"Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but...." -Dennis Miller
Here is my Rant and Roar page. My rants vary in length depending on how I feel and how much I have to say about each issue. Once again, I'd like to point out that I am not trying to offend anyone in particular. This is just me blowing off some steam.
Ok, now is it just me, or do famous actors get paid WAAAAY more than they should? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good Schwarzenegger film as much as the next guy, but should we really be paying this hulk enough money to buy Mexico every time he makes a movie? I mean, we could easily be investing millions of dollars into finding a cure for cancer or reducing hunger, but what do we do with it? We give it to Ethan Hawke so he can slick his hair back and say something unbelievably pretentious every three seconds. Our culture spends most of its money rewarding the already wealthy just for showing their faces. The problem with treating famous actors like the world revolves around them, is that they'll soon start believing that.... well.... the world revolves around them. Some actors try to stay humble, but others let their egos grow until it's the size of a giant lizard and starts terrorizing Tokyo (remember that Godzilla movie that came out back in '98? That was actually Will Smith's Ego). It is the actors who let their egos run wild that I want to talk about today.
What really spurred my great distaste for arrogant actors came from a story I heard about Winona Ryder. Apparently, she was dating a scientist a while back. The media didn't cover the relationship very much because the guy wasn't famous. Now, Winona ended up breaking up the relationship because according to her, "he couldn't understand the pressure she was under". Give me a break! I must have forgotten about that family she had to struggle to support with almost no income, or those people she had to defend in court because their lives depended on her, or how about those auditions she had to attend as a struggling actor or she won't be able to pay her rent? Don't make me ill! I understand that being famous isn't always easy. You often have to give up your private life and you have to face many critics, but let's be honest about a few things, shall we?
First, in comparison to most famous actors, Winona doesn't really get that much coverage anyway (when's the last time you remember reading an article in the paper about her life?), so she isn't under that much pressure from the media to begin with. Second, being an actors doesn't suddenly make your problems more important than other people's. I'm sure Winona's then boyfriend had just as much "pressure" in his job as she does in her job. It might be a different kind of pressure, but I'm sure it's just as intense. Third, acting is one of the easiest jobs a person can have! I know, I know. Some actors can go on about how grueling a shoot is or how painful preparing for a role can be, but let's get serious, it isn't like a REAL job. Tom Hanks and some others went on and on about how they had to go through some basic army training while preparing for Saving Private Ryan. REAL soldiers go through that almost every day and don't get paid a FRACTION of the money Tom Hanks got. I mean, actors get paid tons of money to pretend to be people they're not. Hell, EVERYONE pretends to be people they're not during their lives, but we don't all expect to get paid 80 million dollars for it.
It's time to burst the giant Bubblicious sized bubble that is the arrogant actor's ego. Just because people recognize your face, doesn't give you the right to kick someone who was their first out of an airplane seat. It doesn't give you the right to get a table at a restaurant when there are five people before you waiting for the same table. You may think that the world can't function without you, but the truth is, you're not that important! You're a person just like the rest of us. There are doctors out there who save lives every single day. There are firemen out there who truly make a difference in people's lives. What do you do? You get to have lots people watch as you cry on cue.
Now, some may think I'm just bitter, and maybe I am ("I see dead people!" See, I was cheated out of that role!). To be honest though, I never really had any desire to be an actor. I respect actors for their work, and I don't even mind so much that they get paid more money than India will ever see. What bugs me is that SOME of these people seem to think that they are more important than everybody else simply because they are famous. It is this attitude that I can't stand because there are people out there who actually DO make a difference in people's lives, and they don't get any kind of special treatment. I can imagine that it must be hard to keep one's head from inflating when one becomes famous, and I have great respect actors who fight this temptation, but I can't help feeling both frustrated and disappointed in the ones who don't even try.
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