A Personal View From Laurel (Part 2)

I spoke to Laurel a little bit about her role as Tina in The L Word, but also about growing up, her love of movies and the arts and what she might do in the future.  This is part two of my chat with her. Click Here to read Part One

Angela: Let’s go back in time, if you could pick one of those old movies which movie would you have loved to have done if you had been around then?

Laurel: Oh my god, “Klute2 would have been a fantastic movie to have been in.  This is going to sound crazy, but Ellen Burstyn in “The Exorcist”.  Its such high drama and so interesting to me and I have a little thing for scary movies, but that kind of scary movie - not the slasher kind.  I love anything that’s like”The Exorcist” that has a slightly religious tone to it - that’s what I’m fascinated by.  I’m trying to think there must have been a character that I was fascinated with?  I remember another person who was a younger icon but is still an icon and that’s Jodi Foster.  I remember watching her in movies and just having a strong connection to her.  And I still think she’s amazing.  I watch so many characters she has taken on and would have loved to go there.  Sarah Tobias in “The Accused” was a fascinating character.

I am really interested in characters that are a little rough around the edges than maybe Tina is.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy playing Tina, it’s just something I’m going to crave after this is over.  I would really love to play something a little rough around the edges.

Angela: One movie I like of yours is “Loser Love” because it is so very different from your role on The L Word

Laurel: Yeah, it’s very violent.  To play a person that had been a really sheltered ‘trust fund’ girl who was totally spoiled, but has no self esteem because her father was abusive, and then she ends up in an abusive relationship, it’s unbearable to watch as he’s so awful to her.  And then she ends up being raped and ultimately gets revenge.  It was a really tricky movie.  That film went to movie festivals and I won some acting awards, but I never actually went to any festivals with that movie because I was off doing other things, but I still have a secret pride in that movie. I really think the director did the best he could, he was really lovely.  But I don’t think many people will see that movie.  The character was very damaged and it’s more interesting to explore things like that.  That girl was very young, so I’d like to find a character that has a certain amount of damage but is older.  Right around the time I got the part of Tina I was starting to step into more mature roles with a little more weight.  I have to tell you it’s just as exciting to do that than to sometimes do the 25 year old drama queen which is kind of what “Loser Love” is.  I’m perhaps the only person who would say this, but I am actually looking forward to growing old because I think there will be more characters that I am more curious about playing right now and more curious to drop my vanity and to explore different types of characters.  I just think that there is some point as an actress that you just get older and there is no more pressure.  You know, let some other girl do the 25 year old, I’d like to do this other woman, she’s really interesting to me.  That’s were the Helen Mirren’s, Tasha Richardson’s, Jennifer Jason-Leigh’s, Catherine Kenner’s and Ellen Burstyn’s come into their own -  any of these women - as they have done a strong body of work and as they get older you’re seeing them do so many interesting roles.

I look forward to whatever happens after The L Word, I feel like I’m just getting started on something, I’m finally not playing the young girls any more, I’m playing women with real issues and I’d like to explore that more.  I just hope there is more work out there!

Angela: It’s become quite fashionable for Hollywood actors to come to London to go on the stage, can you imagine doing that?

Laurel: Of course I could imagine coming here.  I studied here for 6 months when I was at university and I would love to come back here to do a play.  I’d love to do theatre, and have a really fantastic character, and spend all the time doing that, but I have a young daughter and I live in Los Angeles so that might be something that would have to happen later.  I have a great friend who is a fantastic actress who was up for Edward Albee’s next play over here, and you know, she’s still competing against named actors, so if The L Word is big over here, or I am in another show that is bigger than The L Word, then that might eventually help get a play. It used to be that you could do theatre then get discovered and then go on to do film and TV, but now they want the film and TV name to come back so they can sell tickets, and I totally understand that.  Even New York is going through that too.  I would love to come over here and do a Sam Shepherd play or something.  There is a lot of opportunity now, there are a lot of things out there, there’s more television, there’s so many different cable networks now.  I’m really open to just about anything.

Angela: You mentioned last time we spoke that you were maybe going to do something with your brother?

Laurel: My brother has written a novel and we talked about turning it into a screenplay, but my brother has a full time job and 3 kids and I have The L Word and a kid, so I’m not sure I would be the one to help him with that or if he would do it himself.  It’s a fantastic story about an interracial friendship in the South, post 9/11, and it talks about how what happened after 9/11 affected small businesses.  After 9/11 my brother went bankrupt because he ran several travel agencies in the triangle area and it’s just a fantastic novel.  It’s not about my brother, but it’s about a murder that happened in North Carolina where a woman was murdered and she had come into my brother’s travel agency and everyone speculated that she was a drug runner.  So he created this incredible novel about this African American woman who was a drug runner and a single father and how they work together to get some more money after 9/11 when their businesses were being squashed.  It’s not been published, but if anyone is interested my brother is very talented.

It’s also nice to discover a wonderful new area of a sibling that you didn’t know.  I had no idea he was writing this novel and he’s about to write another.  It gives him so much pleasure and he’s been encouraged to keep writing and he also had a major life change with his career and everything.  When I read the book, and I don’t just say this because I come from the film industry, but it reads exactly like a film, but it would be a major adaptation and I’m not a screenwriter so I don’t know if I would be the one to tackle it.

Angela: What kind of jobs did you have when you were starting your acting career?

Laurel: I waited on tables in restaurants in Los Angeles and New York and I walked dogs when I was understudying Calista Flockhart on Broadway.  I walked dogs in the morning, went to auditions in the afternoon and then went to the theatre and was paid very little, but it was Broadway.   This was just after I shot “Two Girls in Love”.  And I actually enjoyed walking dogs – see I wanted to be a vet!  I just liked it because I didn’t want to have to wait on tables.  My parents were incredibly helpful at any time of need and my dad sent me to theatre school in London for 6 months. He also sent me to ACT.  I was a bad waitress and I got fired from one restaurant in New York because they said I looked as though I wasn’t into it and I wasn’t.  But I will have to say after I shot “Two Girls in Love” and it went to Sundance I didn’t do anything else after that.  I feel incredibly blessed that way.

Angela: You actually have quite a portfolio of movies don’t you?

Laurel: Yeah, sure.  I went through a phase in New York when it wasn’t a goal to be on television and I didn’t audition for it that much so I was still trying to carve out some characters that I could at the age that I could.  It was actually “Angel” which was pretty much the first time I was interested in staying in TV and that was a very good experience.  I had not really had any good experiences on TV before that, I felt that nobody really cared about the characters, nobody was prepared to answer your questions.  I had a really bad experience on the show “That’s Life” where I came in and they had an idea about the character and they didn’t tell me that much about it and I was also pretty inexperienced as to how fast television goes.  It was a prime show with all these fine actors, I just felt like “you know it would have helped if you told me that this character was cheating on her husband -  that would influence a lot of my choices”, but none of it was told to me.  I think that’s part of the problem with series TV, especially series TV that goes out on cable. There is just not enough time to give everybody the information they need.  I had just come from this environment of film where you spent a lot of time with the director and you rehearse.  You never rehearse on TV!  I was just used to things being more nurtured.  Now I look at TV differently, now it’s my job to do, to come in and do what has to be done and if they want to tweak it then fine, it’s just really different.  I think I needed that time to explore the characters in the smaller movies.  I worked a lot with first-time directors who were really passionate about what they were doing, and that’s what I had got used to.  And, of course, I was working with first-time directors who were still figuring out how to be film makers, so it’s nice to be on television and actually have people who see your work.  I definitely hit a wall and I am not going to do another independent film and bust my ass when I get paid nothing, and it might get to Sundance, or nobody sees it.  It was just too risky after a certain point and now that I have a daughter, as your life changes maybe your career changes. I was living in New York and auditioning there and I was adamant I wouldn’t live in LA, but then I fell in love and now I live in LA!  I am much more open now to doing something on television especially as now I have had a really good experience.  This (The L Word) has been one of my favourite jobs of all time and we get wonderful film directors so it felt like the world kind of joined for the first time.  I have a steady job and have some security and play a character I really like and each week I get to work with a different feature director and they are all fantastic.  That’s a real luxury of working with Showtime and I have to give them credit for getting some of the best directors.

It’s become a lot harder, those directors need names in their movies to get financed these days, and it’s become a lot harder to make movies.

Angela: What is your favourite book?

Laurel: “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

I’m also a Nicholas Sparks fan as he’s from North Carolina.  He wrote a book called “The Rescue” but he also did “Message in a Bottle”.  He’s a little more romantic and more traditional.

There is also a British book called “The Insult” by Rupert Thomson that I read a long time ago, that I like a lot.

I answered more than one book is that ok?  Put the “Lovely Bones” first.

Angela: What’s your favourite colour?

Laurel: Green

Angela: Any ambitions to direct or write?

Laurel: It’s funny, I directed Mia in an audition tape and she swears it’s the best audition tape she has.  She is a great actress and really beautiful so it was easy to make it look good, but afterwards she kept telling me I needed to be a director.  I feel really stupid to say yes, I have that ambition because so many actresses do.  It’s in the back of my head somewhere, but there is still other things I want to do besides.  I would definitely probably be a better director than writer, I don’t have the patience to write and I admire anyone that can write.  I am interested in directing to a certain point, but I wouldn’t want to take something like that on until maybe I had gone to school for it and maybe that’s something I look at in my 50’s or something.  Something I’ll think about later.  Right now I feel like I’m just getting started, I want to act.

Angela: Which is your proudest moment?

Laurel: Giving birth to my daughter

Angela: What’s the strangest thing you have been asked to do to promote a show or movie?

Laurel: The L Word Convention!  No, I’m kidding, nothing strange at all.

Part One