Kimberly, my youngest daughter, accompanied me to New York on one of the occasions I was invited to be on the syndicated TV program The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet. As we walked around Times Square the evening before, I mentioned to Kimberly that one of the other guests would be Willem Dafoe. She, of course, asked who Willem Dafoe is. I mentioned the move Platoon, but she only stared at me. (I realized later that Platoon came out the year before she was born.) Eventually I gave up and said something like, “You’ll see him tomorrow.”
Mike and Juliet have an interesting setup as their Green Room. Some shows, such as The Montel Williams Show, have individual rooms for guests. Others, such as The Today Show, have one room everyone waits in together. (Now that I think of it, every time I’ve been on The Today Show I was in a different Green Room, but it was always communal.) Mike and Juliet have the communal type. As with all Green Rooms there was plenty of food and drink. (I never eat before going on the air. I have this mental picture of myself on national TV smiling with something stuck in my teeth. However, I tend to make up for the lack of food when I come back through the Green Room.)
The Green Room at Mike and Juliet is usually so crowded with guests, producers, and the like that it’s typical to stand rather than sit. That’s how Kimberly and I got such a good measure of how tall Willem Dafoe is. In some of the PR on the Internet, he’s listed as 5 feet 9 1/2 inches. If that’s true, then they must have washed him and put him in too hot a dryer before he arrived that day.
When he went to makeup, Kimberly turned to me and said, “Spiderman. Why didn’t you tell me he was the villain in the first Spiderman movie?” I guess that would be more reasonable than telling her that he was in a movie that came out before her birth. The next comment I expected, “He’s not as tall as I thought he would be.”
That caused me to remember standing next to a TV producer when I met Lisa Edelstein (she plays Dr. Cuddy on the TV series House). I told Lisa I was her biggest fan. She replied, “You don’t look that big.” Anything that woman says comes out sensually, so I immediately tripped over my tongue, impressing her, I’m sure. When she left (she said something about returning her dress before heading to the airport), the producer said, “They’re never as big as you expect.” I told her that I had the same thought when I stood beside Glenn Close a few years ago.
A majority of the stars, artists, or celebrities I have met or been on TV or radio with are shorter than I. I’m just over 5 feet 10, so I’m certainly not tall. Maybe wider than average, but not taller. I’ve wondered if being smaller than average drove them to prove themselves and that’s why they became famous. I’ve also wondered, at least with the TV and move actors, if they somehow have a camera advantage. Finally, I gave up wondering why and started paying closer attention to how. Without exception, these folks radiate confidence, charisma, and charm. Stars act like stars. I’m not talking about those who act as if they are demigods and you are nothing. I’ve met a few of them that I’ll leave nameless. I’m referring to folks like Glenn Close, Lisa Edelstein, or Willem Dafoe. Nice, polite, but definitely an aura that is palpable.
I think the point is that people who believe in themselves and their abilities reach higher levels of success than those who appear anxious or self-conscious, especially if the confident person is approachable and likable. My friend Mark Alison and I discussed charisma years ago and I came to this conclusion: No matter how successful a person is, charisma doesn’t result from standoffishness or demonstrable ego. We find people charismatic because we want to be like them, enjoy being in their presence, but don’t have as much time with them as we wish.
From youth we learn that we are flawed and that others will exploit those flaws through teasing, criticism, insults, and knives-in-the-back. Maybe that’s why so many of us do okay in life but never reach the pinnacles accomplished by others who are no more talented or gifted. They believed in themselves. They projected confidence, even in the face of the troubles that surely come to every life.
There is no human power greater than faith. Faith in ourselves. Faith in a cause. Faith in the face of fear.
I think that’s what makes stars stars. Their tenacious belief that they can do it, even when all indications are that they will fail — even when others fighting for the same victories seem superior or in a better position to win. That’s why we wind up wanting to be like them. Deep within us it is not just the appreciation for their talents but the desire to overcome, to be somebody when the world tells us that we aren’t. They’ve done it and so we find them charismatic because we see them as us, or at least the us that we wish we were.
If human faith is that powerful — and it is — then imagine how much greater that power is when that faith in self is undergirded by faith in God.
This is the victory that overcomes the world; our faith.