Sign up for my Developing Talent newsletter and get a free excerpt from the book.

 

From the book:

"I want to do wardrobe. I want to do hair. I want to do makeup… writing… directing… producing. I want to do all of it. I like it."

- Abigail Breslin (Actor: "Little Miss Sunshine" and other movies.) (Quote from imdb.com)


"Photography, painting or poetry - those are just extensions of me, how I perceive things, they are my way of communicating."

- Viggo Mortensen (Actor, The Lord of the Rings etc) (imdb.com)

~ ~ ~

Creative polymathy

In his post “That’s DR. Winnie to you: A New Child Star Stereotype” (on his Psychology Today blog), creativity researcher James C. Kaufman, Ph.D. writes about a number of people well-known as child stars, now grown, who have explored talents outside of acting.

He writes: “One of the research topics in creativity that has always fascinated me has been creative polymathy – the ability to be creative in more than one domain.”

Some examples, in addition to Viggo Mortensen:

Jamie Lee Curtis has written a number of children's books. Jane Seymour is author of several books and art kits, and is an accomplished and widely published painter. Bryce Dallas Howard has credits as a vocalist for a movie soundtrack, and as a producer, screenwriter and director. Jeff Bridges has released an album of his music.

Julia Cameron is author of The Artist's Way and more than thirty books, and is an award-winning poet and playwright, with extensive film and theater credits. She has a quote on her site www.theartistsway.com that I really appreciate: "Most of us have no idea of our real creative height. We are much more gifted than we know."

~ ~ ~

Mary-Elaine Jacobsen [author of The Gifted Adult] notes in her article Giftedness in the Workplace that gifted adults "may fail to respect their own need for solitude, reflection, and time to daydream or play with concepts and ideas."

~ ~ ~