play Christopher Lloyd’s Jim Iowsky’s drugged out Harvard room mate in an old episode of TAXI before he worked his way up to a cross dresser with Peter Newhart Scolari in Bosom Buddies. No one knew then how far Hanks would eventually go – like to the moon and back in Apollo 13. It was clear that he was very good. Not that he was the only ex TAXI performer to bag an Oscar. Judd Alex Reiger Hirsch got one for his supporting role as the shrink in Ordinary People co starring Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore. That was the film that was supposed to make a star out of Timothy Hutton – the Shia Labouef of his day – but he faded away somewhere around The Falcon and the Snowman with Sean Penn – then just moving into his volatile Madonna period.
Then there’s George Clooney. He must’ve done every TV job going back in the 80’s and 90’s before he found his way to ER. He even starred in B Movie cult classic Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Of course he also appeared on the Facts of Life, Roseanne, and some Japanese car commercials – when he wasn’t trying out edgy roles as transvestites and gritty desperate criminals! So success really did come the hard way!
He wasn’t the only one to hold down some odd jobs. Brad Pitt had to wait a while before he could get speaking roles. For instance one of his first dramatic roles was wearing a giant chicken suit for a local restaurant. With a start like that he might have eventually worked his way up to pro sports team mascot! It was a brief stint on daytime soap opera Another World where he was first trusted with actual lines. That lead to his SAG card. After that there was more bit TV roles like a small part on Dallas where he had to bust it up with Ray Krebbs! It was probably some disagreement stirred up by Lucy Ewing – I’d say she was a vixen but she was really more of a minx! It was when he got the breakthrough role in Thelma & Louise that his career really took off. There was no turning back after that!
So the point is that some of today’s famous had some pretty humble beginnings. if you’d had noticed them in the crowd – and considering how many of Brad Pitt’s early roles featured the back of his head – you might not have pegged them for future greatness. It’s also interesting to think that some one you’re watching on TV right now and not paying much attention to might be the biggest deal in movies in about 10 to 15 years. That’s the dice throw of pro acting, an intriguing combo of luck, skill, and determination that throws up a few winners among the numerous losers who burn out and become Hollywood footnotes. Don’t take my word for it though – just have yourselves a look see at the following brief video!
http://www.youtube.com/get_player
Being rich & famous is every American’s dream. What’s not to like about it? You can take too many drugs, squander vast sums on clothes and plastic surgery, and be admired by legions of fans who don’t know you and will never meet you – unless you really screw it up and have to sign autographs at the mall for money! Plus you get the fun of pretending you don’t get off on the attention and complaining about how tough life at the top is. However, as the late great Whitney Houston showed – her and many others – sometimes it can go horribly and tragically wrong.
So what do you do when fame and fortune let you down and leave you mourning your lost youth and beauty – not to mention your innocence? Well you can always disappear and start over! Now that might sound like a cockamamie idea until yous top and think about it. Yo need to go about it in an orderly and systematic way. For instance the first step to starting over is disappearing – that’s like getting famous in reverse by pulling a Houdini!
After that you need a plan and some expertise! There’s some available expertise in the following video called “Track Me If You Can” in which a security expert shows you how to go about disappearing with some straight forward and commonsense tips like keeping track of you hair follicles while you’re on the run (DNA testing can trip you up!), and using Facebook to lay out red herring!
So you should really pay attention. You never know when this knowledge might come in handy – especially in the event that one of you readers out there becomes famous! Then if the pressure gets too much you can whip open this handy dandy little bag of tricks and you’ll be saying “So long suckers” to the whole dirty game!
Wondertrash 