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“Confessions of a Non-Celebrity” was going to be the name of this lil blog/newsletter/substack/way-to-attract-more-approval-and-rejection-in-my-life-because-I-am-an-actor-and-crave-both. But then, I wrote a sentence about my constant feeling that I was ‘One Job Away’ and I was like, oh. there it is. there’s the title. this must be what geniuses feel like all the time.
There’s probably some rule about identifying as what I am - not what I’m not. But I do what I want. I identify as Not-A-Celebrity! It’s important to me.
I think we should bury the term “A-lister” - just out there renforcing the industry’s caste system. Boooooo. Talent, craft, hard work, desire, and ambition do not necessarily equal Celebrity. It’s not a math equation. “Celebrity” merely signifies who society recognizes and to whom my industry will give more money and power.
To rephrase and misuse something Shakespeare’s Malvolio says: Some are born celebrities, some achieve celebrity, and some have celebrity thrust upon them!
I am not a celebrity! I wasn’t born one, I haven’t achieved it in the pyramid scheme of stardom, and it has yet to be thrust upon me! I am not a celebrity! And I recognize it’s a risk to self-identify as such. You’re supposed to dress, take pictures, network, and post on Instagram for the job(s) you want! And if you’re an actor, you better want to be a celebrity! Otherwise, the Real and Fake News Media will refer to you as “aspiring” or - after you’re like 32 - “struggling” AND THAT IS NOT A GREAT DESCRIPTOR I TELL YOU.
If you make your living as an electrician, but haven’t actually been on the cover of Vogue, do people call you an aspiring electrician? Are you introduced as struggling because no one spent hours on your makeup and used a leaf blower on your hair while lights flashed and Annie Leibovitz captured your soul on film? Would anyone question what that has to do with being a great electrician anyway?? I don’t know! It took me hours to figure out how to set up my seedlings’ grow light! I am not even a struggling electrician, I am just a person who tries to plug things in! If you are an electrician who has never been in Vogue, please clarify.
Dictionary.com (not sponsored content) defines celebrity succinctly as “a famous or well-known person.” (SURE Dictionary.com then how do you explain Lil’ Sebastian?? I’m not afraid to ask the hard hitting questions, you cowards.) But there are different kinds of celebrities, right? Like there are Celebrity-Celebrities, and then there are Local Celebrities, and Genre Celebrities, and Niche Celebrities and (perhaps, a greater sin than never having been a celebrity at all), the Has-Been Celebrities! Ahh, Celebrity, you fickle lover.
In my industry, Celebrity-Celebrities are the only kind that matter when it comes to job security. The rest do not translate into major negotiating power.
I had one line on The Walking Dead and received piles of fan mail and autograph requests for years afterward. It made me feel celebrity-esque to sign photos that people had printed off of the internet, just for whispering “thank you” to Morgan. I have friends who’ve made good money going to Cons for their work on that show; they are excellent niche-celebrities. Still, rarely does it become a better offer for the next show.
Even Celebrity-Celebrities are finding it rough out there. My jaw dropped when I read this quote from Oscar winner, Taraji P. Henson, explaining that she’s still “fighting tooth and nail every project to get that same freaking quote… It seems every time I break another glass ceiling, when it’s time to renegotiate… I’m at the bottom again like I never did what I just did.” That Ms. Henson is a Black woman in an industry far more concerned with appearing “Not-Racist” than it is with actually digging out its deep roots of racism, sexism, ableism, inequality, etc, etc, etc shouldn’t be lost on any of us.
The USC Annenberg Inclusion List is compiling interesting research on those who have, historically, been included in the Academy Awards. It’s not pretty. Of course, these are the folks who’ve made it to the “top.” These are our Celebrities. Inclusion is, no doubt, worse the farther down the industry-ladder you go. The USCAI list only considers gender and race; the greater conversation of who isn’t represented due to sexuality, disability, larger bodies, trans bodies, and more, has hardly begun to scratch the surface.
I always planned to stop somewhere at the upper middle of that industry ladder, making a decent living playing smaller roles in larger projects or larger roles in smaller projects. I’d be everyone’s go-to, reliable actor - but not so famous that I couldn’t shop for my own groceries or take my kids to gymnastics.
Unfortunately, as the bosses made abundantly clear in the SAG-Aftra strike of 2023, they have every intention of knocking those middle rungs out of the ladder entirely. They want me desperate and hungry and hoping to hit a one-in-a-million bottom rung that magically catapults me to a top rung. Those are my options. Take it or leave it.
I often wonder if the desire for Celebrity is a desire to cure to these feelings of being unwanted and unvalued. I wonder why it matters so much to be valued by a system concerned only with the bottom line. Maybe receiving value, affirmation, approval from a system like that only reinforces the system. Reinforces the system and its garbage values. Maybe Celebrity, whether inherited, achieved or thrust upon, does not have to be the goal of every actor.
I’m Not-A-Celebrity. I confess it like I confess I am Not-A-Meerkat. It’s just not what I am. But I am an actor. And sure, sometimes I struggle. And sure, I still aspire. But I’m an actor, doggonit. Because I do what I want.
Maybe I can’t change the system as it is, but I can push at its hypocrisies and shine a light on its inequities. I can identify as Not the Thing dangled in front of me, and always snatched away. I can praise and uplift and encourage the Good Work of other Non-Celebrities.
I confess - I am not an electrician, I am not a meerkat, I am not a celebrity. I am an actor with a finger: Pointing. Look at this system. Look at me. Look at you. Look at all of this.
Look at this grow light I finally figured out how to plug in.
And now, your weekly bonuses…
Notable and Quotable
“I’m just as ambitious as ever. Only, I’ve changed the object of my ambitions.... I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return… I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I’m going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend...”
~Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery
One Obsession Away
Wherein I share what I am obsessed with this week.
My garden! And there’s so much work to do right now, so many seeds to plant, so much dirt to tend to, so many seedlings to pot up. So many weeds to unearth. It is the place I feel the most me.
That being said, you’ll be hearing from me every few weeks now, rather than every week. My fingers need to spend more time in the dirt, less on the keyboard. Your responses, comments, texts, dms have affirmed in me that there is a place for my stories, because they are our stories. What the system wanted to use to make me feel sad and isolated and crazy has turned out to invigorate the bonds of community. I am not a celebrity: I have to write my own stories, I have to dig my own garden.
I’m going to ask my electrician if he’s ever been on Vogue. Also, more garden content, please. ♥️
I appreciate you. I appreciate your words. You non-celebrity, you.
Thank you Bethany, I love playing these audios with my morning coffee. I really like them and you have a good mind.
-Your TV son, Noah