Equity Magazine August 2017 Issue

CELEBRITY
So with To The Bone, you had personal experience of
anorexia, right? When you were approached about it
were you immediately like ’yes, I want to draw on it’ or
was there a wariness and you weren’t sure whether you
wanted to make that part of your life something to put
on the screen?
So I was sent the script by my team who didn’t know my
association with it [anorexia] at all - they just thought it was an
amazing opportunity for an actor. I’d ironically just written a
chapter in my book about my experience with eating disorder a
week before, so I was already reliving it by reading journals
from that time period. It was like the world in a kismet situation
saying ’this is something that maybe you need to expand upon,
something you can may bring to more people - start a larger
conversation.’ Before I read the script I was hesitant to step
back into those shoes when I’d gone so far away from them but
I also figured it’s about telling a larger story, so I gave it a shot
and when I did it hit me in the gut - the writing was so spot on;
I could really relate to some of the experiences in it. It was witty
and had this dark humour that I think only someone who’d
gone through it could write. It was semi-autobiographical for
Marti [Noxon, the writer-director] so that made total sense,
and when I finished it I called up right away and was like ’I have
to meet with somebody about this.’ I met with Marti who had
no idea about my connection with it whatsoever; we started
talking, had a little bit of a lovefest and I explained to her my
association with it and what I could relate to. And that was it
really, I went home and expressed to my team my hopes of her
liking me and she expressed her hopes of me liking her and it
was kind of like a marriage from there.
A film like that needs the humour doesn’t it, otherwise it
can get a bit morbid.
Yeah, it’s already a dark subject matter so you want to make
sure you have lightness in there. Also, there’s a real truth to
dark humour being used as a deflection from issues, especially
with this kind of topic, you don’t want to address the elephant
in the room, you just want to deflect, deflect, deflect. I
personally used dark humour or in general in that way and so
did Marti. My character, Ellen, is very sarcastic and fun and
witty - she’s a bright young women who got a lot of darkness
in there.
And the scenes where you looked very emaciated, I’m
guessing some it was body doubles, some of it was VFX?
So some of it was me, some was a young woman who was in
recovery, and they kind of molded the two of us together.
The shot at the end is obviously not me that’s CGI, but it’s a
dream sequence so you can kind of allow that.
You obviously had to stay really thin for the role as well,
was it weird having to go back to the kind of behaviour
you’d put behind you, in terms of really worrying about
what you eat?
It was, but what was weird about it was someone else telling
me what I could and couldn’t eat. It wasn’t about the
satisfaction of me controlling it, it was actually being held
accountable by a professional. And I started to go like, 'well
maybe I want to eat that,’ and I had to remind myself it’s for a
greater purpose. So, I wanted to eat, whereas before it would
have been me telling myself I didn’t. It was interesting being
held accountable throughout the process; I had a lot of
people supporting me to help me through it. But also, I feel
proud of the fact that, because of the regimen and
supplements I was on as well as constantly eating throughout
the day, I never forgot my lines, I was never late and never
skipped out on work or was ever overly tired, and I had a
great time shooting. I think a lot of what propelled me
forward was that I was so passionate about the story and
determined to get through it, make it to the end and have that
feeling of pride. I knew the greater purpose of the story was
much bigger than myself and that there was potential for
change after this movie or at least a conversation starting
about the subject matter, so I didn’t want to mess it up.
Obviously, it was a little bit of pressure, but sometimes
pressure can be good.
So what is the healthy way they recommend actors to get
down to a small size for roles?
There really isn’t a recommended way. I know other actors
who would literally eat a piece of fruit a day and smoke a lot
and drink a lot of coffee, and that was totally not the vibe I
wanted - I don’t even smoke - so I don’t condone that and, I
reminded myself they’d hired me as an actor, not for the
potential of what my body could look like. And so, it was just
about limiting certain food groups, having smaller portions,
lots of water and just the basics really. But always having
supplements with every meal as well to make sure your body
is functioning properly.
I know one obviously draws on one’s own life with every
role to an extent, but did this movie feel different
because it was something so close to you, did it feel
easier to tap into the emotion when you were in the
scene?
It definitely was a dissimilar type of experience for me and,
watching it back, I can spot the moments where I’m actually
having revelations of my own in the movie as myself, because
the way Marti wrote the script is so accurate and there are
things I’d never been open to talking about or ever really
spoken to a professional about. The therapists in the house
talking about why people stay in disorder or what we like
about it, for instance, was so spot-on and creepily similar to
my mindset at the time that I was just in awe that someone
understood me, and that’s what Ellen’s going through in that
moment, you know, someone’s caught me out’.
I really was so present in this movie that I allowed myself to
have those moments of clarity and they just happened to be
captured on film. Like the scene in the bathroom where my
step mom makes me step on the scales, take my clothes off
and she takes pictures of me and asks me if I think they’re
beautiful, I didn’t know that Kerry Preston, the actress,
was actually going to use the iPhone and take a photo - I
thought she’d turn it around and there’d be a blank screen -
but she took a photo of me and it shook me in that moment
because I was faced with something that I just hadn’t seen in
myself. When you’re in disorder you don’t see yourself the
way that everyone else does really, it’s distorted, so that was a
real moment that shook me as Ellen but also as Lily. To
the Bone provided me a lot of those ’aha’ moments.
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