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Q&A: Is it Too Late to Start an Acting Career?

Thrifty Fun

March 11, 2010


The Question
"Is it too late to start an acting career at my age? I am trying to build my name quickly so my children who are as much interested in entertaining, have a foundation to stand on, as well. I know I will do well, I just need to know "how to" when the only experience I have is with shows and events that I played in as small characters/parts that were for the purpose of work training. I have had great comments on my performances."
By crystalpearl from Houston, TX


Some Answers 
By Top 10 Film Schools 05/05/2011
It's never too late, but there are a lot of factors involved. Hollywood is very fickle and there are never any guarantees whether you are Tom Cruise or just starting out. You are always going to be fighting for that next job. If you have the stomach for not having any type of security whatsoever in your career choice, them go for it. It is not like getting a job at IBM. You will be looking for your next job for the rest or your life. It's tough, but can be rewarding.


By MichelleTina 04/20/2010
It is not late! I am talented for music and I know that no matter when you start, if you have talent your gonna be someone! Keep on following your dreams.:)


 By witchwood 03/07/2010
Hmm... A little difficult as you didn't state what 'my age' is! Depends on what you are looking for.. big star, theatre tv, film. However I will tell you that I didn't start my acting career till I was sixty! I'm a writer, many poems and stories published, but then I saw an opportunity to get into local theatre something I'd always wanted to try, and since then have been in several different plays and I love it! This is not big money, sometimes no money, but oh, the joy, the fun, the audience appreciation. Try if you can.


By JustPlainJo 03/07/2010
Mrs.Story has a good point, but it's probably moot anyway. Who cares how old you are?
In spite of Hollywood, actors of all ages are needed. If you're in the right place at the right time, especially if you have "the look" the director wants, you'll get the part. And even extras make scale. Remember, Grandma Moses was 80 when she took up painting!


By mimijean 03/07/2010
Never! Look for local opportunities first in theatre. Consider taking a class at a community college as they will do doubt have performances they do for the public. Also, consider going to a local agency (not the kind that rip you off - beware of those) and see how to put together a "book" - it would consist of head shots of you. In the dallas areas where I live, it is the Kim Dawson agency. Good luck.


By foxrun41 03/07/2010
It is never too late to start any endeavor. Good luck.


By Suntydt 03/05/2010
I knew a guy that was in his 50's and was auditioning for parts as basically a background character. You know, someone needed in the scene but not as a main or secondary character.


By mrs.story 03/05/2010
Hard to say. You didn't mention your age.


Source: http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf43078103.tip.html

Second Acts: The Late Bloomer

Kathryn Joosten won two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2005 and 2008 and once again got nominated for 2010, and appeared as a presenter at the 2005 and 2008 Emmy Awards telecasts. She also received Screen Actors Guild Award nominations with the rest of the cast for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series from 2006-2008. 

By Kathryn Joosten 02.11.09


Some people in Hollywood think of me as a model for dramatic midlife transitions: suburban housewife to Emmy-winning actress. But I never plotted out a master plan for following my dreams. My career arc seemed perfectly normal to me as it evolved over time. Each phase just seemed to grow naturally out of the one before.


I started out as a nurse. As a teenager growing up in Chicago in the 1950s, I worked part time at a local hospital, where I spent my off hours hanging around the pediatrics unit with a friendly nurse. She inspired me to go into the profession. After graduating from high school and completing a training program, I landed a job at the Psychiatric Institute at Michael Reese Hospital. I was there nine years, eventually rising to head nurse of the largest psychiatric unit. Then I married one of the staff psychiatrists and gave up nursing for a new life as a housewife in suburban Lake Forest.




Ten years later, he got the mistress and I got the children. As a divorcee with two young boys and not enough child support, I had to go back to work. But I couldn't go back to nursing after so many years away from it. My skills were no longer current. So I got a job with a "Welcome Wagon"-type company that advertised local businesses to new residents. To supplement that, I hung wallpaper for people who were redecorating their homes, and served as a location manager for photographers and industrial filmmakers doing shoots in the Chicago area.


All this kept me very busy, which is one reason I signed my boys up for the children's program at the Lake Forest community theater. (It was the cheapest baby-sitting I could find.) Eventually I auditioned for a small part in one of the theater's productions.


As a kid in elementary school, I had loved performing onstage in school pageants. But my high school was too small to have a drama department, so I had never acted in a play. That all changed in June 1980 when the Lake Forest theater put on the musical "Gypsy." I made my theatrical debut in the role of Tessie Tura, a veteran stripper who offers career advice to Gypsy Rose Lee. "You've gotta have a gimmick," I sang, "if you wanna get applause!"


I got applause, and I liked it. That experience led to me doing a second show in the next town over, then to another show in another town and finally to a show in a nonunion theater in Chicago. I was totally hooked. I wanted to pursue acting and see where it led me. But I was 42, with two kids and three jobs. Not the most auspicious of circumstances for a person just starting out in show business.


I thought about my mother, who had died of cancer years earlier at the age of 49. She spent her last months bitterly regretting that she had deferred so many dreams, which now would never be fulfilled. It impressed me deeply, and I had vowed that I would never let that happen to me. So I knew I had to give acting a shot.


I laid it out for my sons, who by then were 10 and 12, and asked for a year to see if I could achieve success, which I had no real definition for. I did theater while hanging paper, selling advertising and finding locations. Eventually I got an agent and landed my first professional TV job, as a pingpong ball for the Illinois lottery. I had moved from community theater to semiprofessional theater, and I wanted to go further. After my year was up, I asked the kids for an extension, and they said yes.


All I wanted at this time was to achieve some recognition in theater in Chicago. I kept making progress. A big step came when I got my Actors' Equity union card while doing a play at the Goodman Theater. But I still wasn't making a living from acting.


Then in 1992, Disney-MGM Studios held tryouts in Chicago. They needed street performers for their Hollywood theme park in Orlando, Fla. After standing in line for five hours, I auditioned and won a job as a "Streetmosphere" player. By now my boys were older and on their own, so I could accept the offer and move to Florida. I played Annie Hannigan, cleaning lady to the stars. The contract only lasted a year, but it convinced me that I could make a living acting.


After the Disney job ended, I went to bartending school in Orlando so I could support myself while doing local theater. I also worked in catering. But after two years, I realized that my acting career wasn't going anywhere in Florida. One of my sons was now living in Los Angeles, so I went out there and spent a couple of weeks sleeping on his couch while I checked out the scene. I thought, "Well, I'll come out and try it for six months."


This was incredibly naive of me. I was in my mid-50s. I had no agent, no contacts and no track record likely to impress a Hollywood casting director. Then again, what did I have to lose? Five months later, I landed my first TV job--two lines in a scene with Jaleel White, who played Steve Urkel on the sitcom Family Matters. I played a grocery clerk in the episode, which aired on March 17, 1995. That job got me an agent, and I was off to the races. After that it was one job after another.


I went back to Florida, sold my house, packed my stuff into a truck and drove it to Los Angeles, where I've lived ever since. I've made guest appearances on dozens of TV shows, including Frasier, Monk and Grey's Anatomy; I've had recurring roles on Scrubs, Dharma and Greg and Joan of Arcadia; I played Martin Sheen's secretary, Mrs. Landingham, on The West Wing; and since 2005 I've had a recurring role as Mrs. McCluskey on Desperate Housewives, for which I have won two Emmys.


I didn't start out saying, "Gee, I think I'll try to win an Emmy." I just kept aiming down the path that seemed to shine before me. I've always adjusted my work life to be able to follow that path. Each step I took was a natural progression, and I always arranged that I could go back and resume my previous life if I didn't get to the next step.


I've come to realize that I cannot arrive at success. There is no "there" there. It is a continuum. I don't advise anyone to give up an assured life for a fling at a dream. Be flexible enough to envision what the future may hold, but also realistic enough to hedge your bets. Then you can follow the unknown path, one step at a time.


Kathryn Joosten is an actress in Los Angeles.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/11/starting-acting-career-leadership_0211_kathryn_joosten_print.html


Kathryn Joosten's website: http://www.kathrynjoosten.com/

What Is the Average Yearly Salary for an Actress? (For years 2009 & 2011)

What Is the Average Yearly Salary for an Actress?
By Wilhelm Schnotz, eHow Contributor updated January 07, 2011


Many actresses work in live theater situations.
Whether it's the rush from performing on stage in front of an audience or the allure of all the glamour that goes with a silver-screen career, there are many reasons women pursue a career in acting. Salary probably isn't one of them, however, as apart from the elite television and Hollywood actresses, work for actresses may be inconsistent and provide poor wages.


Average Actress Wages
Most actresses struggle to find steady work and many support themselves with another source of income, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Most don't work in long-term positions, so accurately tracking the average actress' annual salary is difficult. Instead, the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks the mean hourly wage those who work as actresses earn on each job, which is $16.20 per hour, as of May 2009. Half of all actresses earn between $10.18 and $29.33 per hour, though their earnings vary by their abilities as well as the type of work they perform.


Wages by Experience
Perhaps due to the preoccupation with image in the entertainment industry, actresses in the middle phase of their careers command higher wages than those in the first or second portion of their careers. Although wage ranges are large and depend upon the type of production on which an actress works, those with four or fewer years of experience earn hourly wages between $7.45 and $27 as of January 2011, according to PayScale. Those with five to nine years in the industry command the highest average hourly wage, and earn wages that range from $10.50 to $74.58 per hour. Actresses with 10 or more years of experience earn salaries that range from $12.33 to $44.22 per hour.


Average Full-Time Salary
An actress who's able to work the equivalent of a full-time position may expect to earn an average annual salary of $49,736 as of January 2011, according to Salary.com. Half of all full-time actresses earn salaries between $40,986 and $60,726. Actresses who live in New York, Los Angeles and Vancouver, where the majority of film and television projects are filmed, are the most likely to find full-time employment in their field.


Celebrity Actress Earnings
Although many actresses struggle to find work, those who become stars have little problem making ends meet. Sandra Bullock, the actress with the highest salary in the 2009-2010 shooting season, earned $56 million, according to Forbes. During the same period, Cameron Diaz and Reese Witherspoon earned $32 million and Jennifer Aniston earned $27 million.






Read more: What Is the Average Yearly Salary for an Actress? | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/info_7742787_average-yearly-salary-actress.html#ixzz1NzM2AhN1


Source: http://www.ehow.com/info_7742787_average-yearly-salary-actress.html

Quotes & Poems About Being An Older Woman

Feel absolutely free to post a quote or poem you created about being an older woman, and credit your name. 


"Gentle older women are like water on the edges of oceans. They are foam and mist after years of traveling miles."   
~Deborah Marchant'




The Dance 
by C.K. Williams


A middle-aged woman, quite plain, to be polite about it, and 
somewhat stout, to be more courteous still,
but when she and the rather good-looking, 
much younger man 
she's with get up to dance, 
her forearm descends with such delicate
lightness, such restrained
but confident ardor athwart his shoulder,
drawing him to her with such a firm, 
compelling warmth, and 
moving him with effortless grace
into the union she's instantly established
with the not at all rhythmically solid
music in this second-rate cafe. 


that something in the rest of us, 
some doubt about ourselves, 
some sad conjecture, 
seems to be allayed.
nothing that we'd ever thought of as 
a real lack, nothing not to be
admired or be repentent for, 
but something to which we've never
adequately given credence, 
which might have consoling implications
about how we misbelieve ourselves, 
and so the world, 
that world beyond us which so often 
disappoints, but which sometimes
shows us, lovely, what we are. 






August Third
by May Sarton


These days
Lifting myself up
Like a heavy weight, 
Old camel getting to her knees, 
I think of my mother
And the inexhaustible flame
That kept her alive
Until she died. 


She knew all about fatigue
And how one pushes it aside
For staking up the lilies
Early in the morning, 
The way one pushes it aside
For a friend in need, 
For a hungry cat.


Mother, be with me. 
Today on your birthday 
I am older than you were
When you died
Thirty-five years ago.
Thinking of you
The old camel gets to her knees,
Stands up, 
Moves forward slowly
Into the new day.


If you taught me one thing
It was never to fail life.  






An Old Lady's Poem
by Anonymous 


http://www.wtv-zone.com/Mary/AnOldLadysPoem.html

Graying Audience Returns to Movies

Graying Audience 
Returns to Movies
By Brooks Barnes 
and Michael Cieply 
Published: February 25, 2011
New York Times


LOS ANGELES — Hollywood and older Americans have never had much use for each other. The 50-plus crowd doesn’t go to opening weekends or buy popcorn; a youth-obsessed Hollywood has happily ignored them.


The movie industry is trying to get baby boomers like Marisol Clarke back into theater seats. But in the last few months an older audience has made a startling reassertion of its multiplex power. “True Grit,” “The King’s Speech,” “The Fighter,” “Black Swan” — all movies in contention for a clutch of Oscars on Sunday — have all been surprise hits at the box office.


And they have all been powered by people for whom 3-D means wearing glasses over glasses, and “Twilight” sounds vaguely threatening.


Hollywood, slower than almost any other industry to market to baby boomers, may be getting a glimpse of its graying future. While the percentage of moviegoers in the older population remains relatively small, the actual number of older moviegoers is growing explosively — up 67 percent since 1995, according to GfK MRI, a media research firm.


And the first of the 78 million baby boomers are hitting retirement age with some leisure hours to fill and a long-dormant love affair with movies.


“There is an older audience that is growing, and it’s an underserved audience, which makes for an obvious and important opportunity,” said Nancy Utley, co-president of Fox Searchlight, whose “Black Swan” has sold over $100 million at the North American box office. If the core audience for a particular film is over 50, she noted, “that’s now a gigantic core.”


There are glimmers of a shift. Aging action stars; theaters with adult fare, like better food; reserved seating; and, most important, movies like “The Social Network” and “The King’s Speech” that have become hits based on wit and storytelling, not special effects.


Theaters have long favored younger consumers in part because older moviegoers tend to skip the concession counter, where theaters make most of their money. The imbalance between young and old grew more pronounced over the last decade as theater chains, suffering the after-effects of overbuilding, cut back on maintenance.


Sticky floors and popcorn-strewn aisles have kept even more older people at home. That, and all those texting teenagers, “which is something that adult audiences really find irritating,” said Patrick Corcoran, director of media and research for the National Association of Theater Owners.


The very young still go to the movies more than anyone else — especially on those all-important opening weekends — but distribution executives say they are getting harder to lure in huge numbers. Social networking has sped up word of mouth, turning teenagers and young adults into more discerning moviegoers — a phenomenon pushed along by rising prices. People age 18 to 24 bought an average of seven tickets per person in 2010, down from eight in 2009.


And the industry is battling a generational quirk. When you can legally stream movies on laptops or order them from video-on-demand services soon after their release — or easily pirate them with high-speed Internet connections, often while they are still in theaters — it makes you less likely to buy a ticket.


Fewer teenagers, then, present an opening. Baby boomers are not their Depression-era parents, who grew up on radio and were very conscious of the price of a ticket. Baby boomers were weaned on movies.


“Our generation really had a love affair with the movies in a profound way,” said Nicholas Kazan, a screenwriter whose credits include “Reversal of Fortune,” which was nominated for an Oscar in 1991. “It was not a fling, not a casual relationship, but a real love affair.”


For many baby boomers, the relationship blossomed in 1969, as the movies belatedly caught up with the counterculture in a wave of films that included “Easy Rider,” “Medium Cool” and “Midnight Cowboy.” College film societies and an art-house circuit made generational heroes of foreign directors like Ingmar Bergman, whose “Cries and Whispers” had its New York debut in 1972. The “Godfather” series, from Francis Ford Coppola, forged the lexicon for a generation.


But then a younger, more fantasy-oriented generation asserted itself with “Star Wars” in 1977. Hollywood adjusted its output accordingly.


“For me, the ’80s is a dead zone,” said Peter Biskind, a film historian who sees the baby boomers as having been “betrayed and abandoned” by Hollywood in the era of “E.T.,” “Sixteen Candles” and “Top Gun.”


The baby boomers were taking their children to the movies, however, helping to make megahits of films like the “Home Alone” series. Mr. Biskind, himself a baby boomer, said he believed that as the generation’s love affair with movies ended, television stepped in.


“ ‘The Sopranos’ really nailed the boomer generation,” he said. It offered 50-ish viewers all the moody action of a Coppola film without the bother of a trip to the theater.


Slowly, the movie industry is trying to get baby boomers back in seats. You can see it in the bets studios are taking on scripts. Last year, there were two movies, “RED” and “The Expendables,” that featured older actors in action roles. Helen Mirren, who is 65, was a machine gun-toting assassin in “RED,” which stands for “retired and extremely dangerous.” Sylvester Stallone, who is 64, was a mercenary in “The Expendables.” Both movies were hits.


Just last weekend, “Unknown,” with a 58-year-old Liam Neeson as its action star, was No. 1 at the box office, beating a heavily promoted teenage science fiction movie. More than half of the audience was over 50.


Almost every studio has a movie aimed at an older audience on its current schedule or in development, whether it’s “Dirty Old Men” at Warner Brothers or “Larry Crowne” at Universal Pictures. Fox Searchlight has high hopes for “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” about a group a British retirees who go to India. It stars Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, who are both 76.


Movie theaters have begun to do their part. At ArcLight Cinemas you can now have a grilled ahi tuna sandwich or red pepper Gorgonzola dip.


At AMC Entertainment, the second-largest theater chain in North America after Regal Cinemas, older moviegoers are becoming “an increasingly important part of our plan,” said Stephen A. Colanero, chief marketing officer. He points to efforts to improve adult offerings even if Hollywood doesn’t provide them — Metropolitan Opera simulcasts, for instance.


AMC is also experimenting with seat-side food and cocktail service. The company now operates seven AMC Dine-In Theaters, including three new ones in New Jersey. More are planned.


Studios will continue to tailor the bulk of their releases to younger audiences, and for good reason. In 2010, North Americans ages 12 to 24 made up only 18 percent of the population, but bought 32 percent of the 1.34 billion tickets sold, according to the annual industry snapshot by the Motion Picture Association of America, released on Wednesday.


By contrast, people over 50 made up 32 percent of the population, but bought only 21 percent of the tickets. That is a slight uptick from 2009, when the over-50 audience bought 19 percent of the total tickets sold.


But the actual number of older moviegoers has grown enormously since 1995, the year before boomers started hitting the midcentury mark. Then about 26.8 million people over the age of 50 went to the movies, according to GfK MRI. That number grew to 44.9 million in 2010.


Studios used to deride older viewers as “the once-a-year audience.” They came out once a year, on Christmas Day, to see a movie. Columbia Pictures gave them “Prince of Tides” on Christmas Day in 1991.


It is an attitude, and a reality, that is shifting. “One of the most urgent issues we face as an industry is to figure out how to lure the boomers back to the movie theaters,” said Bob Pisano, president and interim chief executive of the M.P.A.A.


Nancy Perry Graham, editor of AARP The Magazine, says it’s about time. “There is a huge demand that needs to be satisfied, and we’ve been trying to make that point to Hollywood for years,” she said. “I truly believe that Hollywood is finally listening.”




A version of this article appeared in print on February 26, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition.


Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/business/media/26moviegoers.html?_r=1&sq=older%20adults%20movies&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=all

Why Are Some People Late Bloomers? Part I & 2

'Late Bloomer' 

by Kathy Keler 
Visual Artist

WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE LATE BLOOMERS? PART 1


A good garden may have some weeds.
~Thomas Fuller


Does an article about yet another twenty-something internet millionaire make you wonder where you went wrong? Does a story about a grandma who ran her first marathon at 86 make your day?


Don’t worry. If you’re a late-blooming adult, you’re not alone. You’ve got some remarkable company.


According to Wikipedia, “a late blooming adult is a person who does not discover their talents and abilities until later than normally expected.”


I’m not talking about people who started early and kept going into their 60s and beyond, like Picasso, Kurosawa or Joyce Carol Oates.


I’m tracking people who don’t realize their creative passion until later, or who discover it early but can’t pursue it until adulthood. I call them Later Bloomers.


WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE LATER BLOOMERS?
I’ve identified four broad patterns. In this installment, I explore how the “rocky soil” of our youth could contribute to blooming later through:


Lack of guidance and opportunity and
Post-traumatic stress disorder




In the second installment, I look at two intriguing traits that many Later Bloomers share:


Having too many passions and
Learning by experimentation
LACK OF GUIDANCE AND OPPORTUNITY


At age 10, Linda Bach witnessed her father die of a heart attack. She vowed to become a doctor so she could save other lives. At age 20, she graduated at the top of her college class with a microbiology degree.


She applied to medical school. During her entrance interview, she faced a panel of six men. Their first question – did she plan to marry and have children?  “Yes,” she answered. “After I finish school and establish my practice.”  One of the examiners said under his breath, “God, I’d hate to be your kids.”  She didn’t get in.


Devastated, Linda asked her college counselor for advice. The counselor didn’t see a problem. Why didn’t she just want to get married and have kids?


In 1969, at age 20, Linda felt that rejection by two unimpeachable sources of authority – the review board and her counselor – had sealed her fate.


Today we can discover everything about anything via the Internet.  In the past, however, we depended on parents, teachers and libraries to guide us. The quality of that guidance varied from place to place, individual to individual. For the fortunate, it lead to success. For others, like Linda, its lack slammed the door to their dreams – but not forever.


Linda Bach entered medical school at the age of 46.  She is currently a doctor in private practice.  Her story is told in Defying Gravity: A Celebration of Late-Blooming Women by Prill Boyle.


Some people know their path, but didn’t have the resources in youth to follow it. Lack of guidance and lack of opportunity often go hand in hand.




Do you recognize this guy? Does it matter?
Albert Einstein had an IQ of 150. Chris Langan’s IQ is so high that it can’t be measured. You’ve probably never heard of Langan because, according to Malcolm Gladwell, Langan’s upbringing handicapped his social skills.


Langan never got a degree. When he ran into a few troubles, his college took the hard line and dropped him from classes. For instance, his car broke down and he couldn’t afford to fix it. He could hitch into town for afternoon classes, but administration wouldn’t let him transfer to the later sessions. His mother forgot to sign his scholarship application, so they rejected it.


Gladwell thinks that Langan could have turned things around if only he’d learned how to negotiate with authority figures.


But that’s just one symptom of the deeper problem Langan faced — extreme poverty. While growing up, food was a luxury. He owned only the clothes on his back. His stepfather beat him for eight years.


As Langan’s brother explained, “I couldn’t get financial aid either. We just had zero knowledge, less that zero knowledge of the process. How to apply. The forms. Checkbooks. It was not our environment.”


Langan might as well have been raised on Mars. The guy with an IQ higher than Einstein ended up as a Rhode Island bouncer for 20 years.


Savant Daniel Tammet speculates that an intersection between talent and delayed opportunity causes late blooming:


If you’re born in a very poor environment, where you’re not given books and you’re not given good education and then subsequently doors are closed to you that are open to others who perhaps don’t have your talent . . . I could well imagine that throughout our history there are people who have come into their own relatively late in life.


Langan now raises horses and hones his cognitive-theoretic model of the universe — a grand theory of all origins. I don’t understand most of what he writes, but sometimes he gets oddly poetic (“I just had a chance encounter with a garden slug, and it got me thinking about time”).


But Langan will never be published in an academic journal, because he didn’t get the right credentials. Many of his would-be peers (with lower IQs) think he’s nuts.


Perhaps it doesn’t matter. He’s living his dream – a quiet life devoted to higher learning. And the Internet has become the great equalizer. One day Chris Langan’s name might be as recognizable as Albert Einstein’s.


POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
Carl Jung wrote, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” A very brave statement, but the truth is, sometimes we do become what was done to us.


The National Institute of Health defines post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as:


an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat.


Psychotherapy recognized PTSD in the aftermath of Viet Nam.  But PTSD doesn’t just affect veterans of war or victims of atrocities.


Children can develop PTSD after experiencing physical or psychological abuse or even playground bullying.  PTSD symptoms can surface after learning about a traumatic experience second-hand.


The numbness, anxiety and emotional emptiness that characterize PTSD will kill the joy, passion and excitement necessary to bloom early.




My father, self-portrait, age 20
My father was a heart-breaking case in point.  Before World War II, he was an animator for Walt Disney Co. They discovered him when he won a drawing contest at age 15. He dropped out of high school to work for Disney and apprenticed on Fantasia.


The Army drafted him at 20 and assigned him to a mobile photo battalion. He saw and recorded many atrocities that haunted him for the rest of this life.


Disney did not re-hire him after the war, and it broke his heart. As a high school dropout artist, it became harder and harder for him to find work. He was often unemployed. Sometimes he drank.


He passed away in 1994, a broken man who never, for the 50 years after WWII ended, engaged his passion for illustration or photography. You can see evidence of his early talent in the self-portrait at right and in his war photos.


I’m not a therapist, but I believe PTSD may be one reason why some people don’t reach their potential.


CONCLUSION
Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.
~A.A. Milne


In this installment, I explored the weeds that may need tending before you can bloom — lack of guidance and opportunity, and post-traumatic stress disorder.


Recent media fixation on The Secret has rendered any discussion of hardship practically taboo. The “law” of attraction decrees if life doesn’t go the way you want, you must not have visualized correctly, believed hard enough or unconditionally aligned yourself with the universe.


Just what kind of law tells victims of rape, war, poverty and other tragedies that they authored their own misfortune?


If youth has left scars, being told to “move on” or “get over it” is just as insulting.You may never get over it, but the world needs your special gift. I believe that each person has one thing they must do that no one else can.


If this installment rings true to you, you may want to consult a therapist in order to cultivate your gift. Or you may not. But, no matter how thoughtful or wild, forthright or sneaky, typical or unconventional, you must find some way for your gift to triumph over what was done to you.


Next: Passions and Experimentation – Why Are Some People Later Bloomers? Part 2.


RESOURCES, PART 1:
Boyle, Prill. Defying Gravity: A Celebration of Late-Blooming Women.


Ehrenreich, Barbara. Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.


Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story Of Success.


Kaufman, Scott Barry. Conversations on Creativity with Daniel Tammet: Part V, Creativity, Mind, and the Brain (Psychology Today: 10/26/09).


YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE:
Who Are The Top 10 Late Bloomers of All Time?
Was Ben Franklin A Late Bloomer?
Why Are Some People Late Bloomers? Part 2
Late Bloomers Who Like a Cold Wet Wakeup Call


Source: http://www.laterbloomer.com/late-bloomers-1/




What are Some People Late Bloomers? Part 2




WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE LATE BLOOMERS? PART 2


In Part 1, I explored how “a good garden may have some weeds” — life’s difficulties and Later Blooming.


In this installment, I look at two intriguing traits that many Later Bloomers share:


Having too many passions and
Learning by experimentation
TOO MANY PASSIONS


During the Renaissance, humanism arose in revolt against the limits of Medieval education, which confined learning to law, medicine and theology.


The movement reignited interest in what we now call the humanities — classics, languages, literature, philosophy, arts of all types.


Many of our greatest minds were “Renaissance Men.”


For example, Benjamin Franklin was an writer, printer, soldier, politician and diplomat. He invented bifocals, the lightning rod and the Franklin stove. Peter Mark Roget was a doctor, teacher, inventor, designer and compiler of the famous Thesaurus.


Specialization is a relatively recent compulsion.


Some people just have too many passions. They have no desire to specialize because they’re driven by curiousity and wonder. In today’s world, they’re often denigrated.


Margaret Lobenstine calls this type of Later Bloomer a Renaissance Soul. She writes:


"Renaissance Souls much prefer variety and combination over focusing all their energies on one thing. They prefer widening options by opening more and more doors, to narrowing choices by specializing and sub-specializing.


After succeeding in one area, the Renaissance Soul will seek a completely new adventure instead of accepting a promotion, or job hopping to a higher salary."




The musical South Pacific was based on Michener's first novel
This might be why many of these Later Bloomers eventually become writers to explore their varied interests and passions.


James Michener didn’t publish Tales of the South Pacific until age 40. He became famous for epic historical novels — Hawaii, Iberia, Poland, Texas, Alaska and Mexico — and wrote prolificly until his death at 90.


But he also wrote non-fiction on subjects as diverse as The Modern Japanese Print, Sports in America and A Century of Sonnets.


Before becoming a writer, Michener peddled chestnuts, toured America by boxcar, joined a carnival, enlisted in the Army, taught English and edited textbooks.


Other late-blooming authors (and their former lives) include:

• Miguel de Cervantes (valet, soldier, tax collector) — Don Quixote, age 58
• Daniel Defoe (wine merchant, terrorist, tax collector) — Robinson Crusoe, age 60
• Charles Perrault (civil servant) — Tales from Mother Goose, age 67
• Bram Stoker (civil servant, theater manager) — Dracula, age 50
• Isak Dineson (coffee rancher) – Seven Gothic Tales, age 49 and Out of Africa, age 52
• P.D. James (civil servant, hospital adminstrator) – Published her first Adam Dalgliesh mystery in 1962, at age 42.  She’s still writing them.

By far, writers comprise the largest subgroup of Later Bloomers I’ve researched (I think the fact that many were government employees is just coincidence).


LEARNING BY EXPERIMENTATION
David Galenson is an economics professor who writes about artists.


In Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity, Galenson examined the auction prices of paintings throughout several artists’ lives. He identified two distinct patterns, not just in art, but in other creative fields:


Conceptual innovators peak early. They’re our prodigies and ”young geniuses.” They see the whole scenario, then execute it — on canvas, in writing, on a music score sheet.


Picasso is the classic conceptual innovator.
Picasso once said,


"When I paint, my object is to show what I have found, not what I am looking for…I have never made trials or experiments."


Other conceptual innovators include Johannes Vermeer, Herman Melville, Sylvia Plath and Orson Welles.


Experimental innovators, on the other hand, are classic “old masters” and late bloomers. According to Galenson, they:

• need a visual objective;
• work slowly and incrementally;
• consider their creative endeavors a form of research;
• value the accumulation of knowledge over the end result;
• become totally absorbed while pursuing an ambitious, vague and elusive goal; and
• experience frustration that their goal may be completely unobtainable.
• They consider creative output “as a process of searching, in which they aim to discover the image in the course of making it.”

Paul Cézanne is the classic experimental innovator. He created his most valuable paintings (in terms of auction price) at the end of his life.  Just a month before he died, Cézanne wrote:


"Now it seems to me that I see better and that I think more correctly about the direction of my studies. Will I ever attain the end for which I have striven so much and so long? I hope so, but…until I have realized something better than in the past…I continue to study."


Cézanne isn’t the type of late bloomer I’m tracking. He started painting in his 20s (after dropping out of law school) and peaked late.


I’m more interested in people who don’t actually realize their creative passion until later, or who realize it early but can’t pursue it until later.


However, I believe Galenson’s findings still apply. I suspect many Later Bloomers also learn by discovery and experimentation.




ANOTHER TAKE ON LATE BLOOMING


Malcolm Gladwell popularized Galenson’s work in a much-quoted New Yorker article entitled “Why do we equate genius with precocity?” He concluded that a late bloomer’s success is “highly contingent on the efforts of others.”


Gladwell cites author Ben Fountain as his case in point.  Fountain published his short-story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, to rave reviews — 18 years after he quit his law practice to write full time. During those 18 years, his wife, also an attorney, supported him both financially and emotionally. She also bore and supported their two children.


Now here’s something interesting. In Outliers: The Story Of Success, Gladwell concluded that a prodigy’s success also depends on the efforts of others — especially his or her family.


Lucky prodigies like Bill Gates, whose parents sent him to private school and gave him access to a computer at age 13 (in 1968), had a greater chance of succeeding than those like Chris Langan (from Part 1), whose stepfather beat him for eight years:


…that’s because those others had had help along the way, and Chris Langan never had. It wasn’t an excuse. It was a fact. He’d had to make his way alone, and no one — not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses — ever makes it alone.


I admire Gladwell for taking on the Great American Myth of the self-made man, but he’s also simplifying the obvious. Of course, both prodigies and late bloomers stand a better chance of success if they have support. Everyone does.


Yet most of the Later Bloomers I’ve researched supported their own families and still pursued their passion — with little outside encouragement.


Bram Stoker, for instance, didn’t publish Dracula until age 50. He married and raised a son. For over 20 years, he managed the career of Henry Irving, the Victorian era’s most famous actor and a notorious egotist. (Irving refused to play Dracula on stage.)


Buster Merryfield, a beloved British character actor, married and had a daughter soon after serving in WWII. For 40 years, he rose through the ranks of NatWest Bank, then took early retirement at age 58 to pursue acting professionally. Merryfield got his break seven years later, when he was cast in the sitcom Only Fools And Horses.


And the reigning grand dame of British crime fiction, Phyllis Dorothy (P.D.) James, took a job with the National Health Service when her ailing husband could no longer work. She went on to the Home Office and retired at age 59, seventeen years after her first novel was published.


Unlike Ben Fountain, neither Stoker, Merryfield, nor James had the luxury of quitting their day jobs to pursue their creative paths, yet all three found a way — just a little later.


They were driven by some mysterious impulse, despite obstacles and responsibilities. That’s what I find fascinating, and what I hope to explore through this blog.


CONCLUSION
Not all those who wander are lost.
~J.R.R. Tolkien


In this installment, I reviewed how curiosity and wonder drives many Later Bloomers. They have too many passions to settle. Plus, as David Galenson discovered, they often learn through discovery and experimentation, so achievement takes longer.


Two years before Malcolm Gladwell popularized Galenson’s work and concluded it was all about having support, Daniel Pink (Al Gore’s old speechwriter and another lapsed lawyer) reviewed it in Wired magazine. He made a different inference:


Of course, not every unaccomplished 65-year-old is some undiscovered experimental innovator. This is a universal theory of creativity, not a Viagra for sagging baby boomer self-esteem. It’s no justification for laziness or procrastination or indifference. But it might bolster the resolve of the relentlessly curious, the constantly tinkering, the dedicated tortoises undaunted by the blur of the hares.


In the end, though, you must define success for yourself. What I like about Wikipedia’s definition of late bloomer – “a person who does not discover their talents and abilities until later than normally expected” – is a sly implication that normalcy might be superfluous.


Coming Soon: Part 3, Why Everyone Should Be A Later Bloomer.


RESOURCES, PART 2:
Galenson, David. Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity.


Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story Of Success.


Gladwell, Malcolm. “Why do we equate genius with precocity?” (The New Yorker: 10/20/2008).


Lobenstine, Margaret. The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One.


Pink, Daniel. “What Kind of Genius Are You?” (Wired Magazine: 07/2006).


YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE:
Who Are The Top 10 Late Bloomers of All Time?
Why Are Some People Late Bloomers? Part 1
Was Ben Franklin A Late Bloomer?
Late Bloomers Who Like a Cold Wet Wakeup Call


Source: http://www.laterbloomer.com/late-bloomers-2/