When asked by a reporter — “What’s your favorite perfume?” — the Italian stage actress Eleonora Duse replied that such questions were “ridiculous and puerile.” ¹ Duse avoided the press whenever possible and felt an actress “must not attract attention when she’s not on stage…an actress must pass through life unobserved.” ² If Duse were alive and working today, I’m betting there would be no “Eleonora Duse” celebrity fragrance on the market. But it’s good, in the 21^st century, to see or hear the name Eleonora Duse because she was such a cultural force in her lifetime.

Duse started acting at the age of four in her family’s theatrical troupe. As a child, she was often forced to beg on the streets, but Duse went on to become one of the most famous actors in the world. Using the theory of “six degrees of separation,” I feel a small connection to Duse. Right out of high school, I went to New York to study acting with Stella Adler, who was a student of Konstantin Stanislavsky, who said that he “got his inspiration for founding the Moscow Art Theatre from witnessing a performance of Duse’s.”³

At a time when actors assumed histrionic, unnatural poses, declaimed their dialogue, and displayed their own personalities on stage, Duse was different…

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