A still of the computer-generated Tilly Norwood. Xicoia Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Dear Tilly Norwood, They tell me you are an actress and a computer. I am an actress and almost 40. Let's talk. When I was your age... well, wait, no. You are both infant and immortal, like Thor in a diaper. I mean, when I was starting out in my career like you, this very thing happened. An actress older than me pulled me aside and gave me advice. I was at a summer theatre festival in 2009, which meant being drunk in jeggings and flirting with married people with good diction in a meadow. Actress lesson one, Tilly: go to the meadow, but only talk to Ann Dowd. Don't instead go to the roof to look for meteors with the BAFTA guy. Talk to Ann Dowd, Tilly. Related Stories Business Jake Paul Opts In to Sora 2, and Chaos Follows News Robin Williams' Daughter Slams Fans for Making "Gross" AI Videos of Her Late Dad Anyway I was at this theatre festival in a two-hander play - oof, lots to explain here, Tilly. Sorry if I'm going too fast. A "play" is when "actors" (flesh-bags of milk with wrinkles and secrets) stand on, like... a wooden floor? A floor that's higher than the carpeted floor. Those elevated, wrinkled milkbags then yell and whisper at each other. Don't worry. They went to college for it! Sometimes there are hats. I'm not explaining it right. I want you to be excited about being an actor. I promise, it's the best. Let me see if I can tell you why. Oh, oh! Arthur Miller!He wrote a play called All My Sons. I saw one production of it in a barn with no air conditioning or subtext. And, Tilly, it was bad. Even at 14, I knew it was bad. But my dad (also an actor) had done a different sauna-barn play with one of the fedora-ed milkbags on stage, so we supportively gasped and chuckled where we were supposed to. (Lesson two, Tilly: for friends, the worse the play is, the more hyperbolic you must be in your backstage reaction.) But this production... oof. I was excited for our family post-show dissection on the Volvo ride home. Was their dialect coach at war with vowels? Was the ingenue's shaking claw-hand there since the first table read, or was it a "breakthrough" in the dress rehearsal? Could the local police do something about the jarring purple light cues every time someone yelled? We KNOW they're upset, we don't need purple's help. My dad and I made arched brow eye contact at undeserved exit applause. More like "All My Sucks." Then a new actor entered, and the air turned upside down. Tilly, he looked like a dead body. His face was 1,000 pounds of lead, like he almost couldn't move from how heavy his thoughts were. The unmistakable weight of grief. It. Was. Real. While the rest of his body was a meandering ghost, his eyes were molten rage-arrows piercing the other people on stage. People who minutes before had been actors, mere costumed BFAs with bad wigs. Suddenly this man's performance transformed them into the play's bloody-handed Kellers. Now everything was real and terrifying. The actor breathed in sharp like it was freezing cold. He was here to shake these people, demand that they look in the mirror and face their guilt. My dad's hand went to his chest. And 14-year-old me shifted in my seat in discomfort because something was happening for the first time. Tilly, you never had to be 14, so I'll tell you what google can't. It feels like your soul gets a broken glass enema. You go from curious about this marvelous world to drowning in un-marvelous you. Who am I? How should I be? Am I alone? Your human brain answers "no one," "invisible" and "yes." I remember the bad barn play because that actor's performance was so good that, impossibly, I left myself. My adolescent cells floated away from poor me and traded places with his. His performed pain dissolved mine, which was real. All from recognition. From connection. And then, you know, the play was bad again. But the air in the theatre felt carbonated with symbiotic human experience. That's our main job, Till, attempting that. The imperceptible do-si-do of my matter and yours in the air between us. Communal escape or epiphany, it's all medicine. And it's what makes us different from, well... from you. Betty Gilpin, a human actress, will next appear in Netflix limited series Death by Lightning (Nov. 6) as First Lady Lucretia Garfield out Nov. 6. She played another First Lady in Cole Escola's "Oh, Mary" on Broadway earlier this year. Photographed by Emily Soto This, Tilly, can be confusing as an actress. Because you are beautiful. And sometimes the world is so fucking terrifying that it's nice to just look at something pretty and not feel. And forget the bad. While I myself was certainly never AI hot, I had a few good years of human hot during which construction workers on Canal and moguls at Sugarfish would