We make fun of celebrities a lot. Hollywood has become a caricature of itself, with rampant sex scandals, pedophilia, vaginal steaming, incessant lecturing and virtue signaling, and spoiled, entitled celebrities making crazy demands on the set that make all of us cringe, wondering how these overindulged, spastic, neurotic weasels even survive in the real world.

They are ridiculous, pampered, gnats.

But what we tend to forget is that acting – real acting – is not easy. Putting yourself into the mindset of another person, becoming another person is challenging, to say the least. It takes a strong mind and the ability to lose yourself in someone else, a strong sense of empathy, and a lot of emotional investment to become someone else – a someone else that is sometimes quirky, sometimes depressing, sometimes evil, and sometimes insane.