A lot of people think I'm cynical when I talk about acting. The truth of the matter is, I just don't want someone to get some lame advice that will send them in the wrong direction. I want people to find their true love in working, whether it be acting, teaching, or any other job.

Bottom line: Be Careful! A business like acting is 90% luck. You can be a star one minute and out of work the next. Always keep your hopes high and your energy positive, and don't think it's impossible, but know that it's very hard.

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I've learned something whether I worked with someone who was impossible and gave me no feedback, [where] you learned to direct yourself in some way, or working with someone who gives you as much support and sends you in every direction that you could possibly want.

Working with Sofia [director Sofia Coppola], watching her take this idea and turn it into something that we were making not that long after [she came up with the idea] was inspiring.

You don't have to run the circuit for five or seven years before you get your film done. If you're passionate and with the right strings to pull...

Fortunately I'm in that position where hopefully it won't be quite so hard. 

Whereas coming right out of college, coming out of some screenwriting program and trying to get your screenplay made is a totally different experience. So, that's very inspiring.

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People really loved her, so I was hired again and again by the producers I worked with. 

She was also very good at explaining to me what was going on on the set so I could see it in sort of an adult way.

She was very rational with me and set a good example in terms of how I dealt with things. 

For instance, she taught me that if I get upset about something, I should turn to someone else before reacting and ask what they think -- I still do that today.

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It made me feel desperate about myself, and I think I gave that off. 

Now I just think in terms of "Oh, that's great pay," or "That sounds like fun," or "I love working with that person." I think when you try too hard, things don't work out. 

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So, that's the cost. The gift is that you get to travel and you meet remarkable people... 

I can't imagine a better niche for myself -- I'm so happy with what I do. I think the benefits outweigh the costs. 

There were times in my petulant teens when I wasn't sure about that, but by now I've had enough therapy that I'm over it. ....

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I was getting caught inside myself. And I was working on movies that weren't the kind of movies that I wanted to see necessarily. so that was frustrating. 

So for both those reasons I questioned whether it was something I wanted to continue with. 

But instead of giving it up, I decided to take more responsibility for my work. I rechose it for myself. ... I learned to become more at peace with myself and find ways to feel more comfortable.

Referring specifically to male attention, she says, "There are a lot of ulterior motivations that you don't necessarily understand when you're 14 years old. It's every young woman's experience. It's just hard to do it in a professional context," she says. "I won't let my daughter get in the business until she's 18 years old."

It's like your ego is being born at that time, where you're starting to realize how other people see you. It's very clear to me, that emotion, that time. I think it's something that we all feel all the time, at different levels, but I think you probably feel it the most at that age, as young girls do.

Lauren Ambrose - about playing Claire in "Six Feet Under"****[Boston Globe 4/7/02]

That transition from child star to adult actress has a lot to do with how in touch you are, for women, with your sexuality, and for men, with their masculinity. 

When you go from a child, obviously you're not being cast in anything that's remotely sexy, and then when you become a woman, the parts shift. 

And most of the time when you're an attractive young woman, they want you to be romantic or sexy. For me that was just a natural thing. I was comfortable with that part of myself.

My parents were good at keeping [acting] sort of unimportant to me for a long time in the sense that I never knew how much money I made until I was 18... 

it remained just a thing I enjoyed doing, and if a kid is going to do it -- if anybody is going to do it -- it has to be for the joy. 

I always say, if there's anything else you can do and be happy, you should do it , because there is just so much rejection and sacrifice involved. 

You'd better just think it's the bee's knees.

Melora Hardin*--*--[Yahoo! chat, 080200]

her official  site: melora.com

Acting as a very young man was fun. Then it became 
really hard. Through the teen magazine years... I hated those years. 

There were times when I was just a confused teenager and the whole world wanted to believe that they knew who I was and seemed to have a very good idea of who I was. Everybody [did] except for me. 

I  remember sitting back and reading thousands of letters from boys and girls all over the country telling me how wonderful they thought I was and thinking, 'But they have no idea. I'm just so lost and so confused and so scared. Why can't I talk about that? No one wants to hear about that.'

The truth is I don't know. I can't tell you for certain that I've lost opportunities or that I haven't lost opportunities. 

Do I think that it means that I have to be a better actor? Yeah probably. It sounds ridiculous to say this but I heard Sally Field a long time ago in an interview talking about how they would tell her when she was young that she wasn't pretty enough to be a leading lady and how she knew then that she had to be better than most. 

I've reminded myself of that a lot of times through what has sometimes been a difficult experience. Now, I'm actually happier with my career than I've ever been. 

 Chad Allen 

from Gay Wired interview 9/28/2001 
posted on Chad Allen Online site: kclark.net/chad/--

I think just generally walking around. When you're on stage performing and everyone is looking at you it's easy to be scared of saying the wrong thing or putting something in the wrong place or falling over, there are so many things. 

But in everyday life I am not so self-aware and I am just more confident. I drive around by myself a lot and I used to always park as close to the door as possible and try to run in and out of wherever I was as fast as I could. Now I know that I can take care of myself if I needed to.

The confidence is necessary because when you are working with these stunt people, if you can't hit your mark or lift someone with the right strength you are going to go down with them and hurt yourself. You can't be prissy. I was prissy in the beginning and hurt myself a few times, I learned the hard way.

It was 15-hour days followed by nine hours in which to go home, wash your face, go to bed, get up, and drive back to the location. ... I was 18. It was a very strange experience -- "guerilla filmmaking" I call it. It felt like making a documentary. I started having dreams about either killing people or getting killed myself, and I couldn't leave the character for the whole week that I did it. And then when I saw it, it was kind of a shock because it felt so real. I was amazed by how different I was on the screen.

[Would you like to take it that far again?]  Oh, I would love to. That is still one of the films that I'm most proud of, and to me it's what acting should feel like.   **Alicia Witt**[Interview mag., Feb. 2001]

Heather Matarazzo: Yes. I'm very picky about the films I do and I like them to have a message that will reach people in some way, make them think and maybe change their lives for the better. That message of acceptance is very important because I think as a society we often lose sight of that. Hopefully, a film like this will make people think more. ...

EG: Have you become a role model for girls? 

HM: I hope so. That's why I love what I do. I like to get a message across to young girls who are just going through adolescence that it's okay to be whoever you are and it's okay to be an independent woman and it's okay to wear size 12 jeans and have really great curves. I hope they think of me as someone who doesn't obsess over material things and that they will think of themselves as beautiful.  ***[ElleGirl interview, April 3 2002]

A lot of your career as an actor is having a rich life, going out and having experiences that are real so you have something to draw on. 

If you're constantly in the cycle of work, work, work it's really hard to grow. Actors and actresses that take time off to lead interesting lives are much more interesting to watch. 

I think in order to be happy doing films, and live away from home for three months, and be uprooted, and have a hundred and fifty people in the crew that are your new best friends - you really have to have a good idea of who you are.

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If you just surround yourself with make-believe all the time, you're going to be sort of empty when you're up there on the screen. Those are not the people you're compelled to watch.

Even though drug abuse was on the rise at that time across the nation, a 1996 Wayne State University survey of former child stars showed that child actors were three times more likely than the general population to drink and take drugs.

Mackenzie Phillips, 41, who in 1983 was fired from "One Day at a Time" due to her drug habit, has been clean and sober for nearly 10 years. She speaks out against drug abuse, plays the mother on the Disney Channel series "So Weird"... She says a number of factors contributed to her addiction...

   from article: Babes in Hollywoodland by Valerie Kuklenski, Daily News, Aug. 26, 2001

**book:*Joal Ryan.  Former Child Stars: The Story of America's Least Wanted