MAYA rising
WITH HER DEBUT ALBUM Blush ABOUT TO BE RELEASED, A HANDFUL OF BUZZY FILM PROJECTS ON THE HORIZON AND THE GIA COPPOLA NOD OF APPROVAL, Stranger Things STAR MAYA HAWKE IS QUICKLY SHEDDING HER “HOLLYWOOD OFFSPRING” TAG
WHAT I LOVE MOST ABOUT ACTING is what a collaborative effort it is. Reacting to your fellow actors, listening to your character, discovering the moment together… and those are just a few pieces. To make a movie, so many people from different disciplines have to come together. It’s like a collage. MUSIC GIVES ME A FEW THINGS
ACTING DOESN’T. One is the chance to work without needing to be granted permission: you don’t have to audition to write a song. Songwriting and recording is collaborative, but you can do it anywhere, anytime. It’s great to have an audience, but you don’t need one. It’s very freeing. FIONA APPLE HAS BEEN VERY IMPORTANT TO ME.
Listening to her records as a teenager, I could see how she changed as she grew up. Every record she puts out gets better, each one more original than the last. But my greatest inspirations have been my friends. Watching the process of them expressing their feelings and their findings through music has been amazing. ACTING CAN BE A PRETTY LONELY PROFESSION. Always new groups of people, empty hotel rooms, new cities. Music and audiobooks keep me company in those odd times. My record was ready to go, so I thought, “Why not put it out now?” It’s a way to offer a little something to people who might be feeling alone. The first single we released, “By Myself”, is about isolation and loneliness. It seemed right. If it made one person smile on a day when they otherwise might not have…
I’M SO LUCKY TO BE HEALTHY and have work that is ready to be released. This is a very difficult time for the global community. Donating [a portion of proceeds from Blush] to Food Bank [which distributes free food to more than 1.5 million New Yorkers each year] is a way to try to convert some of that good fortune into help for other people.
PLAYING A REAL PERSON [Hawke will play writer Kathy Acker in the upcoming
Memory Xperiment] can be liberating. You have so much more information to go off, rather than making up a character from scratch. [But] there is also the added pressure not to disgrace a real person you admire. It is always a mixed bag. It makes it easier, but also harder. FILMING MAINSTREAM WAS A GREAT EXPERIENCE. I’ve admired [director] Gia Coppola for a long time and getting to work with her on a project that felt so significant to me was a dream come true. Mainstream deals with issues so close to the heartbeat of our time.
ALL I KNOW IS THAT I want to work with great people on great writing. I would love to do a play soon. I don’t know when that will be possible again, but that is a goal of mine.