What is a movie for, if not to exhibit life?
To look at people is to see boundlessly intriguing beauty in our diverse, yet shared humanity
I starred in a Canadian indie horror movie called “The Strings” recently released on Shudder. In the movie, I portray a character named Catherine who is struggling to recover after a bad breakup.
Catherine deals with isolation, depression and alcoholism. I played the role of Catherine when I was 23 and my own story felt not too far away from hers. I was going through a divorce as I had married at a young age, and I subsequently fell into addiction as a means to cope with the breakup.
I am now 26 and “The Strings” has been out for about a month and a half. Since filming the movie, I’ve been lucky enough to go through therapy, find recovery, develop a new relationship to alcohol and be nearly three years drug sober.
When the script was given to me in 2018, I was watching a show called “Love” on Netflix.
The main character is Mickey, played by Gillian Jacobs, who struggles with alcohol, sex and drug addiction. I identified deeply with her character’s emotional struggles, but physically I felt completely alienated by her.
Why was Mickey able to go through considerable emotional turmoil and addiction while still maintaining a rosy Hollywood glow?
Jacobs’s old Hollywood image shone through Mickey’s character, while depression and addiction had left me bloated, puffy-eyed and blemished.
Looking for answers, I listened to Jacobs give an interview in which she explained that she doesn’t drink and that she has never done drugs. It finally clicked for me that the character I was seeing physically was not the one I was connecting with emotionally.
With this, I became increasingly aware of the importance of my own opportunity to portray a character struggling with addiction and depression, as I actually was.
Since the release of “The Strings,” the way I look has been at the forefront of much of the movie’s criticism and praise as I am a size 12, five-foot-eight woman. This morning, I read yet another review that drew attention to the fact that I am, according to the reviewer, “a fat person.”
I made myself shake the review off and go for a walk to get a coffee. On my way back home I rode the elevator in my Parkdale apartment building with three other people. One person was a man with a bushel of sticks and an eccentric hat, happily humming to himself. Another was a woman inexplicably holding an open can of paint and asking me if I thought it was too cold out for her to take her dog for a walk. The last character was a woman with her eyes fixed to the floor and her hands nervously glued to her backpack.
Each of these people in this small slice of life were of different skin colours, shapes, sizes and personalities. Standing in that elevator I thought about how much I’d like to watch a movie about any one of them. Each one of their beautifully evident humanity dissolved my every insecurity that I was not good enough to be in a movie. I was reminded of my initial intentions for acting: to share a story in a real way.
One of our main means of exhibiting life is through film. So why do we insist on having people in movies and television portrayed by actors who too often exhibit only one type of beauty? Why would we allow that when life happens to all of us? Is it to say that not everyone has stories worth telling, cherishing and celebrating?
To look at the people in the world around me is to see boundlessly intriguing beauty in our diverse, yet shared humanity. When we talk about the need for diversity in our media I think we must remember why: because our world is diverse. What is a movie or television show for, if not to exhibit life?