Full transcript: Ivana Chubbuck on London Real
5:01 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Ivana Chubbuck, who is an acting coach and author, whose students include Brad Pitt, Halle Berry, Jared Leto, Terrence Howard, Jim Carrey, Beyonce, and many, many more. Your book, The Power of the Actor, The Chubbuck Technique, has been translated into over 10 languages. You take things from the script into a living, breathing, dynamic character. You’ve been featured in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, People Magazine, USA Today, and Cosmopolitan. Ivana, welcome to London Real.
5:35 Ivana Chubbuck: Hello. I feel duly welcome. Yeah, I haven’t said I’m really good about my introduction. So, you know, what you do is really fascinating, and we’ve never had anyone on the show, you know, that does what you do. And I really want to find out about the techniques and everything that’s in your book and hear what it’s like to train, you know, some of the best in the world.
5:57 Brian Rose: But I also, before we started, I wanted to find out, how does someone become an acting teacher? And is that something that you found yourself drawn to? Did you found yourself being pulled to Hollywood, California, or did this kind of come in a different way?
6:13 Ivana Chubbuck: Well, what happens, I came to Hollywood or Los Angeles to become an actress. And I found that when I was working, people, you know, actors always help each other out. That’s what we do. We take care of one another. And so I’d be giving notes to my fellow actors, and they’d be giving me notes. But I would find that they did some of their best work when I was giving them their notes. So people would come to me and they’d say, would you just work with me? And all of a sudden, it’ll line up with people who wanted to work with me. And then I started charging, and I built a school around it. And then I ended up, like right now, I have two theaters, six teachers teaching for me, over 17 classes going on, something like 600 students. And I teach just the master classes. And what happened was, it came a point where I found that I liked the idea of empowering people and creating and inspiring people better than I liked being the talent myself. And that gave me, that inspired me more, that motivated me more. I used to find myself on a set and working as an actress. And I’d look at my watch constantly because I was bored, didn’t like it to be about me. And when I was coaching people and teaching people, the hours went by so fast. And I find that time is an interesting element in our world. We can tell, even though the same amount of time goes by in hours and hours and hours, an hour seems like 10 seconds when you’re really enjoying yourself and you’re passionate
7:54 About something. An hour, on the other hand, feels like it could be a whole day when you’re bored or when you don’t have an interest in what it is that you’re doing. And so I decided to totally quit acting, even though I work with a lot of directors and a lot of producer writers who offer me jobs all the time, because it’s a major, major people. And I turn it down without modicum, not even the tiniest bit of like, maybe I should take that role. That’s how much I love what I do. I love being the force, the inspiration and the motivator. Interesting story, which I’ve never told anybody before, but I was in Israel to do, my book came out in Hebrew and I was in Israel and I was on a special tour and they took me to a place below that only special people could go into and I was considered one of those people that made me feel very good. That you go underneath the whaling wall and it’s a special place you have to be invited to that’s considered the most spiritual place on the planet. And you really do feel it. It’s a tiny little area. It’s all rock. And you’re supposed to put your hands on the rock wall and ask for something. And what I asked for is I said, God, powers that be, whatever, because it’s the most spiritual place in the world, inspire me to inspire others to greatness. That’s what I asked for.
9:25 That’s who I am and that’s what I’m about. So being the person in front of the camera means I have to be celebrated and I don’t really care about that. What I want to do is spread some kind of word that allows people to take the victimization out of their lives, to take the destructive things that happen, pain, trauma, it happens to everyone. How you take that information and access it into how you live your life is a difference between dynamic people, successful people, and people who are the losers of the world.
10:02 Brian Rose: You know, there’s that time, I know Halle Berry was one of your students, and there’s that point in Monster’s Ball where she takes this really pain and what could be really a tragic moment and she uses it kind of in an empowering way and really got everyone to kind of feel really empathetic towards her. Is that kind of a great example of kind of your technique or what you’re going for?
10:30 Ivana Chubbuck: Absolutely. It’s like taking the, her tragedy in that movie is she lost her husband on death row, her son took a car accident, her job, her home.
10:41 She’s with a white guy whose family is very bigoted and doesn’t want him to be with her. I mean there’s so much loss is happening in her life. So what we did was we made choices about how do we take that and not, and we look at that information with an inner monologue of what we were using, not the dialogue because it wasn’t on the page, but create an inner monologue of like what I had her think was, I can’t keep having bad things happen to me all the time, it’s just gonna, I’m just gonna fall apart, I’m gonna end up dying. I mean either by my own hand or spiritual death. So I have to kind of relook at this information a different way. And I got to look at the fact that I found out that my, the guy I’m in love with lied to me, which was the final straw of all the things kind of coming to a head. And see that not as a lie, but maybe as such an act of such love, because if I were to find out that he, what he knew was the truth, he might lose me. And it was such an act of love, the kind of love I’ve never had before, the kind of love that I need and the kind of love that I want to embrace.
11:53 So by the end of the movie, this is all without dialogue, it was a silent piece of the movie. She went from hurting, being angry, being pissed, falling apart, to the change in her, in her thought process, to take it and see it as a positive. So by the time he comes home, she actually looks at him and our inner monologue to him was, thank you for loving me that much. And then I had her look up to God and say, thank you God. And it’s all without dialogue. And so we turned the most horrible negatives into the most amazing positive, all through the work I do. And she has to relive that moment on the screen, kind of, you know, in that sequence in order to get that acting and that empathy across on camera.
12:45 I mean, that’s very complex stuff and stuff that the average moviegoer won’t even know that you might’ve worked weeks on that behind the scenes. Yeah, there’s a lot of work, a lot of people don’t understand that, how much work a great actor does. It’s not by accident, it’s not because they have natural talent, it’s not because they’re beautiful or handsome. It really is a lot of work. In that particular part, she was in it like maybe, she seemed like she was in it all the time. She really wasn’t, she just was a force on camera. She was maybe in 50% of the film. There was a lot of side stories going on. But we worked on that 30 hours and that’s just in my home where we’re working on it privately. And then I was on set as well. The thing that fascinates me about the films is that they’re ultimately going to take a piece of 10 seconds here and a piece of 30 seconds there. So to get it all happening and then to get it to happen when everything’s ready and the pressure’s on, I mean, I guess that’s a different level of professionalism. Well, again, it’s why people who kind of fly their butt over to Hollywood and they say, I’m good looking, I have a natural talent. I was in the high school play. It’s just like you got to do the work. You got to study. It’s a lot of work to understand how to be prepared in a moment’s notice. But there’s a lot of pre-work you got to do, a lot of study you got to just be prepared to be in the environment at all.
14:14 Jaimin Hansu was up for an Oscar for Amistad. And he’s somebody that all the press said that Steven Spielberg discovered him in Africa. He is African. But they said because he was the right type and all this stuff. People want to believe the urban legends. They’re just not true. Well, he was in my class for three years. He went to an audition like anybody else did. And he booked a job with many, many, a callback, audition, a callback, a callback, a callback.
14:47 And then if I booked a job and then worked on the part. But three years of study first. Charlize Theron was working in my class for years before you got Devil’s Advocate. And he worked really hard on that audition. She had 10 callbacks. And each time they kept saying, well, you’re not the right type.
15:08 You’re too pretty. You’re not from the right type because you’re supposed to be some small town Florida girl. You have the right accent. You’re too young. All this stuff. But the audition was such a force that they had to cast her.
15:25 So it was like every time she’d go in, they’d say, well, it’s not going to go any further. But then they’d bring her back. And then they’d say, it’s not going to go any further. And this happened so many times. And each time she’d come to me, we’d spend hours on the audition and up the game, up the game, more details, more depth, more humor, more just giving details, details, details, greatness is in details. Greatness is always in details.
15:50 And again, I say to people all the time, whatever applies to being successful in the acting world applies to any business. Hard work, education, working hours that you wouldn’t want to work normally. So it’s not a nine to five thing. You work, I mean, when you’re shooting, you work like 6 in the morning till 11 o’clock at night. But when you’re studying and you usually have some straight job or your waiter, Brad Pitt had like three stupid jobs. At the same time, he was studying and he was always studying and he was always working hard. I expect six to eight hours a week of rehearsal time. He would do two to three hours a day to the point where his scene partners in class would complain that he wanted to rehearse too much. See, most people see Brad Pitt and they say, oh, natural talent. He just does it like that. It’s years of study and always wanting to like rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Did his homework. It’s a great story that he was asked in class to do a scene for an agent because sometimes to get an agent, you have to put up a scene for him to see if they like you. And this girl had credits. He had none. He was just studying class and just working his ass off doing those three straight jobs that were horrible jobs. And he was a chicken in front of a chicken company. I’m going to eat some chicken. He drove prostitutes around to their johns. He sold cigarettes at the games. I mean, terrible jobs, not well-paying jobs. The pay for his acting classes.
17:26 And so she wanted to rehearse one time before she put it up for the agents. And he just was, that’s not the cloth he’s cut from. And so he said, she only wants to rehearse once. Can we do some privates? And so I can make sure that I have all the work done, all the detail work done. And I want all the layers and the richness that this part has. And even though it was for her audition, every time you perform, you’re performing. It’s like you should take it very seriously.
17:58 So what happens, they went and he was very prepared because we had worked on it so much. She worked on it the one time with him. And again, she had credits. He had none. And this is a big agency. They took them, didn’t take her. What is it? He was prepared. He was work ethic. Work ethic is so important. Education is so important.
18:23 Brian Rose: What is it in the greats like Brad? Is it the perfectionism? Is it that he’s competing with himself? What is it that you see in the people that consistently either work hard or deliver?
18:36 Ivana Chubbuck: I think it’s about, I think it’s just really simply this. You have to work really hard. But some people are just like real work. They work really, really hard, but they never get anywhere. Why? Because they don’t take risks. You’ve got to take risks. It’s not just the risks and the choices of the films you do or the parts that you choose to play. More importantly, the choices that you make within the material, like making bolder choices, really digging deep, exposing stuff that’s really dark things that most people are too fearful to expose. It takes great courage to expose the truth of who you really are. It’s more courage to expose the truth of who you are, the stuff that makes you fearful, the stuff that makes you insecure, the stuff that has happened to you. There’s so much shame in people’s worlds. And so it takes more courage to expose, to take the risk, to expose, to really go for it, to really push the envelope, to cross lines, to say boundaries are meant to be crossed, rules are meant to be broken than it does to take a motorcycle and cross ten buses.
19:53 It takes more courage to do that. I’ve worked with some people that are like, God, world champion boxers, athletes that are fearless in the athletic world, but that it comes time to really take chances as an actor to make choices that really reveal themselves. They’re scared shitless, and that’s why it’s very rare when sports figures actually make the transition. Because they can’t go to those scary places in their own mind, in their own body, and access that the way that a trained actor can. Because it’s scarier. Right.
20:26 It’s one thing to say, like, I’m strong, I’m big, I can kick a ball, whatever, you know, than it is to say that I fear, I have issues with my mother. My mother is very abusive, and I take that with me, and I walk with that, and I have the problems with my personal relationships because of it. They don’t want to go there, they don’t want to deal with it personally, they don’t want to deal with it, they don’t want other people to know about it. And it’s like, that’s, it’s risk takers that always, any field, you’ve got to take risks. You’ve got to work hard, and you’ve got to take risks. There isn’t anything that is in any way a prestigious thing to get from being president to being heads of corporations, to inventing things, whatever, you have to take risks and work really hard. It’s the way it goes. You know, it’s like, what is it, was it Edison that said 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration. 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration.
21:36 Brian Rose: Right. And on the screen, all we see is that final, you know, color graded shot. And so I think it’s so hard for us as the public to see all the work that goes underneath, because it sounds like you’re training Olympic athletes, it sounds like you’re training people that, you know, take years and years and years and years to do that final thing is like, it’s a stepping stone, right? Does a great performance have to channel some type of pain or some type of an inner peace that you have to take a risk to get to? Is is that a definition? I’m sorry, what is it? Is a great performance? Does it have to come from a person accessing some kind of pain?
22:19 Ivana Chubbuck: And so it doesn’t necessarily have to be pain, but it has to be something that you want to overcome. It doesn’t necessarily require pain. It’s like, I try to make every my technique is based in this, take whatever it is insecurities, fears, trauma you’re going through, split up, you’re going through whatever it is you’re going through, or live with, and that you’d like to get rid of is use the material in front of you to to infuse that in you already own it, and then to use it to impassion and fuel your ability to overcome it. So then the other side that you’re become a winner because of the pain. And so it’s about winning in spite of and because of the things that you’re going through what you want to overcome and within the environment of the script, what you’re doing is, is
23:12 Overcoming it for the character. Therefore, overcoming it for you because you live apart, and therefore your audience because it’s primal realities. We all I’ve been workshops all over the world. And I’ve come to find that and I’ll play like the Philippines, the Russia, Scandinavian countries, Australia, South America, Canada, fear, Italy, I could be everywhere in the world, every environment in the world, right? Everybody’s the same. Everybody has the same fears. Everybody has the same issues with their relationships with their parents with their this crazy hope is the same. And so if you as an actor or writer director, take the information the pain that the or the fears that the person is going through, and you’re using the material to to use it to fuel your ability to overcome and win. What happens is the audience says, I’m going through the same thing. And if they can overcome and win, maybe so can I. And therefore, you give hope to your audience that they can prosper in spite of and because of the things that they’re going through. That’s how a star is born. Because I want to keep seeing that person that makes me feel like I can overcome my stuff. And most of the time, there’s a lot of most acting techniques about just getting to the truth and just feeling the pain and go through that was just that that to me is like, we don’t like being around people that are always complaining. And they’re always, I mean, truthfully always, oh, my
24:56 Boyfriend broke up with me, or he’s lost my job, or I can’t cut a break. And it’s been truthful. And they’re honest, but who wants to be around those people? Those people are annoying, because they just bring you down, they suck you, they’re like little black holes, you know, they suck your like, your life juice away from you. And if they love them, and you know, they’re your friends or family or whatever, it’s hard to be around them. So I always say to my actors and my directors and my writers, I say, Look, if you don’t want to play around those people for free, why would you pay to have somebody do the same thing on screen? We’re on stage, right?
25:37 Brian Rose: Right. So it’s not just about communicating emotion. A great actor needs to instill empathy in the audience.
25:44 Ivana Chubbuck: Let’s get empathy. No, it’s the obligation to allow people to say that you could take the worst of circumstances and change them.
25:52 Okay, even though even though fuck empathy, okay, so empathy only gets us like, Oh, I’m sorry, I feel your pain. So what hasn’t changed me hasn’t changed you. So I want people to be able to walk away from the performances that I helped create and say, I can change my life too, I could have a better life inspiration. Totally. Okay. To inspire people that they have hope that anything is possible. Anything can change that you have the ability to do so. And that the arts, anybody in the arts, whether you’re a writer, or a dancer or a painter has the obligation to disturb sensibilities enough for them to understand the ability to change them. That you have the power, you do have the power. So I have a book is called The Power of the Actor. It’s about if I if I’m empowered, I always say, I will not let my actors make victim choices, because it’s like you’re better than that you can you and this is what you’re putting out to people. So you have to be empowered. Therefore, you’re creating empowerment in the other person that you’re working with. Therefore, it comes back at you.
27:18 And then the audience gets all that and the audience is then therefore empowered and given permission, inspiration, the motivation to do something, to change their lives. In Russia, my book is a big best seller. Now, not just for the general community, because people are using it as a self-help book, because it defines how you would take a character and be able to like take pain, trauma, your issues, fears and all that stuff and how to actually turn it around and use it to feel your ability to overcome and win.
27:55 Right. And so a lot of people are using it for for just the use to help make them have better lives, to change their lives. Halle Berry was walking down the beach in South Beach and she saw this girl sitting on the beach reading my book. And she said, Hey, so like this book is well, I love this book. It’s just so you’re an actress. And she said, No, she said, Well, what do you do? And she said, She’s in premed. And and so she said, Well, this is a great book for medicine. It’s a great book for me to be a healer because it’ll help me empower people to be able to know that they can get over what a disease that they have as part of it. It’s it’s their psyche. So you admit to your disease and you get defeated by your disease, you will therefore be committed to die or be debilitated. What is something I way I got to tell you a great story about another story I haven’t told you, but I’ve told my class, but I haven’t told anybody on air. So this is a really important story. Make a Wish Foundation, you know about the Make a Wish Foundation. Yes.
29:05 Brian Rose: But for people that don’t know, can you explain it?
29:09 Ivana Chubbuck: Maybe in the UK. Make a Wish is when kids are dying of some disease, they have a wish to me. And and so often it’s like, I want to meet my favorite sports star. There was one kid who did he wanted to be Superman for the day. So he was or Spiderman or one of those characters. So the actual town he lived in, he created his day where he could save
29:32 People into all this stuff. It’s a make a wish, you know, for kids that are dying. So there’s a little girl in Toronto and her wish was just 14 was she had read my book and was her Bible. She was reading it over and over again. She was dying of bone cancer. And so I was supposed to fly out there. And the day before I was supposed to fly out there, she was in the hospital. She said she didn’t say anything. They told me that she was going, she was too sick and she’s going to go into surgery right away. They couldn’t find a donor. That was a match.
30:09 They got what the closest they could, which is her father, but it was a long shot. This would be a miracle if it happened. So would you talk to her on the phone? And so I talked to her on the phone. I said, you read the book many, many times and it says you got to believe that whatever it is, that is the problem, that you have the ability to overcome and accomplish whatever you want. And says yes. And I said, okay, you’re about to go into surgery. And I know the adults told you that it’s a miracle if anything happens. Essentially they’re giving you your death certificate. But you’ve read my book many, many times and I’m going to say this. Do you believe that you’re supposed to be on this planet to accomplish something great? Yes. Well, don’t you have to be alive for that? Yes. So I want you to go into that surgery knowing that this is going to work.
31:01 Absolutely. Because you have to be alive, because you have to accomplish something that you have to be alive and be an adult to accomplish. Okay. So I was in the surgery, I got a call two weeks later that she’s in remission. It was a miracle that happened.
31:20 Changed her wish to come out to L.A. and take a couple of classes, of which she did. And she, it’s been about three years now and she doesn’t have any cancer left. Her mother came up to me with tears in her eyes saying, thank you for saving my daughter’s life. It was that conversation and the belief of the mind that was so, that’s, that’s, that’s the whole thing about belief, about the idea that you can’t just give in to, to anything that’s destructive in your life.
31:53 You can’t, you gotta like find the way to, what are you supposed to learn from this? What are you, how are you supposed to grow from this? How can you change from this? It’s, it is the power of who we are. You know, they say we only use six percent of our, our mind. Well, there’s a lot more to go. This leaves us a, like, something like 94%. You know, if I do, if I do my, but then I got another story about that too. I think this is really important. This is really important.
32:20 Brian Rose: Okay, I want to ask you a question about what it’s like, you know, in one of your classes.
32:25 Ivana Chubbuck: Okay, you go, screw my glasses. This is more important. People aren’t actors. A lot of people aren’t actors out there. My brother was, who’s a doctor, was given, he was told he had cerebral palsy. And he did have cerebral palsy. And he had all these operations that were wrongly given to him and stuff like that, because they didn’t know that he had cerebral palsy.
32:46 So they start giving him meds and nothing was working. And then they put him on this, probably they said it was an experimental program and who knew it was going to work or not. So I had a conversation with him. I said, you know, you’re a doctor. And you know those studies that they have where they give people placebos and they give people the actual meds. And the studies show that the same amount of people get healed on the placebos that get healed on the actual meds themselves. Knowing that, and I know you’re a doctor and you want to think that, well, this is going to be difficult to work because doctors are very cynical. I said, you need to go into placebo land. And you need to say, this is going to work. And it did.
33:35 Brian Rose: You should be a doctor too. Let me ask you a question about men. I was listening to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book Total Recall. And he said that when he moved from bodybuilding to acting, he had to get in touch with his feelings, which is something that he had been taught most of his life like a lot of us have, that you’re not supposed to be in touch with your feelings. And so that was for him, like a 180 degree change. And I was wondering if it’s different when you try to teach men or to teach men that have come from other industries or sports, like you said, to just do like a 180, or am I am I getting it simplistic, simplistic, simplistic?
34:07 Ivana Chubbuck: It’s like I think that it doesn’t necessarily it’s about who you are as a person that makes some people more difficult to open up than others. It’s like Beyonce. When I first met her, it took me and she had never trained before. And it took me like 15 minutes before I had tears rolling down her face. And she was like, amazed.
34:32 Brian Rose: But it was how do you do that? What do you say to them?
34:36 When what is like a private session like with you? Are you mean? Are you nice? Are you all of the above?
34:42 Ivana Chubbuck: It’s like it depends on what the care what the character is supposed to be about. And how that person responds. Some people freeze when you get mean, some people will only respond when you’re mean. Yes, it deals with everybody differently.
34:56 Education is very individual. With her was more like empathy, and more about like getting into women’s empowerment. And, and if you notice that there’s a difference between when she was a pop princess, to the time that she’s become kind of iconic, and like, one of the hugest singers ever. And that was a difference between her just singing songs about whatever, and to doing what we used in all our work was about women’s empowerment women, not taking to the history of mankind, it’s like women have been like, repressed and put down and lesser than and, and made to feel like, you know, animals and religions, we had to cover ourselves up and, and we’re dirty to have sex with a lot of religions. It’s just, it’s a it’s women have been reviled in the history of history. And she has certain circumstances being a black female in the south, that like, it’s an issue. So we became very tight about the issues that we both had about that, that we were able to like cry together.
36:06 And, and if you notice, like what changed her, her, her fame factor was, remember the songs that started making single ladies, all the things about women’s empowerment, it was coming from her heart was coming from the work we did, she actually gave me a phone call. And she said, I’m using the work that we did and my music, she could use it in anything. And it changed her world. She used the work we did at the song she sang for the inauguration. You said you can use this work in anything. I mean, I know you said in Russia, people kind of use it as a self help book and the lady on the beach as well.
36:43 Brian Rose: Is how is that? Like how by getting in touch with our feelings, can we be good at our jobs? And, you know, how can I be better at this if I was in touch with those feelings?
36:53 Ivana Chubbuck: I can explain that you keep well, you keep saying, acting is about being in touch with your feelings. And I keep saying that’s not the case. Okay, so tell me the case is maybe understanding what it is that drives you to be destructive. And often times that connects to your feelings. But it’s the things that make us self destructive, the things that make us fearful, the things that make hold ourselves down are usually based in childhood issues. We were treated the way peers treated us family members, issues that like surrounded you when you grow up, it’s when you become who you are, because of all the different input that comes in. And to understand what it is that makes you that way.
37:48 And then using that information to overcome it. So getting in touch with your feelings is really only a tiny part of what I do. So it’s not like let’s get in touch with your feelings. It’s like let’s, let’s figure out what makes you so so sabotage yourself. What makes you so self destructive in your relationships and the choices you make in your career. And the way you engage people, the way you deal with people, what is stopping you? And so we go into the resource of the psychology of that person very specifically, which often again is connected to feelings. So it’s not like one we’re not just going, let’s go into feelings. They’re all kind of, they’re all together, they’re all meshed together. Then we figure out what these fears and issues are, where they emanated from.
38:47 And then what we do is figure out how to use that information with the goal of the script and how to, whatever the goal of the script is, to deal with your own personal issues and how to use that goal of overcoming of the character to be your own personal goal. And, and so it becomes your mission within the script to change that for yourself. And usually that work that you’ve done in the material, whether it’s scene study, or it’s an actual script that you’re performing from other people, actually changes you. It bleeds into your real life because we’re using your real life. So we’re not just accessing feelings. And to access just feelings is what I said before, which is, you’re just, it’s a wink job. You’re winking yourself. It’s like, it’s like, it’s like, I use the example of like, you’re jerking off when you want to just be emotional. Okay. Now, jerking off is great for yourself, but nobody else wants to watch you doing it. So the thing is, it’s all good and pleasurable for you. I’m feeling, I’m feeling, I’m feeling a little good for you. You know, so, so the point is, you want people to, to be inspired, motivated, given the hope that they can change their lives via what you’re doing and the, in your interpretation of the, of the script. So anybody who teaches acting and says it’s just trying to emote or asking people to jerk off. Okay.
40:33 Understood. And it’s very, very symptom. It’s very, very self-indulgent. Okay.
40:37 Brian Rose: What do you, what do you say or what do you, what do you think when you see characters like Daniel Day-Lewis go into that Lincoln character for like a year?
40:44 And he’s in character on the set. He’s in character off the set. And he said that part of him misses being Lincoln because he was him for like a year. And when you see people dive in, like you said, so much that it affects them on the other side, is that, is that, I guess there’s no right or wrong, but is that a technique you teach? Is there a reason for that? Does that work for some actors and not for others? Because it’s always fascinating to me.
41:06 Ivana Chubbuck: It works for him. And it’s like, if people ask me questions, but is it right to do this? And I said, does it work? Yes, that is right. It doesn’t work. That’s wrong.
41:17 It’s like, those are defining factors. It’s like there is no right or wrong in things. It’s like you have to, and again, it’s like, if, if like Bill Gates said, you know, well, nobody’s made computers before. So it’s wrong to make them. It doesn’t, you know, this doesn’t make sense. Is nobody’s done it before. You gotta like, it’s like, it’s right because it works. It’s wrong when it doesn’t work.
41:43 So it doesn’t, and if anybody has like, it says, well, what you’re doing is the wrong thing to do is like censoring. Censorship is antithetical to growth. Censorship of any form. Right. You say a lot of times that I think it’s common for people to take their insecurities and the nuances they don’t like about them. And we try to cover them up or improve on them.
42:04 Brian Rose: But I think in acting and maybe in life, you’re saying that we should kind of embrace those things that make us unique. And then you said find some humor in it. I just wondered what you mean by that when, when you talk about humor is so important. It’s, it’s a great medicine. It’s a great heal. And it’s like, if you’re going through, I would say if they, I don’t care how dark the material is, find the humor. There’s always going to be, I think I’m at my funniest when I’m, when I’m depressed about something, when I’m upset, when I’m angry, it’s like, I, you know, people are, they’re funniest because they’re trying to lighten up the darkness, you know?
42:40 Ivana Chubbuck: And I, and I think that people respond like in a horror film, for example, something funny happens before somebody’s head gets chopped up and it’s just, it makes the dark that much more dark. So if you get used to the dark, you can see, you know, so you need to have, it’s three dimensionality of life.
42:57 It’s like, we want to laugh. We want to cry. We want it all, you know? And I think humors are very, very important aspect. So this humor in everything, you find humor in everything.
43:07 Brian Rose: Who are some of your favorite male actors and why?
43:10 Ivana Chubbuck: Um, wow. I’m thinking old school in my mind, but I don’t know why I’m thinking that, but well, I, I, you know, I don’t like to make those kinds of opinions because so many people are good for different reasons that to just, to earmark a couple would just be wrong to, I’ve been doing this 35 years, 35 years of training people, thousands and thousands of people all over the world. And I just, I love them all and it sounds really weird, but, and they will tell you, if you talk to any of my students, they’ll tell you that’s true. And they love me back. We have love stories everywhere. We all reveal, I reveal my stuff. They revealed their stuff and we’re all like, and I believe in them and they believe in me. And, and it’s like, just, I don’t know. It’s a love story. I, it’s like, it’s a, I, I, I did a workshop in, in Berlin and a bunch of them came out to LA and it’s just like, it’s like, they don’t, they want to leave because it’s like, and I didn’t want them to leave and everybody else in class fell in love with them.
44:17 And I, it’s just, there’s a lot of love and people are so open and people are willing to, to cross the lines. It’s like, when you put yourself in any kind of a box, you become somebody that nobody wants to know. But if you’re pushing the envelope and you’re, and you’re cross and you’re crossing lines and, and, and you’re taking chances and taking risks, those are exciting people. We want to be around them. We want to touch them.
44:42 We want to be a part of their lives. And so it’s, I don’t, I say that just pretty much anybody that you think is great, I probably will think so too.
44:52 Brian Rose: Do you ever throw people out of your class if they’re not willing to be open or if they’re not willing to go certain places? Do you ever get people to sign up to your at your classes? Because they want to be an actor or what they think as an actor, but then they’re not giving you enough. And you’re like, I can’t help you.
45:12 Ivana Chubbuck: I, it is not for me to stop people’s dreams. It’s like some people take longer to learn. Some people are shorter to learn. I just, I just feel like if you’re not getting it, you’re probably kind of probably want to walk away on your own. You can be frustrated that everybody gets it, you know, but it’s like, I refuse to be the one that says, unless you’re being abusive to somebody, if you’re being abusive, then you got to go. If you’re trying to, you know, arrest the ladies, you got to go. But it’s like, when it comes to like, you don’t have enough talent, who am I to say that? You know, who might it be that judge, you know, it’s like, I’m here to get important information.
45:58 I’m here to help you understand it and the best of my ability. And I’m pretty good at it. I’ve had a lot of stars to my name and a lot of people who have won a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of awards all over the world using my technique. But it’s not for me to say, you don’t, you can’t cut it. I just don’t, I think people that are like that, it’s about ego. And I think the best teachers are egoless. How about you?
46:23 Brian Rose: Your growth makes me happy. And it’s not about me. You were talking about how a lot of people work hard. And I agree, a lot of people work hard and some people get places some people don’t. The ones that I find that get places are the people that do kind of get out of that comfort zone and go to their own scary places that might not be scary for you and me, but for them it is. And and that’s how they get development. But how does an actor do that? You know, how do they do that day in and day out, you know, to go to the hard places to go?
46:51 Ivana Chubbuck: I mean, Yes, they love it.
46:52 Because they love it. I love it. It’s just like, yeah, Santa Miller one said that to me. She said, Actors are the weirdest animals. The more pain pain you’re in, the more you go.
47:01 Yes, I’m crying. Yes. You said bad things just happened. Yes, I was when I first moved to LA came to be an actress. I got mugged two weeks. And my first thought was like huge amounts of fear, you know, and I was freaked out. And my second thought was I can remember this feeling for my acting.
47:23 Only an actor. That’s an actor. That’s an actor. So like, how do people do that? Because they want to do it. They like it.
47:29 You know, if you don’t like it, it’s you’re in the wrong business and people don’t like it. And you figure that pretty fast and just they stop doing it. You said when you started working with Charlize Theron in the beginning, you said she was young and and that you saw a lot of, you know, issues and pain underneath that you thought maybe she could access, but she was having a hard time, I guess, accessing herself or agreeing it was there. And I just wondered if you could expand on that or talk about if someone was in the student that wasn’t hard. It was just I just said, you’re young. It was 1920.
48:01 And if you could admit to the stuff that you feel at your age is most people take until they’re a lot older to figure it out, a lot of figure it out, you’re going to be a big star because most people your age don’t want to. And so she said, okay, and did. She was really pretty easy. First, she said, well, no, I don’t have those feelings. I mean, literally, I said that what I said. And a minute later, she went there. I mean, it’s like she was fast.
48:29 She just she just she’s super smart. She’s wise beyond her years. And then she’s experienced a lot of stuff and she was willing to go there pretty fast. But I just told her that I mean, literally said, you’re young. If you go there, you’ll be a star. You don’t go there. You’ll be like everybody else.
48:51 Brian Rose: So she said, okay, that talk to me about Los Angeles. I was there a few weeks ago. That town, I can never get my head around it. Sometimes it drives me crazy. I was actually staying on a Hollywood Boulevard, too, which maybe is where even crazier things happen.
49:03 Ivana Chubbuck: I know, right? What was I thinking? Wrong place to go. What I mean, you said that like people I mean, beautiful people go there and they think, okay, I’m here. Now I can become an actor. But obviously, it takes the hard work. But that town attracts, I guess people that are coming to be famous and people for this and that.
49:21 Brian Rose: I mean, what is L.A.? I guess, what is it really about? What isn’t it? And what is it, in your opinion?
49:27 What is L.A.? And what isn’t it?
49:30 Ivana Chubbuck: L.A. is not what the tabloids say. The people that are the partiers, the ones who go to nightclubing or think that they have sex with the right people, they’ll get someplace. Never happens.
49:49 The tabloids have to be discovered because they’re sitting someplace in a restaurant or whatever doesn’t happen. It really is the people, it’s it’s the tabloid versions of Hollywood versus the truth of Hollywood, which is that they stay at home. They hang out with each other. They don’t go to these, you know, and the parties are the private parties and like everybody’s, it’s just like private people doing what people do, you know, and and they’re hard workers. They work really, really hard. They study really hard and they maintain just a nice private life having trying to have a normal life. But they just happen to be in a public field. And there’s all those people who come out there believing the tabloid bullshit. Where, like I said before, by Jim and Hans, who was discovered in Africa, where I say by way of three years of being in my class, it’s going to be those kind of stories all over the place where people that gave somebody a blowjob and that’s how they got the job. It’s like, it doesn’t happen.
51:04 It doesn’t have, they’re not going to put millions of dollars on your bet because you gave a great blowjob. It’s just not going to happen. So it is all about hard work and who’s really good. It’s not about who you know or who your agent is or, you know, I mean, you got to do the hard work yourself and don’t expect your agent to do it all either. A lot of people have made it like Vince Vaughn and John Favreau created their own movie. It’s called Swingers. They couldn’t get agents. They didn’t have it. They had nothing. They created their own careers. You got to do that hard work again.
51:34 Brian Rose: If someone is aspiring to be an actor, should they move to LA? Are there benefits to doing that and being in the epicenter of it, as opposed to finding another way around? Is it ultimately the right move to make for people that are aspiring? To go to LA?
51:52 Ivana Chubbuck: Well, it’s the big pond. I think you should build a resume wherever you live and come with film on yourself because you’re going to be just like everybody else walking in the door. And if you come in with a bit of a resume, then that walks you into some nice doors. You saw some film on yourself and get to work at home and then go to LA. LA is where you kind of have to go.
52:20 Brian Rose: Talk to me about London. I watched a television show one time in America and it was one of the hosts. And he said it was something about it might have been the actor’s studio. And he said British actors seem to work a lot. And if they’re always doing stage and they just have a tradition here of always doing a lot of productions. And I was wondering if you found that’s true. What do you find different about London actors or just this city? How does it feel different, you know, from through your eyes?
52:49 Ivana Chubbuck: American actors do a lot of theater too. And it’s just a little theaters of the West then they don’t all get on Broadway. But it’s like there’s so much theater. And it’s like LA has so many little theaters and always packed. And there’s theaters everywhere. Oh my God. There’s at least 200 theaters there. The people and people are always doing theater and off the writing their own plays or producing stuff.
53:17 And they love a play that they saw in New York and they and they they put it up and they pay for it to to to make it happen. They make these little films that they’re constantly great webisodes and constantly working really hard the same way that they work here. I don’t really I think the only difference here is here they think that after four years of university you’re done studying and the states that’s just the beginning. You do your four years of Juilliard or or Yale or whatever and then you keep going.
53:56 Those are the people that make it and like and Europe generally not just London Europe generally that’s where I’m trying to change that. So I have schools all over different places in Europe and the people that are in these schools are the ones that are booking the really great jobs the the ones that are the international jobs. And you’ve got to keep studying. Right. So continued education and acting isn’t the norm here. It used to be just getting the experience by doing that but not necessarily the education. Yeah the education but that’s that’s changing.
54:27 People are now more studying afterwards. But it was the norm. It was just you did your four year university drama school and then you were done. I always just use this as an example. It’s like would you go to a doctor who only stopped studying after he went to university and got his you know doctor’s degree.
54:51 Wouldn’t you want him to keep studying and understanding the new technology the new medical advances. Oh no I learned everything. I went to I went to medical school. I don’t need to do that. Would you want that doctor. No.
55:04 Would you want that actor who thinks education is done.
55:07 Brian Rose: And what do you what do you see in British actors like when you see a Judi Dench or Daniel Craig or do you see something that’s slightly different. I mean I guess they they must have a different take on acting just being in a different country and eight times on the way down. It’s like good acting is good acting is good acting. It’s all the same to you.
55:24 Ivana Chubbuck: Yeah they’re just they’re they’re becoming a character and finding their truth in it and what they need to accomplish and what the goals are just certain basic basic things that are true of all all acting technique which is you have to go after something. You have to have some kind of objective or intention and something that drives it. And and that’s the base of all good acting. So it’s not like they’re doing something different than everybody else’s. They’re doing what this good acting is good acting.
55:58 Brian Rose: What was it like working with Jim Carey and did you start working with him when he was really just the funny guy before he transitioned to more serious roles.
56:09 Ivana Chubbuck: I’m the one that helped them understand that acting wasn’t just trying to be funny. Before he met me he had done three series three movies and one series and they all had bombed and they blamed him. I got a call from him saying this is before I knew Jim Carey was and he said look I can’t even get an audition and I’m just like I’m pretty much blacklisted here.
56:34 Can you change that? And I said I could try. So came to my door and he was being Jim Carey’s I’m Jim Carey doing all this crazy Jim Carey stuff. And then I gave him a script to look at and he just got released a date. And I said what do you do where’s Jim.
56:51 I’m in the gym. And he said well I’m told and the critical reviews have all been like I just I do too much and over acting and so I figure I need to keep it really small. And I said it’s because it weren’t truthful because there was no truth to what you were doing. You didn’t you didn’t need anything. It wasn’t all that crazy behavior wasn’t being driven by a need.
57:13 And I said you can do anything if this comic behavior is based in desperation. The crazy things that you’ve done in your life the crazy things that anybody has done in their life and they look back on it. It’s funny when you’re in it it’s tragic. So when you look back I can’t believe I did that. It’s always really tragic so you have to put yourself in that kind of position when you really want something it’s such desperation that your your behavior becomes really funny and your needs become funny but not to you.
57:46 So I gave him things that make it more real more important. At the time his other girl was a little girl named Janie Jane and it was like all about her. He was doted on her. So he made it about like protecting her taking care of her the desperation of that and all of a sudden all this stuff comic behavior came out of his truth to me to take care of someone that was his heart and soul. And we worked on that created that and then he started booking and the rest is history.
58:27 It was all like whether it’s drama or comedy it doesn’t matter if you tackle it the same way. You mentioned that he felt like he was blacklisted there for a bit. We’ve sometimes seen Hollywood actors just kind of emerge out of what looked like their career was kind of over. I mean I guess you could say it with like Travolta and Pulp Fiction. It was all the time.
58:43 It’s never over till it’s over.
58:44 Brian Rose: Do you ever do you get actors come to you sometimes? Every hour till it’s over. That was all the time. Do they come to you sometimes?
58:49 I say Ivana I’m in a rut. I need to change things up. I need to try something new. I need to take some risks. Do people come to do that?
58:56 Ivana Chubbuck: James Franco did that. Jake Gyllenhaal. There’s a lot of people do. It’s like a lot of times the joy of it will be taken away from you or the politics of the business will kind of drive you down or stupid notes you get from directors who want to like take away any of the creative spirit you have. And so yeah people come to me to to get their joy back to that made them want to be actors in the first place.
59:25 And it’s wonderful. I mean it’s like it’s like I go back to like any field. It’s like we have a small microcosm which is show business. A lot of people watch it but it’s a small microcosm of people that actually do it. You could take the same concepts and precepts about how people make it and how people feel like they’ve lost how many people in any job have felt like they’re that the rug was pulled up from under them and they lost everything.
59:56 And some people let that defeat them and then they just like do nothing for the rest of their lives or that same person who takes the defeat or being fired and the next thing you know they’re only a company far beyond anything. Thank God they got fired. You know kind of thing and I’m sure there’s lots of business stories like that. So many business stories like that had they stayed in the company would have been continuously repressed. So it’s like it’s how you take that information and be defeated by it or let that invigorate your passion to prove everybody wrong.
1:00:37 Brian Rose: I was wondering you talked about with Halle Berry that you made that decision that was off the script to make that transformation in her mind. Do you ever come with that plan and then the director has a completely different idea of what’s going on and how do you work with the director sometimes that just has a different vision of the character than you or the actor. I’m not directing and I’m just giving the work that allows the director to manipulate them to get whatever they want.
1:01:01 Ivana Chubbuck: But we need a foundation. I always use the example of you can’t paint. I want to paint my wall yellow right. But I need a wall to put it on otherwise the paint just drips to the floor. So I need a wall to paint it out.
1:01:17 So what I do is I create the foundation. So first I build a house to get that wall. You have to you know cut a hole into the ground. You have to put some cement and you have to put wood and insulation and the roof and on and on and on bricks whatever you have to create this whole foundation and then you have your wall. You can paint any color you want.
1:01:38 I want to paint it purple today. I want to put polka dots on it whatever you want. So I build the foundation so the director could paint it whatever color they want. Directors love working with my people because they can tell them do anything and they have the foundation so strong they’ll be able to go there. Mine’s not the vision.
1:01:55 Mine is the foundation and writers work with you as well.
1:01:58 Brian Rose: What do you what do you what do you try to teach writers because this is obviously coming out from a completely different angle. How do you work with them
1:02:06 Ivana Chubbuck: not a different angle. It’s actually the same as why this book is as a Bible for writers and directors. It’s the same concept is like where is it.
1:02:14 What’s the main characters issues demons like Herman Melville you know and Moby Dick what’s his issues. How does he overcome the whale and metaphorically the whale and and the process and the journey that that that it takes to get there and there’s always going to be conflict that’s going to get in your way. And the more conflict the more you try to overcome the more conflict the more you try to overcome or accomplish more until there’s a crescendo of like information that explodes it into an epiphany and then a day in the mall you know so it’s same concept and concept is how you break down like it’s storytelling we’re all telling a story together and so it’s not like this we’re doing this person is coming from this side this person coming this size prison this side we’re all telling a story together it’s an ensemble storytelling.
1:03:08 And so the directors always talk to their actors about what their vision is and together as a team and the writers because there’s always like the writer director and actors are always a team together and they what is the vision what’s the theme what are we trying to present here and together as a team you tell a story stage and screen. Do you teach them differently. Do you have one that you like more. You’re not picking any favorites today. They must be a little bit different or not.
1:03:37 Good acting is good acting. I do that light one to two Tony’s in a row. You just like is my student Judith Light is in the history of Tony’s. There’s never been anybody who’s one to Tony’s consecutively two years in a row. My person did.
1:03:57 Why. Because we did the work exactly the way I break down a script for movies television and theater. So that’s just a proving case. I worked with two different people doing the case of the curious dog. It’s not here too.
1:04:13 Yeah. It’s in the curious. Yeah. The with the guy who started in Denmark and I started Norway and they both won the award for best like their their Tony. You know doing the same same work.
1:04:30 I mean I didn’t know it’s because of different people but I’m say I would give them if that was being filmed or on stage same exact notes. It’s like it’s not different. Good acting is good acting. That’s why you talk about Daniel Day-Lewis and Judy Dench or or whomever if it’s a good acting it’s good acting you know it’s like it’s not based in and like there’s different ways to finesse it. And anybody who says well I teach theater acting or I teach movie acting you know it’s like it’s bullshit that’s bullshit run away from those schools like immediately because that is just good acting and you have to get to the precepts of what creates a good foundation to create a good performance so you can fly from there.
1:05:14 Good technique is allowing you the ability to to to take it on your own create the foundation using my technique and then you go from there. You should come up with stuff. You should fly from there grow from there. The what do I like better. What’s ever is better.
1:05:35 It’s like I can’t there’s some movies that suck. I’ll walk out of those some movies I really like I’ll stay. Some plays are really great. I’ll stay and I want more. Some plays really suck.
1:05:47 I’ll walk out of those. It’s you know it’s good it’s good. You want to be a part of it. Same as television shows you know.
1:05:55 Brian Rose: Do you what is your view on the future of television.
1:05:58 Are there a lot more opportunities there and then just digital media. Does that change anything you do or are you really just about teaching great performances performances
1:06:11 Ivana Chubbuck: that I think that there is much more opportunity in the internet world. There’s some really amazing stuff coming out of Amazon Prime Netflix. I mean it’s there. It’s some of the best shows are coming from there.
1:06:26 You know and it’s like speaking to this life transparent is have you seen that show. Wonderful. And it’s better than a lot of like a lot of network television and it’s like so it’s a it’s a it’s a world that I want to keep explore anything that allows people to really grow and be creative. And it’s a it’s a venue that allows more creativity when there’s so many checks and balances in the network. You can’t do this you can’t do this you can’t do this you can’t do this.
1:06:57 Now go. Yeah. Am I supposed to do that with all these things I can’t do. So in these other venues you know it’s like they’re letting him do I forget like having to be able to say you know the F word you know it’s like who cares that everybody has usually some unless you HBO and Showtime but they don’t put any kind of holes on all the other stuff that’s really important behavior that you can’t do on sexuality or exposing yourself for gay stuff I don’t know whatever you know it’s so it’s it’s it’s like it’s opening it up to be able to be more creative which I adore and I’m actually noticing pilots that are happening this season on network that they’re trying to push the envelope to which is kind of cold because of that maybe because the competition nobody’s watching network anymore.
1:07:53 So they’re trying to they’re trying to let go of some of their checks and balances on that but remember part of it’s all advertising dollars and so P&G Procter and Gamble are going to say well we won’t take a show that does this isn’t this so it’s that kind of thing so it’s really about money to a lot of like business that people have to deal with this like oh screw that CBS you know but it’s not like that it’s like they have to also deal with the people that are their main advertisers with CBS have instead of some of the most Bible Belti advertisers that exists like their station is probably one of the most like you know saccharin.
1:08:34 Brian Rose: Are there enough roles for women and older women in Hollywood. Should there be more should there be an effort to be made more.
1:08:42 I always think so. There’s always like 10 men and one woman on the show. You know it’d be nice to have more women. How can you tell a story when they’re not an equal number. It just seems to be strange.
1:08:52 Ivana Chubbuck: Well if you tell a story it depends on the story. It’s like if you go to a cop station there aren’t that many female cops. They just really aren’t. So if you want to tell the truthful part of the story there is a couple and I don’t know what it is here but there really aren’t that many female cops. And so you got to tell the truthful story too.
1:09:15 So we want more women but it’s like that’s not the truth of it. In the hospital there are more male doctors you know that they’re getting to be more female doctors so there are more females in those like razor anatomy stuff so you’ve got like three to four guys. And because of the truth of it in the real world we have to look at like the real world and how that really operates. And the mafia for example they’re not run by women. OK.
1:09:49 So we’ve got the Sopranos they’re going to be the wives they’re going to be the psychiatrists I mean your daughters but not going to be the head guys. You know it’s like it’s the truth of it. And if you put it differently to give them more roles you won’t watch because it’s not true. Not the way the mafia works. They don’t give women that kind of power.
1:10:08 I mean it would be nice but it’s just the idea that you’re also trying to tell stories too and you’ve got to be accurate to that as well. I’m a big proponent of female rights. I’m so into like if in terms of my people what I told you about Beyonce it’s like women’s power and all that kind of stuff. And especially if I don’t like any of my my students to make victim choices whether you’re writing or directing or I want everything to come from I need to be empowered and my being a victim those days are over and I want to be empowered from now on with an environment of the script and and especially my women I get really pissed off with them saying come on you know let the way that people told you life is supposed to be the way the history has been has told us to be let’s change the world let’s be let’s show people that we’re as good if not better than the male race.
1:11:06 And so it’s yeah I would love that that would be an amazing thing but we do have a whole lot of stuff like look at Scandal and the show with Viola Davis starring in how to make a murder and it was big hit show scans of a kid’s show extents you know a female lead revenge is a female lead a lot of guys a lot more shows coming out that female leads Game of Thrones is a lot of female leads.
1:11:37 Brian Rose: Yeah there are nice nice to see you talk about not making victim is a choice and I was just thinking about most of the people that listening to us right now watching us aren’t actors and I was wondering if there’s one thing that can take away from you and your book that you know to take what you would teach an actor and what empowers them or what you know a normal non actor would do would it be about not being a victim or would be something else
1:12:12 Ivana Chubbuck: don’t take information as a way to feel like it’s it’s your reason to be defeated take the bad things that happen to you and make them as a reason to overcome and win it’s the losers of the world who get defeated by naysayers get defeated by rejection who get defeated by bad things that happen to them it’s a dynamic people of the world leaders of the world the successful people of the world that take that same information they say I’m going to win in spite of him because that happened and that’s the difference between most of humanity chooses to make a choice that they will be defeated by that and but those
1:13:00 Few that just say are the people that are going to achieve greatness and they will absolutely
1:13:07 Brian Rose: what’s the next five years for you like and what keeps you excited about what you do
1:13:14 Ivana Chubbuck: well I whenever I have the bar I raise the bar and then I raise the bar what’s the five years going to bring me I don’t know I just like keep raising the bar I wanted to you know to write the book wrote the book I wanted to be a best seller and published by one of the biggest publishing companies in the world done raise the bar I wanted to be translated in different languages it’s translated in so many languages and soon to be in a lot more in markets that I never even thought it’s like you know Korean Chinese Japanese Greek Portuguese is already in you know Romanian and Italian and Hebrew and Russian and in Spanish and so many other it’s like it’s like I’ve raised the bar now so what’s the next bar going to be I’m putting up schools and that’s already happening I keep raising the barn things are happening there’s a school that we’re launching that’s already started with success and Moscow we’re starting a school in Italy and different you know different places in Italy that’s already in the markings of coming up for September and I have accredited teachers that are teaching in universities and also their own schools this becomes kind of mine I have accredited teachers in South America Canada all different parts of America Italy France Amsterdam London all over Scandinavia
1:14:57 Russia Romania Tokyo Japan you’re worldwide I can keep going Philippines and very successfully very successfully they have so many students and so I got to raise the bar again and so it’s about raising the bar and never giving giving never ever say why raise the bar I’m done I’m not going to say my age but I am a lot older than you think I am and if you will say what is your beauty secret and I say I never ever stop thinking there’s more I’m going to give you I’m going to show you it’s like when I give up and I say well I accomplished with this it is what it’s going to be accomplished what I wanted to accomplish or I didn’t so I just didn’t sit there like this is all it’s going to be so my face just kind of like it’s into this and I kind of get crinkle like this it’s well that’s it for me but that makes sense right your face is going to do that so but if I’m going OK I’m going to do this next and then say oh what happened I’m going to do this next and say this opens up everything and so it’s like it’s a great beauty secret it’s better than Botox it’s better than any cream or any surgery it’s really just like there’s more there’s more there’s more there’s more to accomplish there’s more to more people to meet and enjoy and explore more things to know I love the fact that I know how much I don’t know it’s true posture is beauty and posture almost shows the way that you’re open to the world and how excited you are about the world and like you said when
1:16:36 You have that kind of cringing cringing it’s over mentality your posture does it too and then when you open up it’s yeah but it’s not even about you in the face too yeah yeah because you’re going to like this well it’s over it’s not not what you look like because I go it’s not bad things happen and say oh good things happen I’ve had that oh my god the last year was like so many things bad that could happen happened including major horrible death long story short just everything really horrible that happened I said to myself okay what do I need to learn from this things don’t just happen bad to you and you sit there go God I’m just being eaten up and and it’s like the world hates me or pick it on me or whatever I need to learn something there’s always something to learn from everything good bad and indifferent especially the bad so much to learn from the bad why did this happen how could I keep that from happening how do I explore this to help other people to understand this and and also how do I access this information so I could practice what I preach preach all this stuff you know so it’s like I need to learn from it I need to grow from it I need to be tested by it is a test and tests are good you know so I’m being tested by it to understand better to to to understand more about how the world works and how about my participation is in that system and how I can help other people grow and myself grow at the same time my growth is your
1:18:22 Growth your growth is my growth it’s all symbiosis you know and it’s like that’s what I love traveling all over the place and meeting all these new people that how many times I’ve heard from as you’ve changed my life this isn’t this is happening in my life now because of the things you’ve taught me and that makes me feel so so good and and going back to what I said about my wish at the Wailing Wall and that most spiritual place in the world is like I feel like it’s happening I feel like what I wished for I asked the one thing I asked God for I feel like I’m getting inspire me to inspire others to greatness
1:19:21 Brian Rose: Yvonne I always ask people at the end of the show a few questions I’m going to ask you the same if you could make a phone call to the 20 year old Yvonne and give that young lady a bit of advice what would you tell her
1:19:41 Ivana Chubbuck: I want to get jokes I tell her it’s like grow up to seven ball I don’t know I was really a screwed up kid very very self destructive but if I I mean at so many levels I had everything you could do wrong and every self destructive way that a person can do it but if I hadn’t done that I wouldn’t be the person I am today so I kind of had to go through that that’s it
1:20:16 Brian Rose: yeah no I agree best advice you’ve ever received business personal maybe acting advice have you ever gotten good acting advice I think he’s out of the acting equation I feel like it’s a small microcosm best advice it’s going to be a long answer to this but I think the
1:20:42 Ivana Chubbuck: Best concepts that I live by is something my father taught me which was never to judge I don’t judge anything you can tell me anything you know you murdered someone I think you must have a good reason to do it you know I just like don’t judge and and it’s because he never he he he accessed information differently I was like six years old and it was like we’re talking about whether red China should get into the UN or not and he said so what do you think and I said no it’s right China is communist no no no and he said well there’s a reason why they should let China into the UN and I said OK then they should let China into the UN and so he said well here’s the reasons why they shouldn’t and and then I realized that form your own opinions taken all information and not necessarily have one be open and I just thought that that to me is like I there’s there’s possibility having opinions I should say that having opinions stops the process of understanding other things and the stronger you have the absolute you are right opinion creates a smaller bubble for you to live with them and to always be open to everybody’s thought process because that that also allows you to be a bigger person more intelligent person and a more a person that can be more of someone who has a better ability to communicate with other people final question to the 20 year old is listening to us from anywhere around the world that can be in China South America who knows who is
1:22:41 Brian Rose: An aspiring actor who wants to grow up one day to be one but what what do you tell them is there something they should do locally should they get some film on themselves like you said should they try new things or what’s the best thing they can do move to L.A. What should they do
1:23:00 Ivana Chubbuck: is it’s study there’s always like some place to study and there’s no place to study in your little town move to the closest town that has a place that you can study study is of premier importance at the same time you’re studying do student films do local theater ply the craft that you’re studying in the real world there’s always theater around every university usually has a film department that may be tiny but it’s still they have one and you can do student films just study and ply the craft and when you have enough actual background that you have that has something that you can show then move to L.A.
1:23:42 But but but if you really love acting you should be able to do that anywhere and again study study study study take risks don’t be afraid be fearless go in there and say if you really have a dream to be an actor go for it but don’t just show up on Hollywood’s door and say I’m pretty I’m talented you know work with me because it just doesn’t happen that way and anything that you read in the tabloids is not true so it’s not going to happen that way you really have to do it the way all the people that you know and love all those big big stars they all studied all those people that you think this were discovered because of whatever they studied everybody studied everybody studied and worked their asses off
1:24:25 Brian Rose: that’s refreshing to hear and you work with some of the best of them the books called the power of the actor how can people get a touch with you find out about your schools around the world is there a single place
1:24:38 Ivana Chubbuck: I think the best way is to go to the website and if you just google my name I’ve on a chubbock then the website will come up
1:24:46 Brian Rose: okay thank you so much for the ideas the candor the biggest thing for me was the hard work involved and that nothing comes easy to any of these great performances and it’s caused by people putting the work in and going to the hard places emotionally and I guess I should have known that but I definitely learned that
1:25:05 Ivana Chubbuck: oh you should have I should have what’s wrong with you should have I think the most important thing that people
1:25:12 Should know is that acting is not about getting to the feelings and can you cry on cue and that kind of stuff it really is about it’s about a journey it’s about a journey a beginning middle and an end and getting some place of importance that’s a primal soulful necessary importance so people are going at the edge of their seats going I need you to get that I want you to get that you create your audience as a rooting section that’s so cool and it’s a good metaphor for life too if you can have people who are rooting for you on that journey well as we say on London Real it’s about the journey that’s our tagline I wish you on yours about it and thank you so much and all the best oh and thank you for having me pleasure it’s good to be had all right take care all right what we call reality is in fact nothing more than a culturally sanctioned and linguistically reinforced hallucination we have the Scottish actor James Cosmo from Brave Hearts train spotting and Game of Thrones I’m an actor to my bones I may have been in Hollywood type films but I’m not a Hollywood actor some people are willing to die for something we’ve got a beautiful country there and it should be for the enjoyment of everyone in Scotland I just started crying and I’ve got to do this it goes right to his broken heart I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done I’m working I’m an actor what’s what’s not to like sometimes you get something that can just make people think on Sunday London
