Girl interrupted
Shannyn Sossamon returns to the spotlight wit a slew of new films and a whole new perspective on life.
After being discovered by a casting agent at Gwyneth Paltrow’s birthday party, DJ-turned-actress Shannyn Sossamon burst onto the scene in 2001, starring in A Knight’s Tale opposite Heath Ledger then 40 days and 40 nights with Josh Hartnett and The Rules of Attraction with James Van Der Beek. It was a rather auspicious start, the classic prelude for any rising it girl before she finally gets that coveted Oscar nomination (for playing a lesbian paraplegic crack whore), plans a secret wedding, deals with a public divorce and marries again. Her family album would be full of Vanity Fair covers designed to set the record straight about her separation / hospitalization / adoption, and she would know the exquisite joy of having Oprah Winfrey scream her name in introduction.
But unlike so many promising actresses before her, Sossamon didn’t follow the Hollywood model and, instead, disappeared as quickly as she came. “I didn’t feel like the kind of overnight success that maybe a Lindsay Lohan has to deal with,” she says. “I never had paparazzi moments. I really just did a couple movies and went to like two premieres. I was never really photographed, and I didn’t go out to huge parties. And then I got pregnant. I was a young, careless, crazy girl, and the next day I was pregnant. I had to adjust, but it was a beauuutiful adjustment.” So beautiful, in fact, that it took her almost two years to realized she’d stopped acting or even speaking with her agent. “I was like, “Oh, wow,” she recalls. “I thought, ‘I need to get my feet wet. I need to start working again and make sure this is what I want to do.’”
Upon returning to work, her options weren’t quite as limitless as they were before. “I made a couple of honkers, “she says”, “and I’m not going to be shy about saying that. There was one I did called Devour that wasn’t made well at all and the story was unclear. They were doing rewrites every day.” But the films, which shot on location in Vancouver, gave her the opportunity to live rent-free with her son and a few friends in tow. “I worked twice a week on that film,” she says, and spent most of her free time learning how to play guitar. On top of that, “one of my friends ended up meeting someone whom she eventually had a baby with, and I fell in love with studying and playing music. So everything happens for a reason.”
Fortunately, Sossamon’s next few projects are definitely up to her standards. First up is a cameo in The Holiday as Jack Black’s girlfriend then a role on Courteney Cox Arquette’s new series Dirt, premiering in January on FX, which goes behind the scenes of an US Weekly-esque magazine. Although Sossamon believes our obsession with celebrity has gone too far, she can’t help but leaf through tabloids at the supermarket. “It’s like crack,” she explains. In February, she’ll star in Wristcutters : A Love Story opposite Patrick Fugit, and when his name is first mentioned, she squeals with delight. “Oh, I just love him!” she says. “He just tickles me. I don’t know what it is about that boy.” But the former child star, best know for his lead role in Almost Famous, has grown up quite a bit since his film debut. “He’s very sexy and tall,” she says. “Very masculine. And I think he’s really going to surprise everybody. He can be a really strong leading man, not just this quirky little boy forever.”
And the fact that Wristcutters revolves around a group of dead people doesn’t keep it from being a feel-good movie. “It’s set in the afterworld for people who’ve committed suicide, and that sounds dark to people,” she says. “But that’s just the backdrop. It’s a really sweet love story.” And her obvious affection for Fugit made the filming experience so much easier. “I was in a weird place when we were filming that. I was shaky; I was on shaky ground as a person and an artist,” she says. “And he was so supportive in a very quiet way, which made it really easy to be in a love story with him.”
When it comes to her own opinions about afterlife, her main concern is that she won’t be able to remember this life once it’s over. “Is that weird?” she asks. “I believe in past lives and all of the things that have happened in my past lives, but I don’t remember. Maybe some people do – and that’s great for them – but I don’t. I’m not like, ‘Oh I remember that one time four lives back when he was so beautiful, that first love of mine.’” The real question is : “Will I remember my son’s face ? Things like that kind of trip me out.”
Incidentally, she also realized that you might be tripped out by her son’s given name, Audio Science. A lot of people suspect that Sossamon chose the name because of its musical allusions, but, in reality, she and the boyfriend Dallas Clayton “just liked the way it sounded. We wanted him to have a unique name, but instead of looking in a baby-name book, we looked in the dictionary.” They were almost done with the A’s when she realized that “audio” actually sounded like a name. “We had a short list of names we for sure liked, but we didn’t want to name him before he was born just to make sure it fit,” she explains. Once she met her son, the answer was obvious. “He just looked like an Audio,” she says. “It’s weird, but he did. You just know when something’s right. Science was on the list for first names too, so we put them together because we really liked Science. But he just wasn’t a Science. I know that sounds funny, huh ?” And technically, it does, but coming out of Sossamon’s mouth, it sounds not only reasonable but charming. Often described as bohemian, she thinks of herself as a true artist, whether she’s acting, playing guitar or dabbling in photography, “I really believe in living creatively no matter what,” she says. “Everything you do should be creative.”
This spring, she’ll team up with Edward Burns, for the Japanese horror remake One Missed Call, in which an evil spirit communicates through the telephone à la The Ring. “You check your phone, and it says ‘one missed call’” she explains. “Then you check your voicemail and basically hear your own death. It says, ‘Sent Thursday, 7:45pm’ but it’s only Tuesday. Then you hear your last ten seconds of life.” After playing a number of characters with style to spare, this role is quite a departure for her. “I look really dorky,” she says with excitement, content to be acing again and playing as many unexpected roles as possible. “I don’t think I’ve even begun to tap into what I’m capable of as an actress. I fell like I’m just getting started.” Luckily, she’s quite the chameleon and feels comfortable in almost any setting. “Exept a florescent-light-lit room with cubicles and a water cooler,” she admits. “I think I might go nuts.”
By Nikia Dawkins
Zink magazine – Holiday 2006
Transcribed by Lee for SSO.
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