Romola Garai quotes
Here are a few interesting quotes by the actress Romola Garai that I stumbled upon. Today (Saturday) I also added a few thoughts of my own to show why I find what she says interesting. Click the link below the photograph to view the full article. :)
^ Picture above: Romola Garai, an actress well-known for her parts in costume dramas, most notably her parts in the movies Amazing Grace, Emma and Nicholas Nickleby. While she has not always chosen parts as commendable as these, she is nonetheless an actress possessing of great talent.
Interesting fact: Before Kiera Knightley auditioned, Romola Garai was first choice for the part of Elizabeth Bennet in the movie Pride and Prejudice.
"I`m desperate to find a contemporary film with a character that`s interesting, dignified and complex."
^ It may be necessary in one's acting career to take less fun or interesting roles than the ones you desire, but it's important to always pursue those roles which will give the best and most postive message and be the best works of art- rather than roles that are of poor quality and with the least artistic merit. It is also important that a role does not conflict with your belief system.
"I wouldn`t have done something that I thought had no merit in it at all, but I did experience a fall-out from being calculating about your career, believing that you should do something in order to get you somewhere else. It was just creatively unfulfilling."
^ Romola, like plenty of people, regrets some of the things she's done career-wise. It's important to realize that doing wrong things may bring temporary feel-good rewards.. but not in the long run! Real rewards are worth so much more. Even if it means being patient in your career and waiting for the right opportunity, rather than a right-now opportunity.
"The filmmakers were obsessed with having someone skinny. I just thought, why didn`t they get someone like Kate Bosworth, if that`s what they wanted? An actress like that wouldn`t worry about whether or not the political ideas were being sensitively or subtly dealt with. They`d do the job, smile and look pretty on the cover of Teen Vogue. There I am, 135 pounds and trying to make art! I was so wrong for it!"
^ I find this really interesting, because Hollywood has programmed people to have such wrong ideas about what it means to be skinny. It's not very helpful for women who are average in size or overweight, but it's also not helpful to those girls who are naturally slim: Hollywood's idea of slim is oftentimes little more than a bony, unnatural frame. What the media industry needs is more women who are willing to be happy with their weight.
"I try and do things that I think will be interesting. Sometimes I get it right in terms of the fact that people like it and sometimes I get it wrong in terms of the fact that people don't like it, but I always try and do jobs which I think will be interesting to me and will help me improve as an actor."
^ One of the issues actors often have is the fear that an audience won't think that their performance is believable, as well as the fear that they won't be proud of their performance. Contentment comes in realizing that you can't please everyone, and you don't have to- and in cases of morality, you shouldn't want to please everyone in the world, because some of them are going to disagree with your moral code.
"I feel that it's important to fail now and again. For instance, if I go for a job and I don't get it, that makes me not a better person, but more balanced, more aware of what life is really like."
^ I like how she puts this. To fail doesn't mean that you are a failure. Often it means that a part wasn't right for you, or it's good for your growth.
"I live in London and am lucky to have many friends from school, university and work who are from diverse backgrounds. Some of my closest friends are the children of refugees and I have always been fascinated by their stories and the struggle of how they came to the UK and assimilated into society."
^ It's important that, no matter how much fame you are given, you don't place yourself higher than other people. Dealing with issues like poverty and refugees and education is necessary- and just as Audrey Hepburn became ambassador for Unicef, it's crucial that people in the public eye make it known that they are not the center of the universe, but that they instead point people to what is truly matters.
"It's too simplistic to say that people start to believe what's written about them. But what happens is that you become a certain way to please people, to be liked, to be what's expected of you, to change yourself so that you become the best possible version of yourself for people who don't know you. And I think that's a terrible, pernicious thing."
^ Romola's words ring of great truth. People-pleasing personalities, as actors often happen to have, may be good for striving to do the best that you possibly can, but it doesn't mean that you should be fake.
Ramola also has made an amusing comment about the fact that lead actors are not as attractive when you actually have to work with them- fiction is fiction, and the person that plays a character isn't actually that character, whether or not we'd like them to be.