Christine pens her #MeToo moment
Actress has released a new collection of essays ‘True Stories From an Unreliable Eyewitness’
In her airy, antiques-filled loft in Greenwich Village, Christine Lahti is trying to fight her way out of a box. Her hands pat the empty air in front of her. Then, quickly, she clutches that pesky invisible kite, but it’s getting away from her ... whooooaaaa! I’m waiting for the third move in her arsenal, but I think we’ve exhausted the possibilities. She is not very good at this.
“I really thought I could generate some income being a mime,” she says, recalling one tale in her new collection of essays, True Stories From an Unreliable Eyewitness. This was in 1973, before the awards — the Oscars, the Emmys, the Golden Globes and the Broadway accolades — before America discovered this actress of quirky beauty, intelligence and wit. All of that would come later. But that day in Central Park, Lahti made $3.35 (Dh12.3). Mime career over. Lucky for us.
True Stories started as readings performed onstage, and became a loosely connected series of essays about family, Hollywood, aging and, most of all, how these life moments charted her evolution as a feminist. It is by turns funny, touching and self-revelatory, and not in a typical actress humble-braggy way: She can tell stories about herself that are truly toe-curling. Did she really approach a random stranger and ask to be relieved of her virginity? (You can imagine how well that went.)
The 68-year-old actress is at her New York City home while her husband, director Thomas Schlamme, is filming The Americans in Brooklyn. We spoke about the book on a brilliant snowy day, as dozens of candles flickered around us and her S&M rope dangled from a rafter. (That is what she called it. It is in fact an art installation. She is no less mischievous in person than on screen.) Here is a condensed version of our conversation.
Every mother will appreciate how one of the finest stage actresses of her time was told by her children that her voice was disgusting, and forbidden from singing and dancing in front of them. You write: ‘Until the little control freaks go off to college, you will be in a song-and-dance straitjacket.’
I had to go full-awkward, because so much of what is imperfect about me is awkward and embarrassing — and hopefully funny.
Your book seemed to start off as a traditional memoir, and then it morphed into something else — an awakening of sorts that centres on what it means to be a first-wave feminist. Is that what happened?
I started writing, not knowing what it was going to be. My daughter was sick of me complaining about, you know, ‘There’s no jobs for women over 50, I didn’t know there was a shelf life for actresses.’ Obviously, I was a little naive. And she said, ‘Stop complaining, stop being dependent on men hiring you, and write some of your stories down.’
This book is largely about how you evolved as a feminist, which included the rejection of the family model you grew up with: doctor dad beloved by his patients but remote to his family; mother who was sort of an iconic 1950s housewife ...
... who I judged so harshly. I think she was a product of that internalised misogyny many women feel, but after her kids left the house she had another life — she became a professional painter, and a pilot. None of us have to be stuck.
You recount stories of Broadway and Hollywood that remind us of why the #MeToo movement was inevitable — for example, the day a casting agent assured you a role, when all you had to do was get intimate with the directors. Did he really say it that casually?
Yes, as if it was an understood thing that I would automatically do that. It wasn’t even couched in a joke or an apology. It was really just, ‘Yeah, here’s what you have to do.’
It was something that we all back then just knew we had to navigate through. And it sounds benign; it’s not like they even touched me. But these experiences aren’t benign. I think that they break you in some way. Especially when I was young, and I was full of hope and optimism about my worth as a human being and my talent as an actress. All that was disregarded. It dehumanised me in a way that devastated me.
It was something that we all back then just knew we had to navigate through. And it sounds benign; it’s not like they even touched me. But these experiences aren’t benign.”