Here is an assorted list of anecdotes where someone or something is referred to as unnamed, nameless or anonymous.
Miki Turner asked Brittany Murphy about her best and worst professional experience: “Well, the worst is also one of the best because I learned one of the most amazing things from it, and that will remain anonymous.”
Source – Reading Eagle (December 2, 2001).
“I worked on a seventeen-week shoot recently with an actress (who shall remain nameless). She kept complaining about wearing the mike, saying Why do I have to wear this? I have to walk and talk, and wear this thing? This was an action picture, we were running three cameras at once, so there was no room for a boom. Eventually, I had to go to the director. Can we go talk to her together? I asked. He said Yes. He sat down with her very politely, and said We have to hear you. You have three pages of dialogue.“
Source – Act Right: Everything You Need to Know That They Didn’t Teach You in Acting Class (1998) a.k.a. Act Right: A Manual for the On-Camera Actor (2001).
“An actress who shall remain nameless went to Washington recently to raise the national consciousness about women’s health. Political and medical luminaries turned out in force. The first lady attended the luncheon, and all was going splendidly until the actress ducked into a Capitol Hill bathroom to sneak a smoke. Alma Viator, a theatrical agent who had arranged the appearance, nearly passed out. She stationed herself in front of the restroom door while the actress puffed away, calling upon the gods and her wits to keep anybody else from walking in. Viator said: That’s the kind of thing that makes you do your homework a little better the next time.“
Source – Los Angeles Times (December 21, 1997).
Natasha Richardson: “Todd doesn’t believe in just reviving a show for the sake of reviving it. And I completely agree – otherwise, it’s just museum theater. He also is very careful in the choices he makes. I know for a fact that a very popular American actress, who shall remain nameless, contacted Todd through her agent. She said she wanted to do a play with him, and it was presented as sort of a gift, because this actress has the power to sell tickets around the block. But he said no, because she wasn’t right – she had never been on the stage. And when you’re 35, you just can’t walk out on the stage never having acted in the theater before.”
Source – New York Magazine (December 19, 1994).
Joan Rivers on interviewing stars as they arrive for the Academy Awards: “I’ve made some terrible faux pas. One well-known actor, who shall remain nameless, came down the red carpet with this woman, and I said ‘Oh, is this your mother?’ It turned out to be his wife. Go live with that.”
Source – The Deseret News (April 25, 1996).
Doug Davidson pulled his all-time favourite gag on Steven Ford when he played Andy Richards on The Young and the Restless (a role that he played from 1981 to 1986): “We had a cast member on the show, who will remain nameless, that nobody liked to work with. I typed up four scenes between Steve and this actress and inserted them into his script. When Steve got it, he saw all these mad passionate scenes with someone he didn’t want to work with at all. It was very funny.”
Source – The Free Lance-Star (June 17, 1989).
Ruben V. Nepales wrote for his Only in Hollywood column: “An actress who has us thinking “What the…?” leads our list of the most fascinating interviewees this year. At the beginning of our press con with her, she spread a stack of index cards on the table in front of her. She announced that she wrote quotations, mainly those of a well-loved woman in American history, on the cards which she said may be relevant to her replies. And so in some of her answers to the questions, the actress paused midway and searched for a “relevant” quote from her “idol.”
“The trouble was, sometimes it took her a long time to look for that “appropriate” quote from the mass of index cards scattered in front of her. As she frantically searched for that index card, the journalists, who sat in stunned silence (and also out of politeness), could hear her mutter, Sh!t. Our interviewee’s bewildering behaviour was enough to send a colleague home after that press con (there were more interviews following that one). He said he had enough of Hollywood diva behaviour for the day. We all wondered – was the actress going loca?”
Source – Philippine Daily Inquirer (December 29, 2006).
Elizabeth Jagger was asked what has her worst modelling moment: “When I was 15, I worked with this photographer (who will remain nameless) who just kept going too far. I was made to wear this see-through top, and she followed me into the loo to try and take photos!”
Source – Elle Girl (April, 2005).
Joe Wallenstein: “I once worked with an actress who was sweet as sugar but could not get the words out of her mouth unless she stood on the set and brushed her hair for forty strokes. That might sound like a minor annoyance until it comes up as two minutes before midnight on the Friday night you are shooting.”
Source – Practical Moviemaking: A Handbook for the Real World (2011).
Author Jason Paul Collum was asked about what it was like interviewing B-movie actresses for his 2004 book titled Assault of the Killer Bs. The response: “They’re all incredibly smart and I learned so many interesting things about their careers, their families, and backgrounds. Very generous. Not a snot in the bunch. There was only one actress, who shall remain unnamed other than to say she was in one of the Friday the 13th films, who was just a train wreck. I took her to lunch and could barely make out what she was saying. She was very frail and ate her sandwich like she hadn’t eaten in a week. Then she went to the bathroom and came back with cocaine all over her nose and cheeks. I’d brought a copy of the film for her to sign, but was so depressed I never pulled it out of my bag. After the “interview” she asked me to drive her to her “friend’s” house…which I discovered was actually a crack house once I got there. No one has been able to hunt her down for interviews since, but oddly she’s the most requested contact I receive from other authors and filmmakers. That was my only truly negative experience with the book.”
Source – Cinemassacres: A Tribute to Forrest J. Ackerman (2015).
Melissa Rivers talking about her mother: “The reason she loved the likes of George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro is that they are in on the joke. They know they’re talented, they know their work matters, but they know that they’re making entertainment, not replicating liver cells to save lives. This is as opposed to one B-level actress (who shall remain nameless because she’s psychotic, she knows where I live, and I’m actually afraid of her) who forgot she was raised in a double-wide and decided she was an artiste of the highest order. Not only did she break into French in mid-conversation, but she also enjoyed reading poetry aloud, often pausing for dramatic effect in the hope that us simple, unenlightened folk could take in all that she was saying and hopefully grasp the meaning and the beauty of her words. She pulled this sh!t in front of my mother once. My mother, not one to be outsmarted, waited for her to finish and then said That was wonderful. You should try reading it in its original Gaelic. So much of the beauty is lost in the translation. Then she turned to me and whispered Melissa, I’m all for people bettering themselves, but please, at one point she needed to be reminded she came from a trailer park.“
Source – The Book of Joan: Tales of Mirth, Mischief, and Manipulation (2015).
Michael Westmore said: “In the privacy of her dressing room, one actress (who shall remain nameless) liked to pee in Styrofoam coffee cups and leave them on the makeup table. Guess who got to remove them?”
Source – Makeup Man (2017).
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