Thursday, January 6, 2011

Signoret: To Show Yourself as You Really Are



"Does one act better after one has aged?

"Well, one doesn't act better: one doesn't act anymore. One is.
The compliments you get from people who speak about 'the courage to show oneself in an unflattering aspect' are just pious remarks.
It isn't courage; it's a form of pride, possibly vanity,
to show yourself as you really are in order
to better serve the character that has been offered you as a gift."

--Simone Signoret, Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be, (NY: Harper & Row, 1978), 324.

This reminds me of the work of any creative act, including blogging.

Top image: Signoret, with Laurence Harvey, in Room At the Top (1959), 38 years old
Review, at the film's 50th birthday in 2009, in the Guardian.

Bottom image: If found it undated, but I imagine Signoret's signing her memoirs, released in France in 1976, when she was fifty-five

3 comments:

momo said...

I read that as "I imagine Signoret's singing her memoirs" which also would be cool.

Lill said...

Thinking about turning fifty is far more difficult than doing it, or being it. Take my word for it.

When you get the invitation to join AARP it will be a jolt. But join. You'll be surprised how interested you are in the magazine.

Love to the future fifty-year-old!

Fresca said...

LILL: Yes, thinking is always different from the lived experience, but since I live so much in thinking, I expect they will be connected... :)
Thanks for the love.
Back attcha.