HOW TO BE A SHY GIRL IN A NOISY WORLD
The unlikely rise of indiefilm actress Kate Lyn Sheil.
we live in an era of rampant online gawking, where bigmouths and attention-starved narcissists monopolize the spotlight around the clock. If you want to break through the clutter, you ought to be as loud as heck, goes the Kardashian-sanctioned wisdom. But what if you’re a fame-averse artist whose very line of work subjects you to intense public scrutiny? Say hello to Kate Lyn Sheil.
“When my sweet, shy friend Kate told me she wanted to become an actress, I was like, ‘Really?’” says filmmaker Robert Greene when I sit down with them both at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, where their docu-fiction hybrid, Kate Plays Christine, was screened. “I told her, ‘You know actresses have to say things out loud and expose themselves, right?’ But that’s why she’s my favourite actress: She displays so much churning tension and so much control.”
Sheil is thoughtful and reserved, but don’t confuse this with inertia. Over the past five years, the Jersey City native’s risk-taking drive has propelled her to the front of the “imminent breakout” line. Besides winning over a long list of acclaimed indie directors (Joe Swanberg, Amy Seimetz, Alex Ross Perry), the highly trained NYU and Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute alumna struck a chord with Netflix House of Cards bingers as the kind-hearted Lisa—a gentle gem on a show teeming with tricksters. More recently, TV viewers did a double take when they saw her cast against type as a wild high-end escort in the Starz series
The Girlfriend Experience.
“So much of what you see in the media is the same: the same images of beauty, the same images of how a funny or intelligent person acts,” explains the pensive Sheil, a movie buff who met many promising indie directors while working at a now-defunct East Village video shrine. “I just try to offer variety and stories that I find compelling.”
In Kate Plays Christine, which won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Sheil explores modern culture’s inexhaustible thirst for voyeurism. The film revisits the story of a Florida reporter who, in 1974, killed herself live on air after reading a brief note in which she railed against TV news’ obsession with “blood and guts.” Greene documents Sheil’s character-building process as well as her unease at the thought of exploiting the late reporter’s personal tragedy.
“I agreed to do it, even though I’m a very private person who’s quite uncomfortable with the idea [of being filmed],” says the stardom-ambivalent thirtysomething, who also mentions that she has never taken a selfie. In fact, Sheil took a breather from centre stage postgraduation to work for a clothing designer, which she loved so much it nearly quashed her actorly ambitions. “In a very narcissistic and navel-gazing way, I am fascinated with trying to get to the bottom of what my motivations were to become an actor,” she says.
Now, with Rolling Stone christening her “the Meryl Streep of the micro-budget-film community,” Sheil is bound to attract some of that unsolicited media attention—something to which she’ll readily consent if it allows her to keep giving a voice to the unusual. “If only one person sees the characters I portray and it makes them feel less alone, then what I’m doing is worthwhile.” h