idolization

Since I've been about fourteen I've idolized Bernadette Peters. For years, I even sent her a birthday card. I've seen her live on stage multiple times, once in Gypsy, a concert in San Francisco, and twice at the Cerritos Center. I have multiple autographs of hers. I own her performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London and I could spend HOURS listening to her Sondheim Etc. HOURS. I used to clean my room to it and I would just keep it on repeat. I lent it out once and someone left a fingerprint on it and it started skipping (my CD, because this was before I had an ipod or even itunes) and I cried until I figured out it wasn't a scratch and could be wiped off and the CD back to new.

I feel like I've been unfaithful to her. She was always first in my acting idolization. There were always others but she was paramount. If she plays and I can go see her, I do. I've never been to a typical concert, a rock band or a pop concert. But I've seen her three times. Once my family accompanied me, once a friend came along. And once, I bought a nose bleed ticket and sat all the way up in the back all by myself but it didn't matter.

But lately, another actress, who isn't even a theatre actress has hypnotized me. She was always on my list of actresses I admired. I tend to like quirky vulnerable people and she is that. I can't say that any of my top six are particularly famous (and these are people who are currently alive, because if I include the Hepburns well, most people know them). They are quirky. Vulnerable. Spunky. But they are not super well known names, with the exception of Idina Menzel but she's not Hollywood famous.

Bernadette Peters. Two time Tony winner and several time nominee.
Kristin Chenoweth Tony Award Winner. I've seen her live too, but she didn't give autographs.
Idina Menzel. Tony Awad Winner and probably the most famous out of them although Chenoweth is well known. But Rent...
Carrie Fisher. Yes, of Star Wars fame.
Karen Allen. Indiana Jone's Marion Ravenwood, and awesome knitress. Seriously. Google her and you will find her knitting page.

And my latest obsession. The one who has replaced Bernadette for the time being. Helena Bonham Carter. Who has never won an academy award. (Shame on the academy I say.) She's the epitome of what I want to be in an actress. She's quirky. Vulnerable, oh so very vulnerable. She just opens her eyes really wide and I want to cry. Spunky. She plays a wide variety of roles. People thought she was going to be typecast as a corset queen and how wrong she proved them. I love period pieces and she's gotten to do many of those. But she's also got the commercial thing going-Harry Potter series anyone? Or Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland to open March 5th. And she's got a cult favorite under her belt-Fight Club. She's done everything. Kids movies, to super risque, her Wings of a Dove love scene was considered the most controversial of an Oscar nominated film ever at the time I believe. She's comfortable with her life and in her skin and in her acting. Or at least she appears to be.

I think the biggest reason she has stolen my heart from Bernadette (not that I'll ever stop loving Bernadette) is that she looks a bit like me. I don't look anything like Bernadette Peters. My hair is wavy at best, and it will never be that kind of ringlet curly. And I'm not a redhead. Not even close. I'm a brunette, similarly colored to Helena's hair. I'm not pale and they both are, but my facial shape resembles Helena's more closely then it does Bernadette's. They are both about my height. But it's the hair that really does it. If my hair is at all curly, it's curly in the way that Helena's is, the sort of kinky waves and body that resembles sex hair, or not brushing it properly. It makes me feel like I'm connected.

I feel almost guilty because Bernadette was my favorite for so long and it's wrong to throw her aside like this when she is the Broadway actress. She has DONE what I want to do and Helena has never done a live musical. Also in terms of singing voices, while Helena's is passable-she did sing in Sweeney Todd and Sondheim approved her for the role of Lovett so all you critics can shut it (if it's good enough for Sondheim it's good enough for me, he wrote the musical), Bernadette is... well she's BERNADETTE PETERS. She's fantastic. Utterly amazing.

Maybe my subconscious is telling me I should try movies.

I feel like I need to reconnect with my love of Bernadette. There is room in my admiration for them both.