ROAD TO FAME.

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 68, 17 September 1936, Page 21

ROAD TO FAME.

Sylvia Sydney, the calm, well-po;sed, independent young actress of today, confesses that she had to be "browbeaten" to fame. Her mother and the stage directors who 'first sensed her ability for dramatic art were the ones who literally forced her to "let go' of herself during her climb to the top. "I was twelve when I decided to .become an actress." she explained in an interview during the filming ■of the new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture, "Fury," screening shortly here. ' I had the urge to act but I also had a kind of shyness that apparently didn't want me to. I was probably the theatre's most sensitive fledgling. I took private dramatic instruction for three years, and both my mother and my teacher had to keep working on me to .drop, my timidity when I spoke my pieces. Later on, in-the Theatre Guild School, I put 'up a bold front to keep from being eliminated with the boys and girls considered unsuited for acting. I shed many a private tear over the criticism of the directors, which I now realise was the only thing that could have kept me sufficiently keyed up to learn the business."