I’ve been reading Mark Vieira’s book on Irving Thalberg while waiting out the blizzard. Books about Hollywood and filmmaking provide a lot of insight into what it takes to be successful: preparation and competitiveness (Katharine Hepburn), dogged persistence (Alec Guinness), and in many cases just being in the right place at the right time.

I am encouraged especially by actresses who succeed late in their careers. In 1930, MGM’s biggest female stars were Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo and – Marie Dressler, a 60-year-old, overweight, self-described ugly duckling. Dressler was a vaudeville comedienne who’d done a few low-budget film comedies when screenwriter Frances Marion suggested her for a screenplay she’d just written called Min and Bill. It was the kind of heavyweight part Dressler later said she’d been waiting for her whole life, and she won the Oscar for Best Actress for it the following year.

Dressler isn’t the only one. Beulah Bondi, an Emmy winner and Oscar nominee, had a highly successfully film career, often playing the mother of stars like James Stewart. Jessica Tandy worked sporadically while raising her kids and thought she was washed up as an actress; she saw a revival of her career late in life and won the Oscar for Driving Miss Daisy at age 80. Most of Joan Plowright’s film work has come after she turned 60. Ditto Angela Lansbury who had a successful TV series and just picked up another Tony Award on Broadway at age 84.

Perhaps one secret is to outlive your competition. I look at the headshots online of the thousands of aspiring actresses and wonder, how does any one of them break through that? There are so many of them. They’re all gorgeous, they all have great figures, they all have beautiful hair.

For actors who do break through and become stars it’s often hard to maintain their star status over time. Someone on screen who was once so sexy and is now wrinkled, bald, overweight, and stoop-shouldered can be painful to watch. It makes you think that Garbo and Dietrich had the right idea – at some point you just drop out of sight and leave your public with their nice memories.

But there are lessons to be learned from those who do succeed. Actors like Lansbury, Plowright, and Michael Caine maintain a certain elegance on screen and seem to avoid roles where they are seen as weak or ill. Even in Caine’s recent film Is Anybody There?, where he plays a man living in an old folks home, he doesn’t seem to fit in with the other doddering residents. He has strength and spirit, and he’s the star. Similarly Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall, Jack Nicholson, and John Travolta hang on to their tough guy image into their later years. It makes me think that it isn’t one’s chronological age that’s the critical factor, it’s on-screen vitality. Perhaps that’s the key – outlive the competition and don’t give casting directors the impression you’re going to drop dead in the middle of filming!

I am putting this information in a safe place to refer to later. For now, getting dressed, getting the snow shovel, getting the hell out of this house!