Cary Grant

On the screen Cary Grant started out pretty exuberant (vide Arsenic and Old Lace, 1944) and became in time more and more subtle (vide North by Northwest, 1959) achieving that incredibly cool and pondered persona.

He said Cary Grant was a character he invented who after a while, like any mask, he couldn't take off. Marilyn Monroe once said pretty much the same about herself, that she sometimes felt like an impostor.

It saddens me to think that these people may have spent their lives feeling that way about themselves, especially when I believe they just needed a bit more perspective to realize that fine tuning your personality to create a good impression is perfectly normal -- they just did it much, much better than the rest of us.

When people criticize a poser I think they tend to forget that all our tics and mannerisms are not "natural" but something that we once learned by ourselves, in front of the mirror, trying this expression and that one for size, experimenting with what works and discarding what doesn't. At first all these deliberate poses feel rehearsed and artificial even to us, but in time they become second nature, and we do them without thinking, like walking, another learned behaviour.

The only difference for actors like Marilyn and Cary is they never stopped fine tuning the person they projected to the outside world. It's not unusual for an actor to have a ghastly time watching himself on the screen. The best actors in the world are people who winced at themselves, made notes of what they felt needed to be corrected and then slowly but surely improved on their repertoire of expressions. It's the only way they could stand the sight of themselves.

I would see Cary as a phony if his self-transformation had been the result of someone else's judgment, instead of his own impeccable taste. It's possible that he benefited from being directed by great movie makers; but even so it's still his choice which lessons to keep. Cary Grant was his own creation, his own decision. He didn't assume a false personality, he simply improved on the one he had. He became more himself, not less.

That's what I like about (some) female impersonators and performing artists. I identify with how they feel oppressed in their own skin. I'm like Camille: at the age when I was developing my mannerisms I repressed femininity to survive. Now I wish I could be different, that I could be one of those women who exude a womanly presence, but I'm afraid that I'll be ridiculous, that I'll feel phony, afraid that the mask will slip, afraid that it won't... Maybe it's too late for me, and maybe it shouldn't bother me.

Even so, I still admire on a matter of principle those who just go for it, unafraid, people who have a vision of themselves that they want to come true.