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Whitney Houston, Mickey Rourke, Jennifer Hudson, Mackenzie Phillips: What comes to mind when you hear these celebrities names? I know the one I hear. It's "comeback."
When Jennifer Hudson sang at the Super Bowl at the beginning of this year, the media went wild with Hudson comes back headlines, and they should have. If you had faced what Hudson faced--your mother, brother, and nephew all murdered in the same day--could you have gone before millions less than three months later to sing?
And did she sing? Critics say she not only sang but she dazzled. The public felt deep compassion for Hudson because of that horrific tragedy, and so did I, but while I applaud her for her dignity and stoicism, I think of her admirable resilience more akin to a spectacular rebound than a full-fledged comeback.
She wasn't gone from the public eye for years, not like Rourke, Houston, or Phillips. Neither did she have to overcome the stigma of self-inflicted tragedy. A murderer mauled her life, ripped the people she loved from her. She didn't trash her career.
During the year that Hudson faced tragedy, Mickey Rourke's epic comeback unfolded and continued into 2009 when he was nominated for an Oscar for The Wrestler. He didn't win. Sean Penn won, but Penn getting the Oscar makes Rourke's comeback no less worthy of contemplation.
"After ten years went by and I wasn't working, I thought I'm never comin' back. The only thing I had going was hope."
Ask Mickey Rourke and he will tell you: His best work is decades behind him. Years before, his bad-boy behavior derailed a promising career.
That is, until this year, and this film "The Wrestler," and what could be a re-defining moment for the 56-year old actor. (Mickey Rourke, The Comeback Kid at CBS)
As the CBS story tells us, "Rourke made a name for himself years ago in movies such as Diner, and then he threw it all away," and those of us who recall his downward spiral back in the day heard the stories. He threw it all away in a self-destruction waltz, and he was good. Someone to watch. The CBS story is not exaggerating when it says people were comparing him to Marlon Brando and Robert DeNiro. So, what he says in this next quote is not cockiness, it's just a fact of his life.
"Once you've been somebody, really, you have a career and you're a nobody anymore (again?), and you're getting older, you're living what's called a state of shame. I went through that in the movie business, you know? You are alone." (Rourke to CBS)
You may not have ever been a highly visible star like Rourke, but you probably know what he's talking about. Some of us have been Mrs. Doctor with lots of friends and a packed social calendar until the divorce or until one of our children was picked up for drugs. Some of us used to be at the top of the corporate ladder until a downsizing; some of us have had clout in our own small pond until we did something incredibly stupid that we've never told anyone, and some of us simply remember we used to be hot and tight until we ate way too many pints of Haagen Daaz and stopped hitting the gym or doing anything to maintain our health.
We can all play the I'm-so-spiritually-evolved game and say, "Oh, but that doesn't mean I'm nobody now. I'm always somebody." And we'd be right. But the point is, if we're honest, many of us know what it feels like to fall from a higher level of performance or place, stuck with that desire to make a comeback while feeling we'll never make it.
Maybe worse, if we've been as low as Whitney Houston, we may at some point have been in a place so dark we didn't grasp that we needed to come back. I wrote at my personal blog earlier this month: "I have been pleased to see ... Houston's comeback.
She sang at the American Music Awards this year, "I Didn't Know My Own Strength." Although some have seen fit to critique her voice and say she's lost something, I was greatly moved by the performance.
When I see her I always think of my mother who passed away last year. Whenever she saw Whitney, she would say, "That's Cissy Houston's girl," referring to
