”I met an older actor. He was well regarded and had lots of roles. We had been lovers for less than a year when he surprised me by saying, `I could never marry an actress. If we got serious, you`d have to give it up.` I asked why and he replied, `Because if you started getting better parts than me, I couldn`t stand it.` . . . We split up not long after that.”
The letter was to Eric Maisel, a Concord, Calif., psychologist whose specialty is people in the arts. His specialty within the specialty is the show-business marriage, for which he has come to feel that the odds of success are low.
”It`s much harder for actors to maintain relationships,” he says after a hard day`s listening at the Marina Counseling Center in San Francisco. Maisel spends one day a week in San Francisco seeing the local artists who flock to his couch. The rest of the time he works out of a Concord office.
Maisel, born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., used to be an ”artist”
himself, if that term fits people who write fiction. He received a master`s degree in creative writing from San Francisco State University and became a full-time novelist. But after some lean artistic years, which included one three-year marriage, Maisel ”saw I wasn`t going to make it writing fiction” and decided to try counseling psychology at Sierra University in Southern California, earning a doctorate.
During his internship at the Marina Center, he developed a summer series called ”Growth and Healing Through the Arts.” But he felt the various speakers addressing the topic didn`t know the territory or, at least, the artistic temperament. Maisel, who feels he does, decided to make it his specialty.
Due out soon is his accumulated wisdom on that specialty, ”Staying Sane in the Arts: A Guide for Creative and Performing Artists” (Tarcher-Putnam, $21.95). Maisel also writes an advice column for Callboard, a theatrical magazine published by Theater Bay Area.
”The artist is a unique package,” he says. ”There`s the obscurity-stardom problem. Those are polar opposites but each requires work to survive. It`s not the kind of problem faced by doctors or secretaries. The actor might be suffering from too little audience, but he might also suffer from too much audience.”
Maisel doesn`t believe that a little neurosis-though he won`t use terms like that-is necessary for the artistic talent to thrive. ”You can be happy and healthy and still be a great artist,” he says.
”I do think artists are more prone to depression,” he admits. ”And I think they are more prone to being manic. But that aside, they are in pretty good shape.”
”So why do they come to you?”
Maisel fell silent for a long time. Then he crossed his legs under him and thought again.
”It`s not for a clinical issue like depression,” he said finally.
”There`s a long list. Performance anxieties. Anxieties in dealing with people like agents. Thinking, `All these things don`t seem to be working and I can`t sort it out.` And there`s the perennial issue for artists: how to support themselves.”
Maisel, who says he charges cut-rate fees, a sliding scale beginning at $25 an hour, says, ”All artists I see are living poorly.” It may explain why so few therapists have followed Maisel into his specialty.
Marriage or other joint relationships can help economically, when one of the partners holds the day job to fund the other partner`s career. But it doesn`t help the marriage much. It`s one of a handful of reasons, Maisel says, that actor relationships are often doomed.
”When both partners want careers,” he says, ”who is going to bring in the money? And so often, when one or the other is the chosen one, the decision is not really discussed. That`s what we do in our sessions: say things out loud.”
As expected, another drawback for actor marriages is envy. ”Artists are very envious of other artists,” Maisel says. ”They worry about who is ahead of the other. They are very important feelings.”
Indeed, as anyone who has seen ”A Star Is Born,” with Judy Garland on the star track and James Mason boozing out, can attest. Maisel agrees that when it is the woman whose star is ascending and the man who is descending, the prognosis for the marriage is particularly dire.
Which leads to the obvious conclusion: Actors should marry non-actors, right?
”Yes,” says Maisel, seeing the logic, but pointing out that, unfortunately, ”Actors are attracted to each other. You heard about all the romances that take place between actors in plays or movies. But that doesn`t mean they should marry each other.”
OK, I parried, so suppose I persuade Annette Bening to leave Warren Beatty and marry me (further supposing I can persuade my wife, Barbara, to leave me and marry Beatty, totally unlikely on her part). Are there some rules for living blissfully married to an actress?
”Yes,” says the good psychologist. ”Remember, she`s going to want a lot of space. More space than you`d expect. Should a good role come up, she`s going to want to go, wherever it may be. Children will be a problem.
”After a performance she may not have a good way of coming down. She`s electrified. That`s where, unfortunately, for some actors, drugs come in. She may look wonderfully together, but that may be a practiced facade. There`s lots of anxiety.”
Hmm. And how would a woman feel married to a male actor?
”There`s the possibility of feeling used, not getting a payback.”
Hmm, again.
So perhaps it won`t work between Annette and me. More important, I really should save Barbara from Warren.
