How I Fought To Get Back To The Top

Two years ago, Dyan Cannon was $150,000 in debt , unemployed for four years , alone and fighting the bank from taking her home in Malibu.She was down to little more than tears.Today she is on a winning streak,cresting exciting new projects and in love.This is Dyan's recipe for pulling out of a nose dive."There's only one rule to follow all the time, and that is be true to your higher sense of right.There is no formula.Perhaps Shakespeare said it best,'To thine ownself be true.'Now each of us is different, so the solutions to our problems are going to be different.But some things don't change , like , never sell yourself short on your higher sense of right.Don't sell the values that are basic to your self respect.BE TRUE TO WHAT YOU ARE.At one point of my career I finally arrived at a point I could not proceed-I was growing tired of the disparity between what was in the script and what happened when the picture was finished.Hollywood thought I was attractive and attractive women were not supposed to be much beyond that.Now Hollywood didn't do that to me.I did it to myself.I allowed it.I accepted the limitations.I was going from film to film and finally I said 'no more,I can't do this anymore.I felt that there was something missing.So I said to myself,'What are you going to do about this? 'I'll stop acting.That's what I'll do.Stop acting?What about the house , the car , the rent? Well, I'll do theatre.But what if theatre doesn't happen ?Soon there came a time when I couldn't pay the rent and the market said no more money , no more credit.They are going to take away the home from me.And then an offer came for a film.But it sickened me...because it was the same old kind of part.That's when I decided they could have my car , the furniture, the house,but that never again were they going to have me.Never,never,never!And from that moment ,it became easier for me to function,because I was standing on solid ground.... I went back to writing peotry, and making a little movie of my own about children.I went back to things that really pleased me.And...slowly I began to live again,to feel, to be myself.