"People are like music. Some are telling the truth, others are just noisy". This is the saying of one of the most praised American actors, Bill Murray. Guided by this "slogan," the actor decided to tell only the truth a few years ago - and admitted that he wanted to take his own life.
But art saved him. More precisely, one of Breton's paintings is responsible for him still being here.
Murray, suddenly, at a press conference, while presenting the film "The Monuments Man," revealed to astonished journalists in London that at one point it was so difficult for him to exist…
Murray was born in 1950 as one of eight children; he grew up in a Chicago suburb in a clerical family. As a kid, he became interested in acting, but since his father's death as a teenager, he has had a hard time "recovering." And he started acting in a theater troupe in Chicago, which was comedy-oriented.
However, during one play in a theater, he was so dissatisfied with himself and desperate that it all came together for him. - "I realized I was going in the wrong direction. It was not only the wrong direction regarding where I live, but the essence was the loss of the will to stay alive" - Murray admitted.
And when, after a bad performance, he lost the desire to live, he started wandering through Chicago. - I thought: "If I'm going to die around here, the best would be if I could drown in the lake, and maybe my lifeless body will float for a while…." He wandered the streets like that, overwhelmed with heavy thoughts. After hours and hours of walking, he ended up at the door of the Art Institute of Chicago. He went inside, and one picture "caught his eye."
It was the work of the French painter Gilles Breton "The Song of The Lark." When he saw the painting from 1884, these thoughts went through his head:
- Well, here's a girl who doesn't have any future in life. However, she looks at the sun, watches it rise, and realizes that she still has a chance. And that scene gave me hope. I felt that I was also a person and that every day when the sun starts to rise, I get a new chance - the actor recalled.
When he realized that it was still worth living, if for no other reason than to see the rising sun every morning, Bill managed to forget about that desperately played the role on the stage. He first moved to New York and started playing in theaters on Off-Broadway, and in the late seventies, he started appearing in the famous TV show "Saturday Night Live." And he managed to reach the big screen. He played in two sequels of the blockbuster series "Ghostbusters" and the following decade in "Groundhog Day" in the eighties.
"One of the things I love about acting is that, funnily, I can be what I am - the actor often mentioned. The painting that saved Murray's life is still in the same place, at the Art Institute. Chicago.
The artist, Jules Breton, born in 1827, vividly painted the French countryside in all his works. And while today his works are kept in the Paris "Orsay" or the New York "Metropolitan," it is interesting that he gained fame in America during his lifetime.
In 1886, the painting "Communicants" became the most expensive work sold by a living artist at an auction in New York. And when "The Song of the Lark" was exhibited at the Paris Salon a year after its creation, it was immediately bought by the American art dealer Samuel Avery. Thirty years after the artist's death, "The Song of The Lark" was presented at the Chicago Art Fair. And in 1934, the American First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt admitted that it was not only her favorite painting but "the most beloved work of art in the whole of America"!