Classic Movie Star Aspies Debate

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I was having a debate with a couple of friends in a film course at school the other day. They know that I have AS and were trying to show me about the important movie stars who they felt were Aspies and telling me to take pride. They came up with a dozen people and I was wondering if anyone else thougt if any of these people seemed liked Aspies or could think of anyone knew ?

1. Marlene Dietrich
2. Klaus Kenski
3. Greta Garbo
4. Katherine Hepburn
5. Peter Sellers
6. Frances Farmer
7. Tallulah Bankhead
8. Marlon Brando
9. Elizabeth Taylor
10. Marilyn Monroe
11. Orson Welles
12. Cary Grant

I definitely think Elizabeth Taylor is HFA. I just finished reading her biography and she was really delayed in her speech.

Frances Farmer might be Aspie, but she's more likely bipolar. Same for Marilyn Monroe.

Katharine Hepburn, quite possibly. I've read about her as well and she had trouble making social connections, as well as having some Aspie peculiarities.

We do have to take pride, because we share the world with some amazing Aspie/autistic minds!

Garbo, yes, most likely. Check out her film Ninotchka. I'm about to write her up for a journal article.

Dietrich, Hepburn, Sellers, Brando, Taylor, Monroe, Grant and probably Welles, no.

Don't know about the others, but probably not.

I wondered about Alfred Hitchcock, but wouldn't put money on it.

In general I think film is not autistic-friendly the way writing, painting and music might be (but most famous people in those fields aren't autistic either).

Just curious, what makes people think that Garbo was an Aspie?
I know she was a very private and reclusive person, but that could've been due to a lot of different reasons.

[quote="happyheather912"]I definitely think Elizabeth Taylor is HFA. I just finished reading her biography and she was really delayed in her speech.

Frances Farmer might be Aspie, but she's more likely bipolar. Same for Marilyn Monroe.

Katharine Hepburn, quite possibly. I've read about her as well and she had trouble making social connections, as well as having some Aspie peculiarities.

We do have to take pride, because we share the world with some amazing Aspie/autistic minds![/quote]

What are the titles of the Taylor and Hepburn books you read ?

Yes, it could have been. For me it was a number of things that slowly added up as I read about her. One is that she was not an actress or movie star - she was an icon. Even other A-listers treated her differently - they didn't see her as one of them.

She has a remote quality in most of her acting - I don't know how much of it was posed and how much of it was her.

One biographer compared her to a unicorn - I have never seen any other performer referred to that way. Normally biographers talk about how their subject is a regular person, just like you and me, but of course smarter, more creative, more talented, more ambitious, etc. No one says things like that about Garbo, so far as I've seen. They talk about her like she's a separate species, which is weird.

I also noticed as I read that she was very isolated. The social life she had seemed to be the social life people gave her. People adopted her, invited her to dinner parties, invited her to Onassis' yacht, set her up with friends. She didn't reciprocate - she never had dinner parties. I got the impression that if people hadn't invited her places, she wouldn't have had a social life.

I also found the first time I saw Ninotchka that her eye contact shifted in and out at a different pace from Ina Claire's when they were talking to each other, but I need to go back and have another look at that.

I'm going to write this up and try to get it published. I'll have a much clearer argument when I'm done. But basically, if you're curious, have a quick look at the bios in the library, and do a quick comparison with other actresses. (Of course, as I gather more information, I may change my mind. But I wasn't expecting her to strike me as autistic when I started reading so there's a case of sorts no matter what.)

buster keaton?