If You Ask Me - Betty White [13]
He’s been gone all these years, but as the memories washed over me, I would swear my dad was standing right there. It is a moment I continue to replay in my mind.
My eternal thanks to the Forest Service for this honor, which is so deeply appreciated. It truly was one of the greatest moments of my life.
I shall continue to work my hardest to spread the word that not only must we protect our wilderness areas—we must appreciate them. They are an endangered species.
ASSOCIATED PRESS/CLIFF OWEN
ON STAGE FRIGHT
I can remember my first attack of stage fright. I was in grammar school, in the third grade. And I had to get up in front of the class and recite a poem.
“Little Machi met a cameraman on a Chinatown Street one day....”
That’s how it started, and I was panic-stricken. I don’t remember if I made it through the poem at all, but I can remember what it felt like.
Still, I somehow managed to continue as a young girl, participating in plays throughout grammar school and high school. In fact, I wrote the play commemorating graduation from Horace Mann Grammar School—which was called Land of the Rising Sun. We were studying Japan at the time, and like any good red-blooded American girl, I wrote myself into the lead! I also wrote a prologue for the show, explaining that it was traditional Japanese theater and props were held by non-actors. The play opened with the princess talking to a nightingale. Since one of the football players was going to be onstage holding a birdcage, clearly this all had to be explained in the prologue.
Guess who spoke the prologue?
So I was the star and the interlocutor. And anything else I could be. Remember who wrote it!
But I never outgrew the stage fright.
To this day, it still happens—every single time I go onstage.
Jay Leno and I are good friends, and I appear on his show all the time. We greet each other before the show and have a catch-up in the makeup room. Suddenly it’s showtime. I’m in the wings and those butterflies appear. Ballplayers have rituals. They may touch each corner of the plate with the bat to calm themselves down. I have no ritual. I have—butterflies.
Color Day at Beverly Hills High. I sang “Heart and Soul.”
BETTY WHITE PRIVATE COLLECTION
So you work your way through it.
Let me be clear: You are never calm. But your job is to deliver.
In the case of Jay Leno, or Craig Ferguson or David Letterman or Jimmy Fallon, suddenly the conversation gets interesting and it carries you along.
Just hope the audience comes with you.
At the 2011 SAG Awards, when my name was announced, I was so shocked—it was so unexpected that I would win the award, given the other nominees, that my first thought was, They read the wrong name. Then I got up to the podium and thought, Oh, no, I’m going to have to say something! On air, I might look calm, but if you knew what was going on in my head, your own head would spin.
None of the tricks I try work. I’m lucky if I can breathe.
It’s amazingly common for actors to have some form of stage fright. It just manifests itself in different ways.
I remember Rue McClanahan used to say, “That’s one thing I never get! I never get stage fright!”
I think she was lying through her teeth.
NBCU PHOTO BANK
You’re taking a chance every time you step in front of an audience.
So is the stage fright due to fear of forgetting lines? Fear of drawing a blank on what to say? Fear of making a fool of oneself?
All of the above.
Rue may have been the only actor I’ve known to say she didn’t feel stage fright.
REUTERS/FRED PROUSER/LANDOV
TYPECASTING
After more than thirty hours a week on live television for four years, there were those who thought of me as sickeningly sweet. They’d say, “She’ll make your teeth fall out!” But if we met at a party, they would tell me, “Oh, you’re not as bad as I thought you were!”
I was certainly typecast as icky sweet on Life with Elizabeth and even Hollywood on Television. But then Sue Ann Nivens came along