What I've Learnt - Lily Tomlin, Performer

The Age

Saturday August 5, 2006

FRANCES ATKINSON

Creativity is like the stockmarket - you should diversify your investment so that no one thing takes a huge capital loss. As a performer, I like having a lot of irons in the fire so I can surprise people. I can show different facets and if they haven't seen me one way, they might have seen me in another way, and then each of those performances reflect off each other. It looks like I do a lot, but sometimes its a dazzling prism that can make a gem look more lustrous than it is.

If I could only do one thing, I'd spend my time performing live. I'm grateful that I can try different mediums and roles and sometimes it's a dramatic or a serious role. There's no radical difference between comedy and tragedy, it's just a matter of degrees or what emotion you choose for the character to express.

Flattery; it's never enough and it's almost always too much. It's a double-edged sword for anybody in the public eye who depends on an audience for acceptance and a livelihood. I don't think you ever quite believe it, yet when you do hear it, somehow you take it to heart, even if it's for just a moment.

I never thought getting famous was a good idea; in fact, I thought it might be a big compromise, especially if you fancied yourself an artist or wanted to experiment or be daring. Fame is pretty relative. I would have been just as happy and satisfied if I'd had opened a little theatre-coffee house in Detroit, where I grew up.

Young actors just starting out have an astonishing self-belief, almost an arrogance, but if they don't have it, they get knocked off the track pretty fast. I loved what I was doing when I was a younger performer. Back then I lived in New York in a five-floor walk-up, which meant friends didn't come over too much. But it was better than the first floor because people using the laundromat would want to eat or use the bathroom and suddenly your place was like Grand Central Station. But I used to get so excited, I'd drag people up to my apartment and make them listen to my latest monologue.

I come alive on the stage. I feel blessed, as though I'm embodying something. As a child, I was influenced by a couple of teachers who used to read us these dialect poems on a Friday afternoon. I was mad for stuff that could take you any place if you suspended belief. That's what I try and do on the stage - take the audience on a trip.

I like to think I take creative risks. I think I always trusted the audience. No, that's not true - sometimes you get full of yourself and you show off and you'll do something that's on the edge and you do it to impress the audience. When I was touring, I'd do ridiculous things. One night I lay on the floor and I slowly began to edge my way under the carpet until I got under the carpet and I just stayed there with the audience sitting there. In the old days I might see how much beer I could drink in one show. If an accident happens on the stage, it doesn't matter how tremendous you are or how artful the piece was - the audience will remember it.

I used to hang out with my dad. We'd go to the track, the bookie joints and the bars. I liked that a lot because I knew my father had more freedom than my mother. I liked that freewheeling thing he had going. My mum was a typical, good woman who had come from the South. She was very witty and dignified and she really, truly loved to be alive. If she was ever depressed, I never knew it. She was bedridden for the last four years of her life but still mentally alert and had loads of friends - she died at 91. I tend to be volatile and moody. I'm way hyper. She'd say "Lily, don't be so rambunctious! Slow down." But I can't. -- FRANCES ATKINSON

The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. The Arts Centre, Hamer Hall, September 2. 136 100