If you have a hard time applying eye makeup, let Elizabeth Taylor show you how.

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A weekend with the in-laws, an alcoholic husband and a slinky white slip push emotions to the forefront.

As children, we are taught to take all our bad feelings and put them in a place where we can’t find them. Negative emotions go to a place where they are ignored, starved, and neglected to the point that rebellion is inevitable. And usually at the most inopportune moments. Anger will demand to be expressed, usually over a holiday dinner. Frustration will find its voice, generally with your in-laws. Jealousy will rear its ugly head, mostly at a happy hour in front of all your work colleagues. We could easily kill ourselves with the weight of our own dark emotions, festering and oozing within us.

This is where Elizabeth Taylor comes to the rescue. The screen legend’s indelible performance in the 1958 film “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” shows us the power of expressing our deepest fears, strangled emotions, and thwarted love.

Taylor plays Maggie the Cat, the wife of alcoholic, ex-football player Brick Pollitt (Paul Newman). Maggie and Brick have come to his father’s Mississippi plantation to celebrate the man’s 65th birthday. Surrounded by family drama and dysfunction, Maggie struggles to regain the love of an embittered Brick. But Brick suspects Maggie of cheating with his best friend, who has since killed himself. Maggie wants Brick, and Brick wants revenge.

Maggie the Cat is unquestionably a complex and volatile character, but it is Taylor’s energy which makes her scream. The actress’ own tumultuous private life was one of survival and heartbreak. Paul Newman speaks of her great tenacity, calling her “a courageous survivor, a helluva actress and someone I am extremely proud to know.”

In the end, it’s Maggie who best speaks to her relevancy across the decades. As Brick asks her, “What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?” Maggie simply replies, “Just stayin’ on, I guess. Long as she can.”

The post Women on Film: Surviving a Hot Tin Roof appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWhere celebrity goes conscious.

When you decide to embark on a career in Tinsel Town, your sensitivity chip for what’s considered “Appropriate work behavior,” basically gets crushed up and snorted off an executive’s coffee table. I know this because, as a writer, I’ve logged in some hours hanging around studio sets. This means I’ve experienced lots of Very Inappropriate Moments, like an invitation to the Playboy Mansion in the middle of a pitch meeting, or being asked to trade sexual favors for a job. (Both offers declined, none were made by Charlie Sheen.)

Also, you need to make friends with rejection. Scratch that, you need to make friends with rejection, offer to have his babies, and retire together to a nice arid climate where cold and humidity are easy on old age. Usually, every overnight success story is years in the making, and perseverance gets you the keys to the kingdom. You need to be strong enough to handle the breaks and the Very Inappropriate Moments. And you need to be mature enough to let them slide off your back.

So how do you do this when you’re just a kid?

The first time I worked around a child actor, I was amazed at his utter precociousness. Kid A was charming, adorable, and seemingly had the poise of Queen Elizabeth gracefully waving down at us from Buckingham Palace. That is, until the day he forgot his lines, held up production for hours, and dissolved into a sad puddle of tears that no mother or social worker could soothe. Why did this happen? Probably because he was a mere six years old.

The next time I worked with a child actor, I was impressed with Kid B’s resume. Just into her teen years, she already was a hit on a TV show and had just started venturing into film. But painfully shy, she wouldn’t talk to anyone outside of her lines. The social worker assigned to the shoot recommended that she take time off and go to high school to get some normal socialization skills. Her manager parents rebelled at the idea, after all, she was the main breadwinner of the family. Kid B stayed in the picture. She was fifteen.

And then there are the Child Stars Gone Bad, their names forever a cautionary tale against childhood fame. Jackie Coogan, Michael Jackson, Brad Renfro, Lindsay Lohan, Dana Plato, Corey Haim, River Phoenix, Danny Bonaduce, all their names etched with sad tales of addiction, crime, lost childhoods, resulting either in a premature death or a career destroyed.

But fame doesn’t always ruin a child. For every Lindsay Lohan, there’s a Leonardo DiCaprio who has flourished. And a Ron Howard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Christian Bale, Elizabeth Taylor, and Kurt Russell. So what makes one child star succeed while another fails to thrive? Is it utterly irresponsible to allow your child to pursue a career in Hollywood, or is it stifling a child’s creativity to forbid him or her to do so? Ultimately, does it all go back to the parents?

Undoubtedly, parents can play heavily on a child actor’s success. See: Michael and Dina Lohan, whose daughter Lindsay has managed to turn a once promising career into a TMZ daily headline of arrests and abuses. But then there are the anti-Lohans, Shelley and Avner Herschlag, parents to newly-minted Academy Award winner Natalie Portman. Portman got her first break into the industry at age 13 in The Professional. She’s gone on to star in many films, as well as earn a degree in Psychology from Harvard University. She credits her parents for her success. As she told Hello! Magazine via Metrolinks, “My parents are the opposite of stage parents in that they’re still not so sure about the whole Hollywood thing. I got a degree in psychology at Harvard and my dad is still saying, ‘This being an actress thing is cute, but don’t you think it’s time to go to grad school?’ They are amazing parents who listen to me and respect what I say, and the reason I’m not totally crazy is I know they’re at home, happy, loving me and proud of me no matter how badly I fail. If you have that in your life, you feel free to do anything.”

There are some built-in safety features for a child riding a coupe de Hollywood. The Coogan Law, named for child actor Jackie Coogan of Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid in the 1920s, famously lost all of his earnings after his mother and manager squandered his assets. This law, passed in 1939, ensures that 15 percent of a child’s earnings are automatically deposited by the employer into a separate account held in trust for the child. But protection from loss of money is only one issue facing children of Hollywood. Throw in early exposure to drugs and alcohol, exacerbated by large bank accounts and an entourage of yes-men, and you could easily have a disaster in the making. That is, it seems, if the parents or guardians allow it.

Child actor, author and advocate Paul Petersen

I contacted former child star, current child star activist Paul Petersen to weigh in. Petersen is President and Founder of A Minor Consideration, a non-profit formed to give guidance and support to young performers. Fired from the Mickey Mouse Club (for Conduct Unbecoming a Mouse), in 1955, Petersen went on to grow up on “The Donna Reed Show” from 1958-1966 as Jeff Stone. As Petersen describes his experience, “I became the Dreaded Bubble Gum Star, complete with hit records, screaming fans, fast cars and faster women…Then I got the bill. The hidden costs, psychologically and emotional, were more than I could pay at the time.” Petersen spent his 20’s mired in drugs and alcohol; then he took Mickey Rooney’s advice to “Get out of town for 25 years.” He returned to write 16 books. He is the AFTRA Chair of the Young Performers Committee, a delegate at the United Nations for the World Safety Organization, and sits or has sat on the boards of SAG, AFTRA, the American Foundation for Drug Prevention, and the Child Labor Coalition.

I specially asked Petersen if he believed that parents hold the key to a child’s emotional success in Hollywood.
“Parents, whether in “the [entertainment] business” or in the meanest streets of Mumbai, India, are the single most important aspect of a child’s health and well-being. Most stage parents (90%), handle the pressures of the business quite well, especially that critical moment when it is time to stop. Too many stage parents, however, forget that their real job is to raise a successful and well-adjusted adult. [They need to help] the developing child break away from the business (usually for college, which the kid has worked for after all) long enough to find out who they really are as persons, not actors, not wage earners. That break from the business is crucial.

Disney star Demi Lovato

So as Petersen might put it, get in but get out and build a life outside of Hollywood. It seems one young Disney star may have heeded this advice. Demi Lovato, star of the Disney Channel’s Sonny With a Chance, recently announced she was leaving the show that made her famous after a stint in rehab for emotional issues. As Lovato said in a statement to People Magazine, “It’s kind of sad for me that a chapter of my life has ended, but there couldn’t be a better time for me to move on. I don’t think going back to Sonny would be healthy for my recovery, being in front of a camera would make me nervous.” The Disney Channel responded with “She is a talented young woman, and our hearts are with her as she continues to take action to improve her health and bounce back from adversity.”

I contacted Disney to see if they had anything to add and did not receive a response, though in all likelihood it would have been “no further comment.”

Will Lovato be able to move forward without a continued presence on TMZ.com? It remains to be seen, but it’s heartening to see a young woman in Hollywood put herself before her career.

And ultimately, doing just that may be the key to a successful child star.

This is the latest installment in Katherine Butler’s column, Shade Grown Hollywood, where celebrity becomes conscious. “Shade grown” refers literally to shade grown coffee, a farming method that “incorporates principles of natural ecology to promote natural ecological relationships.” Shade Grown is our sustainable twist on Hollywood.

The post Shade Grown Hollywood: Can Children Ever Really Succeed in Hollywood? appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWhere celebrity becomes conscious.

“I don’t see myself as a celebrity, I don’t want to be one,” Bristol Palin told Good Morning America in 2009. “But I think using this experience in my life to help others, I think it’s a blessing.” Palin, a single mother at age 18, had just signed on with The Candie’s Foundation to serve as a teen ambassador to raise awareness about teen pregnancy. Her message was one of abstinence, telling the morning show that motherhood is “a 24-hour job and that’s a huge responsibility. Your priorities completely change once you have a baby.”

The combination of motherhood and message should have been a clear one, yet Palin’s turn as a spokesperson was muddied from the start. Flash forward a couple years and the internet is buzzing with a new Bristol Palin headline: “Candie’s Foundation paid Bristol Palin $262,500 in 2009.” How much did they give towards grants for programs actually preventing teen pregnancy? A cool $35,000. Palin’s fee was roughly seven times what Candie’s actually put towards prevention. As ThinkProgress points out, “the Candie’s Foundation appears to be geared towards improving the public image of [executive Neil Cole’s] company rather than reducing teen pregnancy.”

Candie’s responded by defended Palin’s fees with statistics. As the shoe retailer explains,

In a recent independent national survey of 1,000 teens that compared a Bristol Palin PSA with those of another national teen pregnancy organization that use non-famous teens, more than twice as many teens (57% vs. 27%), said Bristol’s PSA “Got my attention,” three times as many (41% vs. 11%), said it was “powerful”, and more than twice as many (38% vs. 16%), said it was “memorable”.

So if awareness was raised, why does this news rub raw? Candie’s never responded to our follow-up on the issue. Perhaps they feel they’ve already responded with their note about numbers. The point was made, so why does it matter how it was made?

The difference may be in the dollars. While many initially questioned Palin’s credibility as a teen mother promoting abstinence, in between appearing on Dancing with the Stars and partying on private jets, it was her paycheck which caused the world and internet to launch into a toddler-worthy tizzy. The light Palin may or may not have shined on teen pregnancy immediately seemed soiled. After all, why did she have to be paid so much for doing a good deed?

I know this expectation might exist in a world without TMZ.com, but doesn’t it seem like social causes should exist outside a world of money and marketing? As freedom of speech still stands in this country, Bristol Palin has every right to promote her own message. But in the end, how credible can the messenger be when a large cash bonus is involved? What’s more disturbing is that humanitarian efforts or special causes now seem to be more about branding a career than really being, well, humanitarian efforts or special causes.

We’ll never know if Palin would have signed on as a spokesperson for teen abstinence if she hadn’t been paid. This is both unfortunate for Palin and her point. While Palin is certainly not the first celebrity to be compensated as a spokesman, it’s disheartening to see the Candie’s Foundation turn a good cause (preventing teen pregnancy), into a celebrity endorsement deal. It seems no different from a business exchange that Tiger Woods made with Nike or a contract Natalie Portman signed with Dior.

But when it comes to authentic messaging about serious issues, it’s enough to push us a little bit closer off the mountaintop into the Valley of Cynicism, populated by Charlie Sheen’s warlocks, Kayne West’s hubris, and Donald Trump’s hair. Why should we listen to anything celebrities have to say when they are quite possibly being paid to say it?

Let’s talk about Elizabeth Taylor.

When the Hollywood legend passed away, she was remembered for her career, her men, her beauty; but perhaps most of all, for her ground-breaking work in AIDS awareness. Taylor was the Founding International Chairman for amfAR, and the organization credits her celebrity with bringing the issue of HIV and AIDS into the mainstream of public awareness. At her death, Elton John praised “her courage in standing up and speaking out about AIDS when others preferred to bury their heads in the sand.” Nancy Reagan called Taylor “Passionate – and compassionate – about everything in her life, including her family, her friends, and especially the victims of AIDS.”

Was she ever paid for it? I contacted amfAR to see if Taylor ever received compensation for her role and did not receive a response. Perhaps it was because they were confused as to why I was asking in the first place. After all, does it matter? And if Taylor was in fact paid for her good deeds, would we ever think to fault her like we did Bristol Palin? Not likely, but why? Because no one, including myself, could ever doubt that Taylor was anything but sincere in her work.  Care2.com conducted a poll that perhaps sums it up best. Asking readers to weigh in on celebrity endorsements for noble causes, an overwhelming 41% replied they are in favor of it if celebrities seem sincere. I conducted my own (completely unscientific) poll and found that most people were fine with celebrity causes, as long as the cause received the attention it deserves. In fact, several seemed to consider payment completely besides the point. Why get upset if the cause gets attention?

Except that’s exactly what everyone did with Bristol Palin the other week.

Perhaps, then, it depends on if we agree with what the celebrity is saying. As Taylor herself famously said, “Celebrity is not something that comes without responsibility.” She set a firm precedent for other film stars to use their notoriety to bring attention to serious issues, and many celebrities have taken up just causes.

Perhaps none who have done so more publicly than Angelina Jolie. Jolie, who works as a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Jolie is literally in trenches. Just last week, the actress visited Libyan refugees in Tunisia. As with Elizabeth Taylor, it feels uncomfortably cynical to be critical of Jolie’s tremendous humanitarian work, no matter what motivates her to do it. The same applies to her fellow Hollywood advocates active in social reform, as evidenced by George Clooney’s work in Darfur, Don Cheadle’s work as a Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations Environmental Programme, or singer Shakira’s role as a UNICEF ambassador. Celebrities can be master handlers of the public, and it’s difficult to argue that the light they shed on these causes is anything but beneficial.

And then, there is how the celebrity says it. Case in point: Tom Cruise’s infamous escapades in 2005, in which he declared his love for Katie Holmes while deriding Matt Lauer for his “glib” comprehension of psychiatry. Cruise was promoting Scientology’s anti-psychiatry stance, and he clearly was on a mission to message the public. That he dressed it in a giant ball of couch-jumping mania turned off most people, pitching his career into a downward spiral that only a spoof of another Hollywood megalomaniac in 2008’s Tropic Thunder was able to stall. His last film, Knight and Day, had a respectable opening at $20 million. But when you’re talking in the language of superstars, this reads as a failure. As E! reports, “On the other hand, Cruise hasn’t had a $100 million domestic hit since 2006’s Mission: Impossible III, released in the summer following the actor’s infamous Oprah couch jump.”

Experts have addressed celebrity endorsements in a study entitled “Endorsing Products for Money: The Role of the Correspondence Bias in Celebrity Advertising.” As scholars from, among others, the University of Cincinnati wrote, “the correspondence bias is the tendency to assume that a person’s behavior is a true reflection of their beliefs or opinions, and thus, their underlying dispositions when in fact, their behavior could be explained entirely by situational factors. In other words, people make strong inferences from behavior and fail to adjust sufficiently for situational constraints.” In celebrity endorsements, the situational constraints can be money. Or mania.

Nineteenth-century satirist Oscar Wilde wrote, “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” When considering celebrity consciousness, is this necessarily bad if they can use it to influence for the good? No. But apparently, it’s as long as we agree with what constitutes good and that we’re all on board with who is saying it.

This is another installment in Katherine Butler’s column, Shade Grown Hollywood, where celebrity becomes conscious. “Shade grown” refers literally to shade grown coffee, a farming method that “incorporates principles of natural ecology to promote natural ecological relationships.” Shade grown is our sustainable twist on Hollywood.

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