If you had told me when I was a little boy...

If you had told me when I was a little boy that I would be sitting in a room in New York City having an on-camera therapy session with Pamela Stephenson I would have thought you were nuts.  First of all, Pamela Stephenson was then part of the cast of Not The Nine O'Clock News, a hilarious and, without sounding too fluidy, seminal comedy show of the early eighties. Now she is a pyschologist and this morning I shot an interview with her that was basically a therapy session about being famous.  The thing about being famous is that you don't really talk about the real experience of it very often.  To do so with non-famous people is awkward and there is a lot of 'you should be so lucky, mate'  and with other famous people you sort of can but actually you don't really because it is so nice to know that someone just gets it and that you don't need to talk about it. Obviously being famous and what that means as you go about your business in the world is something I have a lot to say about but mostly I say to only my husband, very close friends, my own therapist and now, the lovely Pamela Stephenson.  I had a great time. I hope it turns out ok.

I have been having a lot of 'if you had told me whe I was a lttle boy/getting up this morning/etc' moments recently.  Partly I think it's due to Halloween and the flurry of extraordinary experiences I have been having.  I attended Bette Midler's Hulaween bash that benefits her amazing New York Restoration Project and I went as a monkey. Not a mouse as some of the tabloids supposed! A great time was had by all and a lot of cash was raised. Stevie Wonder performed, Bette wandered around being charming and hilarious.

Then on Saturday I had my own second annulal (I hope) Halloween extravagnaza at the the Soho Grand Hotel. It was another smashing evening. DJ Michael Cavadias had a lot to do with how incredible a night it was, but also my amazing friends and their genius costumes.  I went as a Victorian boxer. Natch.  We partied till the cows came home.

Then on Sunday and Monday I performed in Sleep No More, the amazing Punch Drunk, site-specific show at the McKitrick Hotel on West 27th st, NYC.  I have been to the show several times and am a big fan, and when they asked me to be a part of their special Halloween celebrations I was honored, and when they came to me and asked if I would like to be IN the performance and play a doctor and do 1 on 1s with audience members (behind a locked door I did a short wordless piece in the near dark in which I tucked them into a bed and eventually coughed up a piece of hardware!!), well, I was over the moon.  The show is incredible and I cannot exhort you enough to see it if you are in NYC.  I just loved being around the dancers and performers who I had seen from the other side as an audience member.  I have said many times that if I have a regret it is that I am not a dancer and that was only reinforced after spending time with these brilliant people.

Now I am back at work on The Good Wife. In this past weekend's episode I said a line which involved the words 'semen' and 'Bin Laden'.  Again, if you told me.....I can't believe it got past the censors. But the fact that I get to say things like that and work with the people I do is what makes this such an incredible show to work on. Today I am shooting my first ever major scenes with my colleague Josh Charles.  We have only said hello to each other over the last couple of years. Funny old world.

On Friday I will be in San Francisco singing for an Amfar event and on the weekend of the 12th I will be at the Denver Starz Film Festival receiving an Excellence in Acting award.

If you had told me when I was a little boy...

emmy schmemmy

I just got home from the Emmys. It was a hilarious evening. I sort of compare it to Christmas or Thanksgiving: You all meet up in LA, see people you only see at that time of the year, party it up like crazy and also get lots of presents, though sadly not, in my case, an award. But I am so happy for Peter Dinklage who won my category. I think he is brilliant and it couldn't have hapened to a nicer person. He is in one of my favourite films in the whole world, The Station Agent.

I also loved the range of insane reactions to my Jean-Paul Gaultier outfit. Either adulation or horror. I like that.

Here I am with Scott Westerfield, the author of the Leviathan trilogy about the third instalment, Goliath, and an interview I did in LA at the GBK Gifting Lounge.

emmys

I am off to the Emmys this weekend. I was just trying to explain to someone the horror of winning. Of course it is also lovely. I mean, you've won. Duh. The horror part is the getting up in front of literally millions of people and having to speak whilst you are in a state of high anxiety and emotion. It's awful. I am already having nightmares about it. Really. And the fact that I am an actor does not help much. There is no rehearsal, you have to write the script, you're not in a good state physically or mentally when it happens. I almost wish it wouldn't. Almost.

There is good swag and parties though.

Below isa wee film I made. The soundtrack is the version of That's Life I did for the movie Burlesque that ended on the cutting room floor, or the DVD extra, whichever way you look at it.

Catskill disaster zone

My beloved Catskills has been truly devastated by Hurricane Irene.  We all thought we were in for it here in NYC.  Who knew the biggest damage in our state was going to be so far north and inland? This area was already having a hard time economically and now this devastation has hit it really hard and even more in need of help.

If you can spare anything, please go to The Mark Project (which is rural development organisation already trying to revitalise the area) or to the American Red Cross, and make a donation.

I am going to go up there and volunteering this weekend. Here's a video of some terrible flooding in a town called Fleischmanns!

sleep no more at midnight in paris

A couple of weeks ago I went to see Sleep No More here in NYC. It's a sort of site-specific performance dancey piece that takes you on a journey through several buidlings and weird and wonderful seetings like forests and hospitals and cavernous corridors and is based on both Macbeth and Rebecca.  You wear masks so that everyone looks the same aside form the performers and you follow them around until you see bits of action and performance.  I had a really amazing time and actually had a very prized thing happen when I was taken into a room by one of the performers and had a 'one on one', just me and him, he rambling and crushing an egg full of dust in my hand and peering at me through a magnifying glass, me being pushed against a wall and saying yes when he asked me if I heard the voices too!  He actualy took off my mask!! Transgression! Then held me and so I held him!  It was frightening and moving and erotic all at once.  And of course if I were to go again, as I fully intend to do, there is no way I will have the same experience I had that night at all.  That's the beauty of it.

But at first, as I was wandering around looking for a performer or some sign of where the action was I kept thinking I was missing the boat, that the party was going on somewhere without me. And indeed it was.  There is a ritual that takes place in a certain part of the building at the beginning of the experience that I missed, and that is why I couldn't find any of the performers.

Then, last night I went to see Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris. The message of the film - aside from French people are cultured, sexy, intellectual and artistic and Americans are stupid, mean, uptight and philistine (Yeah, tell that to the Tea Party, Woody!) - is that we all think that life is more exciting at some other time in history, that our now is never going to be as magical as some era of the past.  However, we realise by the end of the film that the people from that era also think that their time is a bit dull and they long for a time earlier when they imagine things are better too.

It sort of made me think of that first quarter of an hour of Sleep No More. Instead of wondering where the action was I should have just looked around me and soaked in the atmosphere and the spectacle of the rooms when they were empty.  The latter part of my experience was only so magical because it was cumulative, and included the first bit. 

I guess I am just reminding myself how important it is to stop and smell the roses.  Cos you don't want to leave the garden and then realise you forgot to, do you?