When you've been brought up in variety, I think timing is always important in your life. If I'm ever late for anything, whether it's personal or business, I always apologise. 'I'm sorry I'm late,' and all that. And if somebody is late meeting me, I expect them to say 'I'm sorry I'm late.' It's just, shall we say, showbiz etiquette of my day.
I've grown up on set, so I understand a lot of things that a new actor wouldn't, whether it's etiquette or how things work on a technical level.
Say 'Toronto' or 'Ontario,' and the immediate thought associations are with a somewhat blander version of North America: a United States with a welfare regime and a more polite street etiquette, and the additionally reassuring visage of Queen Elizabeth on the currency.
You know, you can make a small mistake in language or etiquette in Britain, or you could when I was younger, and really be made to feel it, and it's the flick of a lash, but it would sting, and especially at school where there's not much privacy, and so on. You could, yes, undoubtedly be made to feel crushed.
Let's face it: professing a deep interest in movies, the absolutely dominant global art form of the last century, is at this point like professing an interest in air. Passion is nice. Erudition is admirable. But it's like that moment when good manners cross over into meaningless etiquette.
In beauty school, you learn etiquette.
I lived in a world where social arrangements were taken for granted and assumed to be timeless. A child's obligation was to learn these usages, not to question them. The complexities of racial deportment were of a piece with learning manners and etiquette more generally.
Nothing is less important than which fork you use. Etiquette is the science of living. It embraces everything. It is ethics. It is honor.
Your wedding day is supposed to be your big day, and yet a lot of engaged couples find that instead of creating an event that will be important to them, they're dodging through a minefield of modern etiquette traps.
If you're ever bcc'd, do not go near 'reply all.' 'Bcc' is 'blind carbon copy.' It means you're a fly on the wall, dude! If you hit reply all, it's beyond bad etiquette to out the person who gave you the superpower of invisibility. It's like screaming, 'I'm a spy!'
