Opus Dentist

Did everyone watch the Emmy Awards last night???? Who was your favorite? Personally, I LOVED Claire Dane’s yellow gown that delicately accented her tiny baby bump! I also really loved Nicole Kidman’s dress, but I think someone cryogenically froze her face years before death. I didn’t know you were supposed to do that. She is going to be one, HOT, reanimated corpse in 150 years. Walt Disney is going to be bummed he didn’t get the Nicole Kidman package.

Do you know what I hate? They rarely, if ever show the men!!! I am freee-ands with a lot of actors, mostly B’way, but a few in TV etc, and those menfolk can really clean up!!! Granted, it takes them ten minutes to get ready and not 4 hours, but still….They spend an inordinate amount of time working out and bleaching teeth and whatnot, I feel like it should be appreciated. At least an ass shot or two. I think we’re entitled to that as viewers.

But let me explain to everyone something about actors….

Looking good is a GIGANTIC part of the job. NOT EATING is another. The minute some actor/actress tells you they eat shake shack followed by a nap, and then they roll out of bed with perfect highlights, teeth that are whiter than spring clouds, and abs you can bounce a quarter off of? It’s bullshit.

I am fairly “average looking” for an actor. Yet, in order to maintain the amount of muscle I need for the project I’m currently working on, I hit the gym; A LOT. My body tends to lose muscle quickly, and build muscle slowly, so I am at the gym CONSISTENTLY six days a week, 4 of which are bodypump or crossfit or just plain ol’ lifting. There is ALWAYS cardio. I walk every damn where. I calculate protein, carbohydrates, calories, and nutrients. I don’t go hungry, and I DO have a bit of a snacking problem, and I KNOW it holds me back. I’m working on it. I’m now in a cinnamon gum chewing frenzy. I look like a cow chewing her cud. I brush my teeth like it’s religious ritual. I’m like the Opus Dentist. No chains, all floss. I get my hair blown out before photo shoots and auditions so that it looks like G-d had the benevolence to grace me with long, silky strands instead of my usual Slovak fro.

If it sounds obsessive, it is. Think about it this way, if you are a teacher, you grade papers meticulously, going over every line with your red pen of doom. If you are a doctor or a nurse, you do your CEU’s every year, make sure you sanitize your hands to the point of cracking knuckles, and you read charts with such a discerning eye that nothing passes your notice. If you’re a chef, you develop new recipes and tweak them until they are just perfect. This is the actor’s equivalent.

Most people’s jobs don’t give them the time to do that. It saddens me that people feel the need to compare themselves to people whose job it is to look the way they do. Can you shuffle off to your dermatologist to get a zit injected if one appears too large? No? I can count THREE of my friends who did this last week. (a little TMI, but it may have something to do with the fact we seem to have sync’d our red tent times together. effing period pimples.)

If you don’t look good, you don’t work, and you don’t eat. Actors, dancers, models, all the same. A nurse can still be an exceptional nurse if she has ten pounds she’d like to lose. A doc with a belly is no less a great doc. An actor with a belly doesn’t get hired. It’s just that simple. Actors have built in time to work at it. A teacher with 2 kids, 30 students, an hour long commute, and a pomeranian, has to MAKE time for it. I commend them MOREhugeaboveandbeyond for finding the time to do it. Also? Being a teacher is REALLLLLY hard. I have NO idea how elementary teachers do it. I’d go batshit crazy inside of a week, and probably think of selling myself as a non-russian Russian mail order bride…to RUSSIA in order to escape the rugrats. Things would get ugly, quickly. Really ugly.

Speaking of counting everything.

I made trail mix protein breakfast bars. They’re good. Eat them.