The Historian

My brother has very weird taste in T.V. shows. That is to say, then, that everyone has weird taste in T.V. shows lately, seeing as he likes pretty much everything on except reality T.V. One of his favorite new shows is FOX's Sleepy Hollow. I wish I had seen this show from the beginning because it does look very interesting, but I poked my head in while my brother was watching an episode and it was very... different. I was having trouble following the plotline, but that's the risk you take when you jump right into a series without watching the previous ones. Still, it looks good and I still want to see it from the beginning. Maybe then the headless soldiers and trunkful of crossbows will make sense.
After all the hype I've heard about this show, I did some rudimentary research on Sleepy Hollow's leading man, Tom Mison. What I found was a brief but inspiring little quote at the end of his biography on IMDB.
"I've always been a history buff. It was one of the few subjects at school that really, really caught me. I think you'll find a lot of actors will be interested in history because it sparks your imagination so much. When you enter a period of history, your imagination just goes wild in creating the world, which is really what acting is."
This quote stuck out to my, I think because it made me realize... all actors were historians, in some sense of the word. And somehow, that made me see some actors differently. It's not like they were just playing pretend; they were delving into the time period, fleshing it out, bringing it back to us in the liveliest way possible, through acting.
Since then, I've been imagining different actors and wrapping the word "historian" around their profile, just to see how it fits. And I just kept repeating to myself...
This guy's a historian.

(Tom Mison, picture courtesy of http://justjared.com )

She's a historian.

(Adelaide Kane as Mary on The CW's Reign)

She's a historian.

(Picture of Emmy Rossum, courtesy of http://fanpop.com )

And this guy just can't seem to keep himself out of period dramas, so you know he's got a few research essays up his sleeve.

(Picture of Tom Hiddleston courtesy of http://marvel-movies-wikia.com )

It does make me view these people, and others, in a different light. Not that I thought they were puppets or something, but it's fascinating that so many actors, as Mr. Mison points out, are probably history buffs just like him.

-Grace