When Jessica was 12, she was sent to an acting school affiliated with Chuck Norris. Her scene partner was David Joyner, the man who played Barney the Dinosaur, who was nearly two decades older than her.
Chuck Norris told her she was too expressive with her face, and used Denzel Washington as the ultimate example of powerful, restrained acting — his secret being that he never moves his eyebrows. To put this theory into practice, Norris literally taped Jessica’s eyebrows down with green Scotch tape so she couldn’t move them during scenes, and required her to do this every class going forward.
Jessica found the whole experience humiliating, eventually crying in the minivan and refusing to go back after the third session. She closes the story with a funny note — the experience permanently changed how she watches Denzel Washington movies, because now she can’t stop fixating on whether his eyebrows move.
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