Kerry James Marshall especially was a huge influence on me in graduate school, as were Wangechi Mutu and Julie Mehretu. These artists are titans. My education was also very much in comic books, so I've been going to comic book events in New York and have met a few artists there.
At least when I was young, in high school: "Eh, voting doesn't mean nothing." You don't really know that to be true, you just say it. Then you get older, and responsible, and you go, "Oh heck, let me vote." And then you vote and you go away. I was actually right when I was 16.
Brit Marling smartest girl I've ever met. Hands down. Brilliant. Her story? She had a graduate degree from a top tier school and turned down a job with some big company. She went to LA, said she was going to be an actress. She wasn't getting auditions, so she started writing her own films.
I was bullied badly as a kid, but I could always change schools. I could always go home. Now you can't, because of cyberbullying. When bullying follows you home, and there's no escape and no end, to me, that's horror. And to so many girls, that's just life.
I think I've identified as an artist since I was a baby - literally a baby. I made a book of drawings and paintings in pre-school. By the time I got to high school, I was completely enamored with art, doing paintings and portraits at lunchtime. I've been creating in some capacity forever.
I remember in film school, when we made shorts, you'd sit there and screen them with your peers, which has its own flavor, because everybody's so competitive and evil, and it's a really nasty environment.
I put an octopus in aquarium, and it would eat the others. But if you put an octopus in with a school of tiny fish, he might not be able to catch them. That's an archetypal structure: a powerful individual versus the multitude, the crowd. You can relate to that.
I studied painting, sculpture and video in both undergrad and grad school, but I've always been more interested in music and I've always admired music that can evoke a cinematic experience.
I think sometimes when you come from a conservative background, you want to rebel a little bit. I dropped out of school at 15 and learned early in life that saying yes was a lot more fun than saying no. If you have the opportunity to explore the skies and attempt something people haven't done before - well, I was damned if I was going to sit around watching television while someone else was doing it.
What made me want to be an actor? Ah, I'm not really sure, to be honest. I was one of those little kids who did it around school, and then I got to university and made lots of bad plays and short films, and then midway through that, it suddenly dawned on me that this might be a satisfying way to earn a living, if that was at all feasible.
Ever since Marx, leftists have known that the simplest way to controlling a country is via education, the news industry, and health care. If you, as a leader or as a member of a leadership organization can succeed in taking over those three things where only kids, young people, only learn what you want them to learn, they learn how horrible freedom is, how unfair capitalism is, how mean-spirited, all of this, how wonderful equality and egalitarian is. Whenever there is a communist invasion or revolution, the news outlets are the first things seized and then the schools and then health care.
You know, in college, I never got either degree, but I was a double-major in Computer Science and English. And English at Berkeley, where I went to school, is very much creatively-driven. Basically, the entire bachelor's degree in English is all about bullshitting. And Computer Science, which was my other major, was exactly the opposite of that. You had to know what you were doing, and you had to know what you were talking about.
In drama school, my greatest strength was my range. So my early career was like that: I played all kinds of different characters.
The good thing about the Anvil school of filmmaking was that it was fly by the seat of your pants. There was no safety net.
I went to film school and studied Alfred Hitchcock. I knew of Alma Reville existence, but had no idea really who she was or how influential she was on him. She stayed in the shadows. Go online, and there are hardly any images or film of her. She really stayed out of the limelight on purpose. She didn't want it, and I think that's one of the reasons that she's really lost in the shadows of Hitchcock's history to a degree.
I've been a writer longer than I've been an actor. I wrote short stories like crazy when I was in high school and college. I worked in advertising before I moved to L.A. to pursue acting.
To me, acting is very therapeutic. I get out a lot of anger and frustration. It's maybe hard to believe, but as a kid I really had a lot of self-doubts. My father was very ill - he was an alcoholic - so there were a lot of things that built up for me. And because I was going to a Catholic school in a small German town, a lot of it was suppressed. I was angry and didn't know how to get it out.
I would go into my three different sisters' rooms in the early-mid '70s and they had very specific different tastes in music. I specifically remember lying on my different sisters' bedroom floors and listening to their record collections. And "Starship Trooper" was one of my sister Nancy's favorite songs and favorite album. Music is so defining for me. In the late '70s and early '80s, I worked in radio. When I was in high school, I worked at two different radio stations.
It's always nerve-wracking; it's like going to a new school every time you start a new movie. There are so many people and you're trying to be comfortable and vulnerable on set in order to be fearless on camera. But it's fun, it's part of the job. You've just got to be very personable, I guess.
Growing up and applying to college, I just imagined that I would study acting. But then, once I went to college, I realized I was more interested in all the aspects of filmmaking as opposed to all the aspects of theater, which is what you would have to do if you studied acting at a liberal arts school. And so I thought, "Oh, I'll meet directors and filmmakers, and I'm an actress, so I'll become friends with them and hopefully be in their movies." And then It worked!
I took Alexey Brodovitch course at the New School. He taught me something that I've always remembered: After we did the initial assignment, he contradicted what he had said the first week, and I said, "Okay." The next week, he contradicted what he had said the second week. We went through 10 weeks of contradicting, and I thought maybe he was drunk. At the end, he said, "You may think I've contradicted myself, but there's no one way to do anything."
I'm actually working on with Autism Speaks. Since my brother's 18, I wanted to work on a program for these older kids. A lot of the schools' special education programs end when the kids are 21, like my brother's school. What is next for these kids? I want him to be constantly active, and not just sitting at home. I want him to be constantly growing and it would be amazing if the funds could go to something like jobs for these kids, or a home where they can be together.
I've been acting for years and years, at prep school - school plays, that kind of thing. That was always very high on my agenda. I went to study English for two reasons. Principally because when I was in university, studying drama wasn't considered an option. You couldn't get a degree course for it. And so many plays and things that I was interested in landed themselves in a broader spectrum of literature.
From university, I tried to get into the profession almost immediately, and just got kind of kicked back in London, by lots of people saying, "Well, you know, we'll need to see you in something. And the easiest way for you to get seen in something is drama school. That is the best way to get an agent."
Film and television as a medium has only very recently begun to be taught at the great drama schools in the UK. When I was at drama school in the UK, I was there for two and a half years, and we did one week of television and film. It's right before you leave. It's like, "We've taught you Anton Chekhov and William Shakespeare, you are likely to be in a washing-up soap-liquid commercial."
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