rings thing (oct 22)
October 22, 2002 | 12:10 p.m.

With Viggo Mortensen's recent announcement that he will no longer be accepting fan mail after October 31, 2002, the question arises: How important is an actor's contact with fans to the (long-term) success of his/her movies? To his/her career? And, more specifically, how important is the contact the Fellowship actors have with their fans to the success of the Lord of the Rings movies?

I have to say that this annoyed me until I read the statement Viggo made, to the effect that he doesn't have time to answer each piece of mail personally any more and doesn't want it to be answered by other people, so he will no longer be accepting any. Which is different, of course. (I thought he'd decided that he was too important to read fanmail, which would have been rather arsey to say the least, I'm sorry).

Personally, though I love and indeed am obsessed with various TV shows/movies and their characters, and therefore I suppose with the actors and actresses who play them, I am not at all interested in having any sort of direct contact with them. I have never written to a celebrity or gone to a signing or an appearance or anything of the kind, and I don;t think I ever would even if I had the opportunity. However, that's just me. I know it's important for other fans to feel as if they have a connection with the actors, however tenuous it may be. I suppose that means that an actor's contact with fans is important to the success of his/her movies, because fans expect to have at least some contact with them. If I saw an actor from LotR on the street, I wouldn't ask for an autograph, or even speak to them, but I think I'm in the minority there - I think celebrities need to accept that people will ask them to sign things and so on, and take it as part and parcel of being famous and having shitloads of money. I would.

I think that the contact the fellowship actors have with the fans is going to be quite important to the success of the LotR movies, but not vital. I think we would all go to see the movies even if there was no way of having any contact with any of them, but I may be wrong there. I have to say that I use movie and TV shows as an escape from real life, primarily, so to have contact with the actors would mess with my head quite a bit. Odd, isn't it?

This has been rather bitty. I'm not really 100% focused today. Sorry.

<3
gf

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