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What I've Learnt - Sigrid Thornton · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm so excited to welcome my next guest, the beautiful Secret Thornton, icon of Australian screen, television, and stage.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: From her roles in Sea Change to Wentworth to a streetcar named Desire, this woman is an Australian treasure.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I am so happy to have her here to talk about what she's learnt on her journey so far.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sigrid, welcome.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're thrilled to have you on board.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's lovely to be here.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: We'd like to have a chat about the challenges that many of us face, but in particular in the arts industry, it's become apparent there's a sort of an epidemic of anxiety, depression, mental health issues.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: What is your experience of some of these things and have you been observing some of these elements within your workplace and in the industry itself?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've been observing those new encroaching, you know, that darkness coming into society in general.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: And of course the arts reflects society.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's the most, it's the most high visibility reflection of society in my personal view.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: I am a bit biased though.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I think therefore we're going to see we're going to see it in spades in in the arts industry.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's also, of course, an industry which lends itself to high anxiety.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Partly because of the lifestyle that you know that it it um uh it in engages people with uh and that people need to engage in to be part of it.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but also because it's um it's people need to be completely open to to to be artists.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: So they need to kind of they need to lay themselves bare, and that that really requires quite a lot of it it needs if you're gonna lay yourself bare and allow people to sort of scour your your insides, you've got to actually be prepared for what can can come up and can come out and what can encroach.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And for yourself, how have you prepared yourself?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is it something that you personally have experienced?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've been doing this for a long time.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um clearly you've seen, I'm sure, in your own development, the um the challenges of trying to be authentic, real, in touch with yourself, but also protect yourself.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: How how do you develop that resilience and and what sort of um tools have you got or developed over time?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm an untrained actor.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I've never really been uh and and having said that, I think it's probably something that um uh drama schools and institutions maybe need to start to look at more and more.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh because I was going to say, I was about to say, look, I'm an untrained actor, so I haven't had the experience of being taught any particular methods by rote.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I've picked things up along the way and I've developed my own set of, you know, my my own MO if you like.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Having said that, it's kind of it's kind of changed over the years, and it varies from from project to project, too, the way in which I I protect myself.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I also used to think that I was someone who kind of never brought my work home with me.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: But as I've grown um uh and matured, I've and my I like to think my work has grown and matured, I have come to realize much more keenly the inextricable connection between one's work and one's life.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: And in other words, when someone asks you, you know, actors are always asked by journalists, you know, what are the similarities between you and the character?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the similarities between the actor and the character are absolute.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: They are complete, they are they are intrinsic.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so that it so that it's become, as I've as I've started to work in that kind of more holistic way, if you for want of a better description, um, over the time over time, I've found more and more that it's it's it's more and more difficult not to bring my work home with me.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and and and of course, my work is uh I feel very passionately about my work.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it is something that um it is a genuine extension of who I am as a person.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, it it's it you know, my work feeds me and I feed my work, and that it's a it's a circular motion.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, I I've had experiences in my working life that have been um that have taken me to quite difficult places, I'd have to say.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it's to do with um things that are going on in life while you're doing a job or playing a role.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh but other times it's to do with the role itself and and the way in which it it kind of feeds certain aspects of your own personality.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because to to to um try to kind of break a role down and enter into the spirit of the writing and the structure of a role, you need to kind of um magnify certain aspects of your own personality through your own by by virtue of your imagination.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And when that role um it requires dark places to be entered into, uh those those darker aspects of the imagination come to the foreground.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And they are and and it's it it can be harder and harder to quash them, depending on the how important that working experience is to the person.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think so, for example, streetcar.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was about to say, so Blanche Dubois.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so where did the the the Where did that take you?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: The best example, I think.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, a very a very powerful role, one I'm sure you you completely imbued and and embraced.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Where did that take you and how did that how did that affect you, that playing that role?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was really uh it's it it it's one it's it's the one of the it's it's probably the most magnificent working experience I've ever had.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: I should preface everything by saying that.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: But the flip side is that it was really like going into war every night for me.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: It felt to me like I was going into battle every night.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: It felt like I and every night before I had to go on, I sort of didn't want to go there.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to, I I really didn't want to go to that place.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I knew I had to, it was like I had to force myself forward, ever, onward, ever, onward, if you like, like a sort of like a play soldier.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that once, once I was on the stage and the and I was being, and I was then being swept up by the play, which is what happens to the actor, but most especially with great writing, the play sweeps the actor up, and the actor is then, and then the actor is then on the streetcar's a perfect example, you know, metaphor for this because it's you know it's it is a freight train.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but it sweeps you up onto the freight train and and it doesn't dump you, it dumps you, it's like a wave, I suppose, dumps you back on the sand at the end of the night.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's exactly what happened to me with streetcar.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Where I would, I would, I would kind of tiptoe into the water going, fuck it's cold, really, really, fucking cold.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: But then the wave would come and and I would and I and I would be in it and it would be magnificent because the writing is so extraordinary, and that that woman is so amazing, and she's and her madness is so profound because it it links into every woman.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it takes us into every woman, every woman's mind, and every woman's heart, and every woman's gut, and every woman's soul.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's it's a beautiful, beautiful thing to be part of, you know.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, it's it's um, but having said that, at the end of the night, you know, um more than one was glass of wine needed to be consumed to kind of to recover?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: To to recover.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh to recover.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, of course, there's a sort of there's an initial sense of recovery and relief that happens every night.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: But then, but over time, there's a kind of trickle-down effect playing a particular kind of role.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: You seem streetcar's a perfect example of this because um I'm told, having researched the role, of course, as one does, that the women who've played it, you know, uh for long periods of time have got a little bit mad.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I got that when I played her, even for a relatively short by these kinds of other standards season.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: When I got home, I was in a difficult place.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, when when I when I finished the season, I should say.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: I I it took on I needed I needed to recover.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I took myself off to a little bit of, you know, to a beautiful woman who is a therapist that I now know who's gorgeous and who's really um just right for me.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And gradually I took myself, found myself uh coming out of that place.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: But interestingly enough, as this is of course, of course, you know, life-work connection is again, as I said, absolute.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it it coincided, of course, my recovery from that play with all sorts of other very difficult things that were going on in my life, which I believe was, you know, pretty insanely synchronistic.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: So so that, you know, there was not just one factor.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: I understand.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So what you're saying is that, yes, of course.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So those things were feeding that emotional state that you were in.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I was feeding them too.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because because because emotional um disturbance and distress and anxiety feeds the environment around the person, and and that and the feedback loop begins.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that you know, you you create, of course, you're creating, you create a more uh a less stable environment.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: The more the less stable you are feeling, you you know, your your instability vibrates and it create it creates instability around you, and it comes, and then that and then that comes back.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it exacerbates the state of anxiety that that the person that one feels.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Does that absolutely make sense?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And also, I suppose you had to find a way to ensure that you could sustain what you were doing and not allow that to unravel you.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, directly.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: But but also to, you know, the the trick is to, I think, is to kind of one needs to embrace completely the the the necessities of the necessity.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is necessarily.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: You need to kind of really go there.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and but you also need to protect.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what you what this is what we started out talking about.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: How do you protect yourself?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it it is in and in the case of streetcar, I had wonderful people around me, I had a good support system, but I was away that the it another thing that was made it slightly more difficult experience for me was that I was away from my family, which for me is a hugely important support mechanism.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm a very lucky woman because I I met my life partner at a young age, and even though I'd been acting professionally from uh you know from a younger age, I was very young.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was still a teenager when I met my now husband.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh he has been a rock for me.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: He's a very um very different kind of person.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and uh even though he really understands the process of performance and he he's he's got enormous empathy for it, and he really he finds it a very exciting process to watch and observe, um, he he's he's kind of it's just so not him.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: So he's he's able to be kind of stand back and observe and be a tremendous support, s support network for an actor.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: So being away from the family So being away from that was also you know, you know, a little bit more challenging.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that brings us to that concept of motherhood and work and the challenge uh as a mother myself, I I understand very much what you're talking about, how you need that strength, but you also have to do what you gotta do.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: So while there's the support system, sometimes you have to be away from that and and find your way through.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So so how how have you reconciled being a hard-working mother and and wife?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's challenging, juggling the two.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Very challenging.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't think I've reconciled it.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't I I don't think I don't think it's reconcilable.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think in a in a kind of neat way.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think it I think it's um, you know, I I I used to think that um as a young, very young person, young, confident, high-spirited, passionate.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: I used to think passionate all those cliches.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I used to think that um, you know, that that that I was going to be able to have my cake and eat it too.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I realize now uh that what I all I ever should have needed, because all I was ever going to get, was maybe most of the cake, certainly not the whole cake at the whole time.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: What I was going at the same time, what I was going to be able to do in my life at best was to have a slice at a time.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that there are there is a, you know, there's a there is a time, turn, turn, turn, what is it?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: For every season, turn, turn, turn.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it and a time for every purpose under heaven.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, so I'm sorry I sang that so badly.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: No, you didn't.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was beautiful.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: I do, I love the musical reference.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I know, I love that.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And they knew that there's a timing for everything, a time to be born, a time to die.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, in between the birth and the death, if you're lucky, you get most of that cake.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And as a working mother, it's really um that the the inability to have the whole cake is highlighted.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because you know, you can't actually be uh a working mother without guilt about being away from your children.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: You just it just doesn't have you are.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to talk to you.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's true.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um it doesn't really exist.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: So what you are doing is you you're putting yourself into a slightly sort of unbalanced, conflicted state, but you're doing it because you know that you that it's that you you kind of need to go there, you need to go to that place.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, going to difficult places is what life is actually about, in my view.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, jumping, it's you know, this is why it's one of the reasons I love being a performer, because jumping off a cliff is the nature of performance work.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think that we need to kind of do that in life.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think that, you know, the the more the more difficult the role for the actor, the higher the recommendation that the actor should do it.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and the and and and I think that that's it's a bit like life.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think that, you know, the people who are having the richest, fullest lives are not actually having completely happy lives.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: What does that even mean?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um, they're not necessarily having totally secure lives.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: I confess that with a little few more years under my belt, the idea of contentment has a slightly more um warm resonance to it.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: But nevertheless, I I'd be bored out of my mind if I was content for very long.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the comfort zone is not everything it's cracked up to be.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, because what you're saying is that it's okay to be out of the comfort zone.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, being out of the comfort zone is critical to growth and development.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's the only thing, it's the only it's the only means by which growth occurs.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: In my personal view.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the thing.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: And growth doesn't occur uh you know, in in a state of happiness, in a state of bliss.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that is a that is a that is a uh a sort of relatively static state.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh the the the state of growth um and kind of human enhancement um is is is is f found through sort of pain and suffering, actually.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And do you discuss this with your children?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because you've got older children.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, adult children.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Similar to me.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I find that an interesting notion.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how do you inform the next generation about that?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because in many ways, we're sort of in that that climate where there's a lot of cushioning, there's a lot of encouragement to everything will be all right, darling, that sort of approach.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or trying to imbue the next generation with exactly what you've just outlined.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Part of mentoring that generation is saying it's okay to feel anxious, to be afraid, to push through those boundaries.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is that something you do with your your children?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: I've really tried to do that.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: But here lies the rub.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think that, you know, um it's somewhere I heard a new term the other day.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked, there's been a lot of discussion about helicopter parents, hasn't there?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Who they hover above, right?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have time to do that.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: The new one is the new one.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Lawnmower parents.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm one of them.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now have a guess what that might be.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's see.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: You get the lawnmower and you mow the lawn, and there's all this grass, this long grass, but you mow a really nice, clean, neat patch for your children and lovely, nice, neat path.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: That they can walk uncluttered.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: That they can walk down.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, no gristled notes.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: No bumps.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's very interesting.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe that the baby boomers are giving have given birth to a whole lot of children who are, you know, have lawn mower parents.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: I believe that the baby, what I'm saying.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Very interesting concept.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of next generation on from the baby boomer boomers, I'm sort of in between there, lawnmower parents.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because I have to say, I I try to do as I've just said, but when our son, when I was in hospital with our son, who's now 32, I remember thinking, I remember whenever he would cry, I would burst into tears.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And about kind of a couple of days in in those days, back in those days, you got a week in hospital.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: I got that to the OCS, I remember that time.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, you got a week.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And and Tom once said to me, you know, maybe day three or four, he said, What's this, why do you why do you cry every time the baby cries?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: He's gonna cry, he's because he's gonna cry.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: I said, but I I just can't bear the idea he would ever suffer.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I just can't bear to see him in pain.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that is actually what a parent, you know, experiences every day.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: You you don't really want your child to have pain.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that we are much more focused on our children than we were focused on upon.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I are other things.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we are, and and uh it's to do with kind of concentration spans, it's to do with the pace of life, it's to do with the fact that we're trying to cram a whole lot of stuff into our lives, a lot more stuff.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and the the times have definitely changed.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know, long gone, many generations uh away from seen and not heard for children.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: But in the interim, there have been various stages, and we're at the stage where we have focused in far not too much attention, but major attention on our children, thereby filling them with all kinds of um anxiety to perform.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, children always uh, you know, it's kind of in the DNA, isn't it?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's it's the it's it's the natural way for a child to to aim to please uh his or her parents.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: But um, but I think that this is that that this incr extraordinary focus has given rise to, and the lawnmower parenting, has given rise to a generation of children who are not only faced with this sort of ridiculously short kind of concentration span that's born out of social media, etc.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: But um but the the the concept that then that life um really uh shouldn't be that difficult.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh because presentation has become so tremendously important, um, you know, the sort of superficial presentation has become paramount by virtue of social media.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: This is a the way you look theory that you will have heard a million times before.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: But but you know, social media engagement, a full social media engagement, requires the person, girl or boy, or man or woman, to um to kind of present, present the best, their best, put their best face forward, um, and not necessarily their most genuine self.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I and I think that this is, you know, I think this has given rise to kind of genuine kind of um confusion in terms of, you know, at how do I individuate?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: What how do I individuate?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: What what makes me unique?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: What is it that makes me a unique human being?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: What is it that distinguishes me?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Is it good how can I be uh how can I be unusual and still at the same time kind of have this even more enormous pressure to kind of be the same as everybody else?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: And not be fragile in the process.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no allowance for that, too.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're meant to be.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you're meant to be.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're meant to be projecting brave, strong, successful, beautiful, yeah, um uh yeah, this and yeah, everything.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, and and yet we have uh it would make sense that to set those high expectations constantly.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you and I grew up in an era where, you know, when we're away, we're away.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: When we were doing things, it was irrelevant what anybody else was doing.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: We had no knowledge.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: This constant sense of being part of a an ever-presentation.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and quite sort of pervasive.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's um, I mean, you know, I I far be it from me to really, I do really get the idea that um we grew up in a generation where I remember my grandfather, you know, my my darling, you know, very late grandfather now, you know, listening to Daddy Cool, because I had an album of Daddy Cool.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I used to play this bloody thing over and over again.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And Daddy Cool was, you know, really cool and it was fantastic.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: But it was rock and roll.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember grandpa saying to me, I said, What is this with rock and roll?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: It just all sounds the same, and it's so repetitive.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's no development in the songs, it's just dunk, dunk, dunka, dunka, dunka, dunka, dunka.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And he was right.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: But he couldn't, he didn't, you know, so so what I'm trying to exemplif exempl exemplify is that of course there are things about this current generation that we still don't understand.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: We we don't understand the advanced.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And or disadvantages fully yet, because we're only going to be able to understand them retrospectively properly.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: But we doesn't it shouldn't stop us from analysing them as best we can, and that's what we're doing now.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the the way that I see it, and that I I tend to I tend to kind of see the negative more than the positive, I suppose, with social media, for the kinds of reasons that we're discussing.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And to your children, in your role as a mum, do you do you think that they they are comfortable talking to you about these issues, or are they like, Mum, you are so behind the eight ball, you don't know what you're dealing with?
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're on social media, obviously, to some degree, but it's an interesting notion that there's a generation that we because because it feeds the anxiety and the depression coming back to the mental health framework.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is also intrinsically contributing.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: No question.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely no question.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then of course, you know, the the sort of the stats are suggesting coming out with this now, we're finally getting some historical evidence to that to this effect now that um that that's the case.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but yeah, no, no, my kids, look, we discuss all sorts of things.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm a pretty, you know, we're we're very close and and and um and I I think I kind of, you know, I'm a Luddite, uh but and I don't um, you know, I'm not so especially interested in social media uh for myself.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but you know, for what happened to me, for example, Facebook set me up with a page without me even wanting to set up a page.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: They sort of said, well, there's been this interest and we're setting up a page, and the page was was was pretty, you know, low end because it was just a grab bag of stuff, forcing me to start my own Facebook page, uh professional Facebook page, uh, to in order to sort of clean up the act.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's quite affrighting, isn't it?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: But they can do that.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: But it's it is, you know, it's it's it's pervasive.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Mind you, I don't think I've ever looked at it.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's it's and I wouldn't even know how to friend someone.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's actually it's a different gym.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a different world.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've got real.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And tell me, in in terms of um, you know, the notion of happiness, what makes you happy?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what what do I mean this this notion of happiness and and do you think it's something we should aspire to, or do you think it's just a little um mythological concept?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is it normal for us to be what's normal, what's what's not normal?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a really it's an ongoing question, isn't it?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: What is happiness?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: What does it really mean?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I think I think it's actually more about the striving than the actual happiness.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think that's the life that we're having.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um it's not really uh about, and and you know, and actually to to be able to, wouldn't it be great to be able to bottle those moments uh and just have a little bit, you know, when you feel elation, joy, um, or even, you know, that kind of that calm, that joyful calm that we were talking about earlier, and we taught we described it as contentment.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: But um, if we could bottle those and just have a little nip every now and again, that'd be really nice.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if we could control it.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: But we can't control.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: There are certain things that we can control, and there are other things that we can't control.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: But it's the striving after that that that's the that's the stuff of life.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's the in that's the good bit.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it kind of bugger it, but that's what emerges.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a bit of a drag, but that's what it is, and that's what art is, that's what beauty is, that's what that's what ugly is, that's what life is.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's not all, it's not neat, it's very messy.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the messiness is that's kind of the good stuff too.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's so important to to, from a mentor perspective, to share with with people who because saying life is messy changes the lens.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's actually it's very helpful to let's say the younger generation or people coming up the ranks, even in the arts industry, yeah, to say it's okay to fall over, to be messy, to be fragile.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there's not enough of that.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's as you say, it's there's just too much pressure for them to be perfect, happy, etc.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, of course, we know, and I mean, on a much more sort of serious note, what we do know is that when things really, really go wrong, um uh what's happening is that the person is experiencing a sense of hopelessness, that there's nothing on the other side of this experience that I'm having now, this feeling that I'm in.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what you know we need to try and help people avoid.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: That hopelessness is is bitter and there's there's no more bitter place for a human to be.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and um, you know, it's it's it's the most self-destructive place that someone can go to.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's when people do all sorts of dreadful things to themselves.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: So um that is the kind, but if people can be um helped to, I suppose, you know, if you if you w bring it back to my own personal experience and you're asking about how I would how I handle this with my own children, um, for example, when they've had, even as little children, it's that kind of old adage, this will pa this too will pass, you know.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: I always say things life is ephemeral and everything does pass, and we do too, of course.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: But we want to make it as, you know, we want to make it a a good a good and preferably wild ride.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we want to know that that that these experiences, even as we sit in them, in those painful experiences, that that that there's something more outside that deep painful experience, and that on the other side, life will almost certainly get better, be better.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: That the person that that I will be a stronger person, I will actually be able to cope with the next knock between my two two front teeth, even better.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, and certainly experience does teach a person that, you know, you you you kind of know I've been there before, and even though even when you're having a pretty a pretty rough patch, if you've been there before and come out the other side, you can know from from from learn having learned from learned experience that that the on the other side there's something kind of fresh and new and hopefully kind of even better for having had the bitterness.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And tell me, if you could go back in time, just briefly, what would you say to your 10-year-old self?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: All these questions, I'm so bad at them.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um not bad.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: 10-year-old self.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what would I say to my 10-year-old self?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: I would say, be yourself.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I should actually preface the answer by saying it's not as if at 10 years old I wasn't being myself.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: But if I would say, yeah, I think that's an important piece of advice for a 10-year-old, be yourself.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone else has taken.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: I like it.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: And what about your 20-year-old self?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: What would you do?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: 20-year-old self, I would say go for it.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: And your 30-year-old self?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um relax.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: And your 40-year-old self.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Stop worrying about what everybody else thinks and actually look after yourself for a change.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's 50.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, wait, something like that.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, we'll get to 50.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: We'll just creep up to 50.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: 50 is have fun.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Have fun.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: 50.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Have fun.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: I totally agree.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, thank you so much for your time, Sigrid.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's been really beautiful and and insightful, and we value that you've spent this time to come and share your incredible stories and journey.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if they're incredible, but they're there's just someone else's stories, and it's valuable to share our stories with one another.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's important.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I I I I really respect um and and and value what you're doing too, because it's a tremendously important thing for young people to understand that um that that resilience is a a f really big factor in, you know, there's a lot of focus on success for artists, actors, who let's what are we what do we call them?
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: Artists.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: Artists, yes, of course, argument.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but what does it again we've asked the question what does success mean?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's only, you know, i it's it's not possible to have any kind of success, uh, you know, on any value system without resilience.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I do think I use I often say to young actors, what do you need to be?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: What do you need to be as a kind of as an image?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you know those things that you blow up, those big blow-up toys that that stand about the same height as a human being, but they've got a weight in the bottom of them, and you can punch them and they're full of air.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: They come back up, and then they just go, you go, and they go hit the ground, they go, that's what you have to be.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely love it.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you've learned as much as I have.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: The show will be coming to you free every month, and a subscription is the best way to ensure you get each episode downloaded straight into your pocket.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: For more stories or for an opportunity to tell your own, head to my website, mindful and publishing dot com.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, stay curious, kind, and connected.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: With love, Deborah.