The most tiring thing you hear as an entertainment “journalist” is when the person you’re interviewing says, “As an actor…”
Yeah, no shit, Calista Flockhart, it’s not like I’m interviewing you for your opinion as a math teacher. Do you have any other job other than acting? Is there any other reason I would be speaking to you if you weren’t a famous actor? No? Then you can just omit “as an actor” from your lexicon because amazingly, I can fill in the blanks.
This happens with musicians and directors and writers as well, but for the most part, I spend my days talking to actors, or at least people who consider themselves actors. (But you better believe I’ve heard my fair share of “as a director” or “as a musician” or “as the third assistant to the guy who wipes Tom Cruise’s ass.”) And it’s really the most pretentious thing you can say, because it’s one step away from saying, “I’m honing my crawwwft.” Acting isn’t easy, no, but you’re not exactly inventing the Internet, are you?
Before I got into this job, I thought the whole “honing my crawwft” pretention of actors was a cliché, but it’s far more prevalent than I ever expected. And sometimes it’s with actors whose work I actually like and who actually seem reasonably normal otherwise! I just don’t understand it. Maybe that’s why I never seriously considered acting as a profession – well, that and the fact that in all the school plays I was ever in, I couldn’t stop mouthing the lines of the other actors as they spoke them. (True story.)
Actors who have pulled the “as an actor” crap on me in the last few months:
- Sarah Wayne Callies from Prison Break – not that I particularly liked her in the first place, but she is definitely one of the more pretentious people I’ve ever interviewed. Actually, she was even worse than just the normal “as an actor” people; I believe she said something like, “As a profession, I’m a storyteller.” And then she went on and on and on about how important Prison Break is to the “cultural lexicon” right now – like, is she watching the same ludicrous, mediocre Fox action show that I am?
- Tate Donovan – wow, you really think highly of your acting ability for a guy who starred in Love Potion No. 9.
- Meaghan Jette Martin from Camp Rock – Get back to me when you learn to fake cry with actual tears, honey.
- One of the women from Knight Rider, with no sense of irony or self-awareness whatsoever.
- Rex Lee – oh, this one made me sad. I love him on Entourage and he really does seem like a lovely person, but the entire interview was about his intricate thought process that goes along with every scene and how hard it is sometimes to get his emotions in the right place. He said “as an actor” at least ten times. At one point, he actually said, “As a human…” Later on, he said, “So I made the decision in my mind…” Oh, in your mind? Not in your spleen?
- John Barrowman – except I actually didn’t care because I was too busy picturing him naked.
- Tila Tequila – WTF?
See, the “as an actor” thing isn’t limited solely to people who take acting seriously – it’s even used by people who just think they’re supposed to take acting so seriously. And maybe you should, if you’re John Malkovich or Meryl Streep, but you know, if you’re mainly commanding a group of men and women to eat pig vaginas for a chance to go on a date with you, maybe you shouldn’t be so worried about honing your crawwwft.
