“I didn’t really know what an audition was. And I didn’t know what being in movies was all about. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as acting.”

Anna Paquin Interview
By E.C. Gladstone

I spent an afternoon in Venice, CA with Anna Paquin back in 2000, when the 18-year-old was truly on the cusp between girl-and woman-hood. As we sat down for a bite at an outdoor café, she muttered about being bad at making decisions. I decided to start with that thread…

EG: So you were saying you were bad at making decisions…

Anna: Well when there’s three hundred things on the menu, yes!

EG: Is it that way with deciding what projects to do, too?

AP; No, that’s like,‘do I want to be this person for three or four months?’ Like you ‘meet her’ and either you want to be the person or you don’t. If you’re going to be irritated with yourself for four months because you’re getting up and you’re going to work and you’re being this person that you don’t like or that you just can’t see the point in being. If there’s a maybe, then it’s a no. You know what I mean?

EG: Give me a couple of examples.

AP: Well, I think that would be things that I wouldn’t do and therefore I’m not playing…
Of something that’s very different, or that’s very like myself?

EG: How about one of each?

AP: Um, the character I played in Finding Forrester, with Sean Connery. I mean, she’s pretty similar [to me], she just has a kind of very–other than that whole kind of moody thing that I do–um, has a normal life. Just very regular 17 or 18-year-old girl. And the character in Hurly Burly was very different from myself, But, that was enjoyable and that, you know was an interesting thing to get to do, and it was a good character, I thought. There’s like a time, when there’s just some things I would read and, there’s just no way I could say this or be this person. I would feel stupid or just hate doing it.

EG: It seems like you’ve explored different identities with some of the characters you’ve chosen.

AP: Yeah, I mean there’s some similarities in the sense like, how different can teenage girls really be? You know what I mean? But yeah, I really don’t like doing the same thing twice. And I wouldn’t feel like I was doing anything, I was really stretching myself or challenging myself in any way if I kept on choosing film after film that was exactly the same character. I definitely think I can do more than that and I think that the great thing about getting to do what I do is that you can just be someone completely different and you get to play around with that and there’s no consequences, you know, you can try out being a different person without really having to screw up your life to do it.

EG: Does it help you figure out who you want to be in real life?

AP: Maybe in some ways, or like, I know what I don’t want to be. You know what I mean? Just the way that they respond to sort of various situations, I’d be like, no I wouldn’t have done that–that was, that wasn’t very smart. I think the interesting thing about acting is that every single scene, you are thinking through like, why are they doing this? How is this going to affect things you do later? How does this all fit in? And you get to see consequences, a bit. You don’t really do that in real life–I mean I consider consequences but you don’t pick it apart in minute detail. You know, what will this mean if this character responds in this way in this scene, how does it all fit in to the bigger picture. It’s not really anything particularly deep, but its something.

EG: You’ve played radical characters in at least a few things: HurlyBurly and It’s the Rage.

AP: You saw that? Oh cool. She’s not a nice girl. She’s not nice. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t still bleed when you shoot her, which you kind of forget when it’s like this really nasty attractual thing. Sort of, prejudiced bigoted little bad mouth punk. She just says what she’s thinking, doesn’t hold anything back… I’m just saying that when it comes right down to it, she wasn’t really the smartest cookie in the jar, if you know what I mean. What she was doing wasn’t exactly the most life preserving tactics to personal relationships. And I’m older than she’s supposed to be and I’m still very much alive, so therefore I think that I’m more experienced in living in a non-self-destructive way.

EG: How do you get into a role like that?

AP: You know what, I have no idea, because I’ve absolutely no idea what it’s like to be that person, but I figure as many different ways as I could imagine being that person–because there’s probably so many different people that have had so many different kind of life experiences that is in some way similar. If I can just think up something kind of stupidly elaborate for her whole life scheme, then I am sure that someone somewhere has had that life, and so it is going to be relatively somewhere near truth, do you know what I mean? And also there was a lot in the script and the dialogue and you can just imagine what that person has grown up like, she’s so completely monumentally screwed up. And, I don’t know, just using my imagination really.

EG: Does it interest you to play those characters in terms of wanting to find that out, or is it just, ‘Well this isn’t boring?’

AP: I would say that I had the best time being that girl, because absolutely everything about her was so unlike myself. Although the punky thing is kind of fun. I enjoyed the clothes and the hair and the horribly trashy thing that basically is everything that your parents would say ‘Go back upstairs and change,’ or ‘I hope you’re going to a costume party,’ if you came down, leaving the house looking like that, you know? Yes, kind of is something new.

EG: You’ve played a motherless child a lot. Is that anything you’ve ever thought about?

AP: In so many scripts and movies, there’s either no mother in the story, or the mother’s kind of absent, or there’s bad relationships with the mother. I don’t know why that is. In especially everything I’ve done there’s been, like, mother issues, and I don’t have any! I don’t really know, maybe there’s a lot of people that feel that they have issues with the way they were parented or mothered or whatever, and therefore it comes out in what they wrote about, but I was very well mothered and still continue to be very well mothered, so I really don’t have answers on that one. But I have noticed that–like, OK, Piano mute mother; Jane Eyre, no parents; Fly Away Home, no mother… yeah, I’ve pretty much had no parents or no mother.

Continued at Part 2

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Copyright 2001 ECG

Anna Paquin Interview
By E.C. Gladstone

EG: Playing roles like that, does it help your life out or does it make it more confusing?

AP: Um, I don’t know. I’ll have things to draw on for my work from experiences I’ve had or experiences friends of mine have had that I know about. I usually kind of forget about my work when I’ve finished something, and all the looping, its all done–you don’t really think about it again, you know. But it’s interesting, you get to kind of see how things would play out if you were to be in that situation… it’s just that I don’t happen to have ever come across the same situation in real life as I’ve already encountered in a film, do you know what I mean? And maybe if I am ever in such a situation it might be kind of nice to have kind of already been there done that, but I don’t know, it’s just never really happened.

EG: Did it make you more comfortable about getting to know boys?

AP: I’m really comfortable with guys. I always had like lots of like guy friends when I was a little kid and stuff and I had a brother and his friends were always around. I was never like one of those girls that was really annoying about boys…

EG: Well you went to an all girls’ school right?

AP: Only for a couple of years. I never thought that guys had like cooties or something. The only thing that I can definitely say is that you cease to be self-conscious when you kiss somebody on camera, with like 30 people watching and telling you where to put your head, and where to like, you know what I mean…so completely unnatural and unromantic, yet make it look like it is.

EG: Do you agree with the It’s The Rage position about guns?

AP: Yes. You don’t know when someone’s going to go completely crazy and if they happen to have a gun then it’s the difference between someone ending up dead, and somebody ending up with a lot of bruises or something. If they’re going to respond violently, a gun makes it kind of permanent.

EG: Is that what made you want to do the film? Or did that come out of it?

AP: Well part of choosing the film is not just the character, as what the whole kind of story is and what the point is. And yeah obviously that was a part of the reason I wanted to do the film. But it wasn’t the only reason.

EG: Do you feel strongly about doing charity type things?

AP: I’ve done a fair amount of community service. I worked in like a soup kitchen for a while, in downtown LA, and I helped out at a special education center for a while, on my spring break. I try to do that kind of stuff.

EG: Is that voluntary?

AP: School does ask you to do a certain number of hours, but you can do more. Sometimes, say you have a requirement, once you actually start working at some of those places you realize that it’s just nothing, you’re not even coming near actually making any difference if you schedule like 20 hours. You end up wanting to do more. And that’s a really good feeling.

EG: In Walk on the Moon, was that a situation where you were trying something on that was nothing like your real life?

AP; It’s when you get into the HurlyBurly, It’s the Rage, X-Men stuff, that I’m a little out of my depth and don’t actually know what its like. Like a big freak. I was fourteen once. That was back in the dark ages. Oh my god, four years ago, that’s really scary. Wow, it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago. Wanting to be older than you are, I can understand that a lot.

EG: Would you rather be treated as an adult?

AP: Oh I am treated as an adult, and it’s kind of scary. I think I’ll probably get to be more of a kid just going to college and living in a dorm and having no responsibilities of any sort, than like school work. I am happy being exactly the age I am, I don’t think I want to be treated any older, because any older than like 18 and I am expected to be completely serious and completely responsible, and completely grown up and not that I’m irresponsible or immature, but you know, I think 18’s a good age, because you get to kind of do what you like, but you still are taken care of. You still get kind of the benefits of being a kid without restrictions. I think not having to tell anyone what time I’m coming home will be weird. And if I want to go out, like when I have classes the next day, I can. It will just be my own problem if I’m tired, you know what I mean? But you see, I am also going to do my best to have no classes before eleven. A lot of my friends that were in college at UCLA did actually manage to get no classes before like ten, or something. You can do it sometimes.

EG: Do you know where you are going to school?

AP: Um hmm. I am going back East.

EG: Is it impressive?

AP: Somewhat.

EG: As impressive as where your brother went?

AP: I just want to have like as normal a college experience as I can possibly have, and, when people like making a big deal about it before I even get there, I just want to be like everyone else, where no one really pays attention to that kind of thing.

EG: Do you still want to study psychology?

AP: I’m thinking about it. I’m definitely going to study English, because I like it and I am not bad at it. I want to study French. I’ve been taking it for like, four years, and I just went to Paris and it was so amazing, to be able to speak another language. I would rather, if I’m traveling, speak in whatever language that they speak. And I sort of feel really arrogant not being able to, you know it’s like expecting them to always be able to speak your language? I just felt really good actually being able to just have a conversation with people and get by and understand everything that was basically said, as long as it’s not too fast, which the Parisians have a tendency to sometimes do, if they think you speak French. My first opening two sentences made them think I speak French, yay, but now I can’t understand a word they’re saying!

Continued at Part 3

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Copyright 2001 ECG

Anna Paquin Interview
By E.C. Gladstone

EG: You still interested in Law?

AP: Yep.

EG: Do you have a favorite book?

AP: Hmm. I want to read more books by Tim O’Brien. I really like the way he writes. That’s probably my favorite book of the moment, The Things They Carried. Its about Vietnam, and Tim O’Brien was a soldier in the war…somewhat fictional, somewhat fact based sort of memories, stories, from his time in the war, and in a way that it was so kind of like impossible for those guys like to come back and just to fit back into their old lives because no one really had any idea what they’d been through and how traumatic it was and that it was just this huge big thing that they didn’t really have any way of dealing with. It’s a really good book. I would definitely recommend it.

EG: Photography–did you ever think that you’d do something with that seriously?

AP: I think if anyone wanted to do a display of my photographs I would be so beyond flattered. I really like it. I’ve become more aware of what directors actually have to do, I think it sounds scary as anything. Because there’s so much stuff that they have to hold together and they are responsible for everything, every single department is accountable to that one person. And that one person has so much stress and so much pressure…

EG: Ever considered being a cinematographer or a documentarian.

AP: That could be very interesting actually, I’ve thought about that. I was thinking about, you know, maybe applying to film school or something. But I don’t really want to just go to film school I want to specifically learn how to become a cinematographer, and I don’t think you can actually do that. I don’t really want to just go to a different school and learn a whole bunch of technical terms about stuff that I don’t want to learn about.

EG: You probably know most of them already.

AP: I probably know a lot. I specifically would want to know about lighting, and what kind of things create different sort of looks, effects, moods, what to use, camera lenses, that kind of stuff. And all I’d really need to do is go to a really friendly cinematographer on a film I’m working on and get them to explain it to me, you know what I mean?

EG: You ever tried to do that?

Ap: I sometimes ask questions, yeah, I don’t know if I would want to go to years and years of film school just to get to a point where I can specialize, because I highly doubt I am going to end up being a cinematographer…

EG: It’s probably the only solid skill you get in film school. The rest of it is more about creativity and theory…

AP; I just don’t have the patience to do through the theory stuff when I know I’m not going to want to use it.

Continued at Part 4

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Copyright 2001 ECG

Anna Paquin Interview
By E.C. Gladstone

EG: Do you think you are always going to act? Is it possible that something in college might take your interest elsewhere?

AP: I would have to be pretty bowled over. And love with whatever the new field was, because I am pretty in to what I’m doing, you know.

EG: What makes you laugh?

AP: Um, strangely specific, yet vague questions. People actually being interested in what I have to say!

EG: What makes you cry?

Ap: I’ll go back to what makes me laugh. I like things that are not like necessarily ha-ha kind of slapstick, but things that are maybe like a more dark sense of humor, black comedy. I really liked Dogma. It was really funny. That’s just my opinion.

EG: So what makes you cry?

AP: So what makes me cry? Um, anything like jamming my finger in the door. I’ll go through phases where I’ll bang into everything I used to do that a lot when I was younger, bang my head on things. Let me think what makes me cry. Um, watching other people who are in a lot of pain and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. I really hate watching the news when its some story about something really horrible and nasty and violent, it just really disturbs me. Maybe I’m too sheltered but it just, that really disturbs me because I find that those images stay with me for a really long time.

EG: Do you miss New Zealand?

AP: I miss my friends. Family members that are still in New Zealand. We keep in touch. I don’t really miss New Zealand as a place, because I haven’t really been away that long.

EG: How long have you been away?

AP: Two years. But I’m young, you know. Maybe when I’m a little older I’ll feel very nostalgic and want to go back and I’ll go back. But right now I’m just kind of wanting to see new places and new things.

EG: You’re parents aren’t from New Zealand…

AP: My mom is.

EG: Where would you like to travel to that you haven’t yet?

AP: Lots more places in Europe that I’ve never been. Maybe some parts of Asia. I’ve been to Tokyo, I’ve been to Hong Kong, but I haven’t been outside the big cities. I just like the landscape there, it’s so different. I want to go to places that are visually completely different and completely different cultures. Maybe Africa/ I want to see everything. Because, I sort of travel a lot but I don’t really go anywhere. I go back and forth from big North American cities, and I spend way too much time on airplanes but I’m not really seeing anything. Because when you’re traveling for work you take your culture with you, if you know what I mean, it’s exactly the same.

EG: Who do you admire?

AP: Um, there’s lots of musicians that I admire because I really love their music…

Continued at Part 5

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Copyright 2001 ECG

Anna Paquin Interview
By E.C. Gladstone

EG: Do you play?

AP: I play from time to time,. Just classical music. Bach, Vivaldi. Actually one of the strings on my cello is broken at the moment, and I really need to get it fixed, and I am feeling guilty about that. There’s a lot of singers and bands that I think…just that it’s so amazing how they produce some record or an album or whatever and there are all these kids and teenagers everywhere that listen to their music and get something out of it, and they have so much sort of influence over so many people. I really love that lead singer of Radiohead, Thom Yorke, I think he has a really beautiful voice. I really like the way that different music reflects different moods and different feelings and is associated with different memories…

EG: Did you like kind of living that out a little bit in Almost Famous?

AP: Yeah, that was great because, basically these girls, these kids got to be with those musicians that they thought are just the most amazing people in the world. And how great would that be, you know, going on tour with your favorite band? It was a lot more OK, it was the 70’s you were allowed to do that. Not that I was there, but that’s what I’ve decided and I’m sticking with it!

EG: Is that something you’d want to do?

AP: Well, you know, I think these groupies were a little more innocent. It was more like they really cared about the music rather than just being able to tell their friends that they were with certain rocks stars. It was a really great way to spend the summer, we had concert scenes almost every week, and so basically I’d spend like two or three days shooting concert scenes, and we had big crowds and everyone’s all like dressed up, and they had the guys on stage doing their thing…

EG: Who would you be too embarrassed to meet?

AP: I’d like to think that I could probably be composed in front of anyone. Though that’s probably not true. Who would I feel stupid in front of?

EG: Thom Yorke?

AP: I’d like to think I wouldn’t feel quite as stupid… I probably just would feel really uncool.

EG: What about Robert Plant?

AP: Yeah, I’d probably feel pretty stupid as well.

EG: What is the most rebellious thing you’ve ever done?

AP: The most rebellious thing I’ve ever done is not going to be written about in an article my mom is going to read! So we can forget about that. I’m going to leave that one up to your imagination.

Continued at Part 6

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Copyright 2001 ECG

Anna Paquin Interview
By E.C. Gladstone

EG: What about the last dream you had?

AP: A few days after we finished school, I dreamt that I had a paper to turn in and it was one of those dreams where, I had like a dead line but for some reason I couldn’t move. I was stuck sitting in one place, and I just would look at the clock and it was going round and round. And I knew, but for some reason I was completely incapable of even standing up, and then every time I tried I would like get distracted by something and it was just horrible, because I’m really good with meeting deadlines and it was just really disturbing. Anxiety dream. But it’s school’s fault. Because I have like a million assignments and papers and tests and stuff all the time.

EG: Do you like writing papers?

AP: I actually enjoy writing because it’s nice to be able to express yourself in words, but papers are always a little bit too stressful to really enjoy. I like it when we get creative writing, assigned, that’s really nice. Like instead of writing a paper on a book, we’d have to write, say, a 3 page short story in the style of, or write an extra chapter for the book, you know things like that. Or change the ending. We had an assignment where we had to re-write a chapter of Heart Of Darkness–like choose like a significant moment and put it in a different setting, at a different time and place, different people, but have the same main things really happen, and it would cover the same kind of thematic moments.

EG: So what did you do?

AP: Let me think, what did I do? I re-wrote the last few pages, where Marlow goes back and tells Mr. Kurtz’s attendant that he was really the good guy after all…

EG: And how did you change it?

AP: I think I re-wrote it that Mr. Kurtz was some psychotic serial killer or something. And Marlow was a lawyer, It was just stupid.

EG: I haven’t seen X-Men yet…though I have seen the trailer!

AP: More than I have! I almost saw the trailer…

EG: Well, you appear to be the only mutant who has avoided any serious make-up.

AP: Did you know that Rebecca Romijn-Stamos had ten and a half hours of make-up every day? If you put me through ten and a half hours, you would have used exactly all of my child working hours. Well, for one thing, there wasn’t anything that needed to be done to my character, it just so happened. But if you start like having four hour make-up processes, that leaves them like, six hours to work with. So that would not have been fun at all. There was so much stuff, complicated prosthetic pieces that you have to worry about not damaging, or like, Jimmie Marsden had to act with sunglasses on the whole time, because he’s Cyclops.

EG: What’s it like playing a super hero?

AP: Actually, Rogue is probably the least frivolous…because she doesn’t have any strange physical manifestations of any mutations. She doesn’t look any different. She can absorb people’s abilities if she touches them, and memories and feelings, and basically kind of drain them, if she touches their skin, even for a second. And there’s a cool effect when that happens. I haven’t seen it, but they tell me it’s cool. The whole premise of the movie kind of makes it just a little bit, like you can’t get upset or frustrated or angered when you just think ‘OK, I’m going to work every day and I’m pretending I’m a mutant superhero!’ You just can’t take it that seriously. I mean you take it seriously, but you can’t take it too seriously, in like a bad way. There’s some kind of goofy stuff acting-wise, that you have to do to pretend that things are going on around you when you’re doing blue screen/green screen stuff. Sometimes it’s hard.

Continued at Part 7

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Copyright 2001 ECG

Anna Paquin Interview
By E.C. Gladstone

EG: Who did you like working with?

AP: Well the only people I really worked with a lot were Hugh Jackman and Ian McKellan, and they were great. Everyone else I worked for a little bit, and I wished I could have worked with them more. We had like a really great cast, you know.

EG: Do you get anything artistically out of working with an actor like Sir Ian?

AP: I think that–and this is probably not going to be your satisfactory answer, so I am just warning you–what you get from watching someone who’s so, so talented and experienced as him, is more kind of learning by osmosis than anything specific, if you know what I mean. It’s just so fascinating to watch them and see how they work, and see what they do and how they do it. It’s more that it kind of inspires you to focus even more and try even harder. You kind of try and bring yourself up as close to their level as you can. It just makes your standards of what you consider to be doing a good job even higher, and I think that’s a good thing.

EG: What’s the favorite scene that you did, that you’re looking forward to seeing how it turned out?

AP: There’s this great big scene that’s hugely important to the plot, and I’m very looking forward to seeing how it comes out, but because it’s hugely important to the plot, I’m not going to tell you anything because they will not be happy.  But it’s this big fabulous scene, that’s kind of the climax of the movie. After you see this movie, I don’t know if you’re going to want to be a mutant.  I mean they have a little bit of a rough time.

EG: Are you a fan of the comics?

AP: I wasn’t really a big comic book fan.  So it wasn’t really specific to X-Men, it was just, I didn’t read comics. I never really have watched a lot of movies [either]. I like to go to the movies once in a while. I like going out with my friends.  And I like actually doing something, not just sitting still.

EG:  Like what?

AP: Like, someone’s having a party.  You can’t get into clubs, because you’re not 21.  There’s underage clubs and that’s sometimes fun.  Sometimes we just like hang out at someone’s house.  We go to Third Street [Santa Monica] sometimes.  Normal teenage stuff.

EG: The Oscar speech; In retrospect, have you ever thought that you wished you had done anything differently?

AP: No, because honestly, me at 11 if I had gotten up and got my little piece of paper out, and read this perfect little speech, and had been all slick, that would so not have been me.  And it would have taken such a ridiculously large number of hours of practicing.  And I just think that me at 11, that would have been no way been an appropriate thing to do. I had no idea what I was doing, and that’s who I was. I mean, everyone gets to say, ‘I am so surprised.’  I was surprised! I could genuinely say that I was surprised and I think that that’s a perfectly legitimate way to respond. Suddenly someone says, ‘And the Oscar goes to you! Get up on stage, speak’ You go, ‘Uhhhh.  Me speak now, be composed.’  Um, No.  I could hardly see over the podium!

EG:  You think you’d be more prepared next time?

AP: Next time?  I wish there would be a next time.  Well that’s very flattering but does that happen more than once in the same 18 year old’s lifetime?  I don’t know.

EG: Well let’s talk about another actress who was recognized at that age–do you see any similarities between you and Jodie Foster?

AP: I don’t really know a lot about her career as such, I mean, I know that she’s one of the few people that actually kind of made that transition from child actress to serious adult actor. But I don’t know really what kind of things she did and when, and I haven’t really looked at it.

Continued at Part 8

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Copyright 2001 ECG

Anna Paquin Interview
By E.C. Gladstone

AP: I don’t really know a lot about her career as such, I mean, I know that she’s one of the few people that actually kind of made that transition from child actress to serious adult actor. But I don’t know really what kind of things she did and when, and I haven’t really looked at it.

EG: Do you feel like you are fairly careful about what you’re doing?  Is there a path?

AP: I don’t really think about what I want to do and why I want to do it, you know, I just kind of do what feels right at this time.

EG: Is there anything you wouldn’t do?

AP: I don’t really have like rules, and I’m not really that conscious of the whole process of decision making. I just do what feels right.

EG:   What actress’s career would you like to have?

AP: I don’t know. I could imagine it being pretty amazing having like Marilyn Monroe’s career, that would have been pretty amazing, to be that person, And then someone like Grace Kelly.  Or anyone who got to dance with Fred Astaire. That kind of era. Any of those sort of glamorous movie stars from way back.

EG: And yet most of the roles you’ve taken are not really glamorous at all.

AP: There’s not really glamorous movies star roles…that’s not the type of films that people make. I’m just saying if I was to be someone entirely different, different world, different time, different place, different person. I just can’t imagine getting up and going to work every day, tap dancing and singing. I just think that would be amazing. I’d like that.

EG: Do you sing?

AP: Yeah

EG: Are you good?

AP: I can carry a tune.

EG: Do you do Karaoke?

AP: I’ve done it a couple of times.

EG:  What kind of songs do you like to sing?

AP: Like cheesy pop music is kind of fun.  That kind of thing.

EG: What made you want to act?

AP: Nothing, I went to an open call audition for The Piano. I didn’t really know what an audition was.  And I didn’t know what being in movies was all about. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as acting.  So, I can’t actually say that I knew I wanted to be an actress…

Continued at Part 9

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Copyright 2001 ECG

Anna Paquin Interview
By E.C. Gladstone

EG:  What made you want to keep acting?

AP: Well, it was always good.  You know, you go to work every day, and everyone includes you, you’re not like the youngest child who is too young to go play with other kids kind of thing.  You get to actually be part of everything and you are doing completely different stuff than you would normally do.  I mean I’m having completely different sort of experiences when I was really little, like all the funny old dresses I was wearing in The Piano.  I thought that was great, you know, like playing dress up all day long, you know.  And, then as I got a little bit older, it was like ‘I really like this, this is what I want to do.’  It was sometime around Hurlyburly. I’d work on like one thing a year, and there was a little while where nothing was releasing. I wasn’t working all the time because I wasn’t really wanting to. It wasn’t really something that was motivated by me it was just like, I’d read something and be like, ‘Oh ok I want to do this.’ There wasn’t someone making me do stuff, when Anna wanted to work Anna worked, and when Anna wanted to stay home and be with her friends, did just that.  And then started to get really get into what I was doing and wanting to do it all the time, so I did.

EG: It wasn’t until Hurlyburly you got into it as a career?

AP: I mean until then, I was more oblivious and I still didn’t really get the whole thing. Actually, Walk on the Moon I was like, 14, 15 and that’s when you kind of start developing real interests, and really having your own kind of passions and things that you want to really do.  And I was like wow, ‘there is this thing I get to do…’

EG: So, you never felt any pressure after winning the Oscar?

AP: I mean either you can be like ‘OK well, how am I ever supposed to live up to that blah blah blah pressure?’ or you can just be like, ‘OK well, that was really great, thank you very much.’  I’m just going to go about my business now, and now see if I can figure out what I am actually doing. You kind of have to pretend, ‘OK that was good but basically that didn’t happen.’ Because I didn’t even know what the Oscar’s were. And everyone’s like ‘ooh blah blah blah,’ like this big thing, and I was like, ‘OK, um so what does that mean, what do I have to do? Am I supposed to do something different now?  Am I supposed to be someone else?’ It didn’t really affect me in any way because, it was like first time around. It was not like I ever even thought about it so, it was just like OK. Why not?

FF

Copyright 2001 ECG