” A Pale Green Mermaid Blog “
On making the move to Hollywood
“The summer I was 21 I was cutting tobacco in Kentucky for a living, making $3 an hour. That’s when you decide you’ve got to move to Hollywood. [Laughs] My cousin Miguel Ferrer and his father, Jose Ferrer, came to Kentucky to do a movie and they got me a job as an extra, at $20 a day, which is good money when you’re 21. And then I think Miguel said, ‘You ought to come out to Hollywood, be an actor.’ And I was like, okay. I had an old beat-up Monte Carlo, it was running on about four cylinders, and I bought a case of oil and sort of nursed it from Kentucky to Los Angeles. I pulled up in the driveway of my Aunt Rosemary’s house in Beverly Hills, this very rich place, and my car had rust all over it.”
On success and his aunt, Rosemary Clooney
“My aunt Rosemary was a great jazz singer. I asked her, ‘Why are you a better singer now when you’re 70 years old and you can’t hold a note?’ And she goes, ‘Because I don’t have to prove I can sing anymore. Just serve the music, just serve the material.’ I’m leaning toward that [philosophy] more and more—in my career, in life.
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Behind every great guy always stands a great Aunt.
I just so so so identify with this guy guy guy, he is a real person talking about real life…
