Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here with one of the more surprising interviews I've conducted recently with the youngest subject I've ever sat down with.
The actresses name is Carly Schroeder, the very sweet 16-year-old star of the upcoming release GRACIE. Carly plays the title character whose story is loosely based on the life of actress Elizabeth Shue and her family (Shue is on hand to play Gracie's mother; brother Andrew is also in the film, which is directed by Elizabeth's husband, Davis Guggenheim, recent winner of an Oscar for directing AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH). Although the film is being promoted as a sports movie set in the early years of the modern feminist movement, it's actually a sometimes-dark coming-of-age piece set after the death of Gracie's oldest brother.
The fact that I got to spend an entire half hour with Schroeder was sort of a mistake. I was scheduled to interview both her and Guggenheim together, but his schedule got mixed up and he never showed (I did get to interview him later that day, and I'll post that very soon). The sum total of my knowledge of Carly's work is her harrowing turn as the sole girl in the devastating film MEAN CREEK (2004) and as Harrison Ford's daughter in FIREWALL (2006). I knew that she'd played a villainous character on the final season of the Hillary Duff Disney show "Lizzy McGuire" and spent her early years (she's been acting since age 6) on a couple different soap operas, but I'd never seen her in any of those shows. What the heck were we going to talk about for 30 minutes that seemed in no danger of getting cut short?
The fact that she showed up right at our scheduled time made me even more nervous. Little did I know what an absolute ball it would be to talk to someone so confident (without a hint of snobbery) and grounded. Perhaps for the first time ever, I asked a somewhat personal question of a subject. It wasn't a question I had written down, but I felt like she would answer it honestly, so I went for it. With GRACIE, Schroeder has entered the realm of leading ladies, and her performance is strong and assured and gave me absolutely no clue what she would be like in person. I expect big things from her in the years to come, and I suspect she'll be able to keep her nose clean (unlike some) to actually enjoy her success.
Keep in mind how young Carly is, and that some of her answers and personal philosophies might seem slightly idealistic. But I have to admit I found all of that refreshing about her. She's still enough of a kid to see most people as good, but she's been in the business long enough to know what the real world is like and where the likely pitfalls are hiding. I've got another possible interview coming up soon with someone a little younger than Carly that I was contemplating turning down, but after speaking with Carly, I am curious about how the younger sect thinks. We'll see.
In the mean time, enjoy the interview and be kind in the Talkbacks. She's only a child for Pete's sake!
Capone: In recent months, I've been interviewing a lot of younger actors, Shia LaBeouf to name one, many of whom came out of that Disney Channel group, and I've noticed that a lot of them more into much more serious work than the Disney programs afforded them. You went right from "Lizzy McGuire" to MEAN CREEK. Do you remember that being a deliberate effort on your part to hone your acting chops as it were?
Carly Schroeder: Not really because I was on a soap opera for seven years, so had done serious, then I did "Lizzy McGuire" while I was doing the soap opera. I've been working since I was six, and I like the more dramatic stuff. I did 13 episodes on "Lizzie McGuire," and that was an incredible experience; I would never want to take that back. But I think the more serious things can convey some sort of message to kids my age, or even adults--everyone needs to be inspired. I think especially movies like GRACIE can do that for people. There's always room to have more fun, to do more comedy kind of things, but I really like doing the more serious, dramatic things. It feels more like me.
C: To have your first major film be MEAN CREEK, this story about a horrible death, and to be the only young female character in the cast, had to be unusual.
CS: It was definitely different working with five guys. Guys are very different than girls; we actually had to share one trailer, and it smelled so horrible. That was the one thing I remember, coming in there holding my nose, change as fast as I could in a back room, and then come flying out. And they were all great actors. It's always a great experience to work on a movie with a bunch of great actors that are younger. They've all gone on to do their own thing. Some have stayed with acting, a few have gone on to do other things. I still keep in touch with them.
When I first read the script, I actually didn't want to do it. I was the last person they saw. I didn't want to do it because there were so man curse words, and I was only 12 at the time and I knew it was going to be rated R, and I was like, "Uhhhh..." None of my friends could go see it, but then I thought, when you walk down the halls of a school, honestly, it's rated R. What the kids say is ridiculous. I took that into account and decided it was a good movie. I especially liked the idea that your life can change just like that. It doesn't even take a full 24 hours. I thought that was a great message to get out there.
C: Your character in GRACIE, some younger viewers might be a little shocked at how she acts during her rebellious phase, especially with the boys. Was it tough, since Elizabeth Shue was right there on set, comprehending the pain that she must have felt for her to act out like that?
CS: Not at all. The movie was inspired by her story, but it's not a direct account. I discussed this with David, I think the main thing is that when somebody dies who's close to you, the one left behind has a real desire to be needed, a want to be close to someone. And I think that's the reason she acting out a few times the way she did. Other times, Andrew told me this, you have this feeling that if your life stops, it doesn't matter because without this person you feel like you're lost and you don't have a place in this world, and everything just kind of goes on around you. After a while, you find yourself and redeem yourself, and you can go back to the way you were before. But during that period of recovery, you don't care what goes on with life because time just stands still.
There are a lot of girls, even if they don't have someone close to them die, they still act like that. I've never gone through that rebellious stage thankfully--I'm sure my mom is happy about that [laughs]. I've never taken my mom's car. I hate driving; I just got my driver's license and driving is a nightmare. I live in L.A., and it's like, Let's go driving! Oh please. I'm like, mom, please drive me somewhere, please! [laughs] I did get a car, and I had to get my driver's license, and all my friends were bugging me. My driver's permit was about ready to expire, and I would have had to go through the whole course again. So I was like, alright, road trip.
C: Most of your life has been in front of the camera, so to find out about this very different life from yours, not just in terms of the pain Elizabeth suffered but the times these events take place in. She was a girl, and certain things were expected of her and no expected of her. Was that startling?
CS: My mom, for starts, was saying, I don't know how you do this. She's like, you have such a great life and suddenly you're in this dark place. Part of it is just acting, but part of it was watching kids at my school. Some kids do have that loss. One of my friends, Katie, she lost her brother in the Iraq War, and she had this very vacant expression. She was upset all the time, but in a more internal way. I think I used a little bit of that. I also pulled different characteristics from other movies I'd seen. I tried to make the character as real as possible. Also, Davis helped with that. He'd give me scenarios, saying you should think like this, or she should be upset at this moment but not crying. That would give the audience too much emotion. That was very helpful to me.
I think that was one of the things Davis and I discussed. I didn't want to cry, because I feel that every time you see a movie and an actor cries, you're over it. But if they're not crying, the internal conflict stands out and I think an audience can relate to that more. Not everybody wants to cry at every single moment; it's more complicated than that.
C: Did you spend a lot of time with Elizabeth just talking, not just about these events, but also about the times?
CS: When we got to New Jersey, Elizabeth and I had a girls' night, and we went out. She took me to this pizza parlor where she used to hang out when she was younger. And since this film was shot in her hometown, she showed me around. She showed me a treehouse where she used to play and the house where she used to live and a movie theater where she used to go and the soccer field where she used to play soccer. She really gave me a bunch of information that I got to use. We talked about relationships and guys, hair and makeup. We really didn't even talk about acting at all. It was more just talking about our personal lives and getting to know each other better. She really developed into her becoming more like a sister to me.
She's also just had a baby. So she had to take care of this newborn, and she also has two kids, but she was on set a lot. She's a busy lady.
C: The obvious question would seem to be: how tough were the physical challenges of making this movies?
CS: I had to go through three months of training.
C: Had you ever played soccer before?
CS: I played soccer when I was six, but that doesn't even really count. It was more like chasing around the ball, acting real dramatic, pulling your hands on your knees, panting real hard, and seeing who's looking at you. I had a little plaque on my wall that said "Star Player - 1996." That was given to everybody on the team, so...yeah. I trained for three full months for the former captain of the Galaxy Dan Kalichman, and that was intense. We did circuit training three days a week for two hours. After that, we 'd do three hours of ball control and speed and making sure that I was tough enough so when these guys hit me I would snap in half, which seemed to happen quite a bit. Tuesdays and Thursdays I'd do six hours on the soccer field playing the game.
C: Any cool injuries to report?
CS: Oh yeah. There were a couple times when I thought I broke my ankle. I still have a scare; I'll show you. [She pulls up her pants leg to reveal a small white scar.] I'm so proud of it. That's from a cleat. That was a pretty good cut. I'm 16, you see, so I liked picking at it and it scarred over. We had this one night where we were shooting in the rain. First I got kicked in the knee by the goalie, so I fell over backwards, and that hurt real bad. But there's no crying when you're playing soccer. Don't even think about crying. Then I had to get up and do the scene again, and this big guy, just under 200 lbs., full on slide tackled me. They didn't even call cut, they just ran out on the field because they thought I'd broken my ankle.
C: Ain't It Cool doesn't usually get into personal questions that often, but since GRACIE deals with a girl acting out at a young age, this is maybe an appropriate question for you. If you don't like it, just tell me.
CS: Go for it! Shoot some personal questions! [laughs]
C: It's not really that personal. Do you have a personal mindset or motivation in your life to avoid some of the trappings that a lot of younger actors or actresses fall into and becomes tabloid fodder and talk show jokes?
CS: I think that everybody grows up, and I think it's unfortunate that some people have to be in front of the camera doing it. And everybody slips up and makes mistakes, so I'm not going to say that's not going to be me. But hopefully, it won't. I'm not going to say never, because never usually turns into a for-certainty. The nevers come back to haunt you. I think I'd like to go to college, get a higher education. I'm going to try not to date actors, because that seems to be like dating yourself, but worse because it's a guy.
I do have a boyfriend, so I think I'm staying clear of the actor thing right now, which is pretty great. He's a baseball player. I think it's really important to stick with your family, listen to your parents, have some good friends surrounding you and not just the friends who are with you for the good times. They need to be around you for the bad times too. In turn, you need to support them too. That's huge.
I can't smoke anything. I'm allergic to smoke, which was why in the movie I wasn't smoking anything; I'm blowing on the cigarette, blowing it away from me. I did another movie, EYE OF THE DOLPHIN, where I was supposed to smoke and I sneezed for about 12 minutes straight. That's not going to happen. I really like being in control of my life, so drugs really doesn't seem like the way to go. I think acting is my first priority, so if anything gets in the way of that, I'm going to try and scoot that out of the way.
C: I can't let you go without asking about working with Harrison Ford in FIREWALL. Give me your best Harrison Ford story.
CS: By the end of the movie, I was calling him "Papa Bear." I think the coolest thing was when I first met him. I was really worried that he was going to be a complete jerk.
C: How did they find you for that film?
CS: Harrison Ford saw me in MEAN CREEK and signed off on hiring me. I think the coolest thing was meeting him. I was staring at him, thinking, Is he going to be mean to me? All I could think is, I've seen him in Indiana Jones; he's like the coolest guy ever. So I walked up to him and said, "Hi." And he said, "Hi, I'm Harrison Ford." And I was like, "YES. YOU. ARE!!!" I couldn't even get my name out; all I could say is "Yes you are. You are Harrison Ford." He was looking at me like I was a nuts fan or something. But he was awesome. He was a very sweet guy.
C: While you were filming, was there anything he did or said that made you go, "That was a very cool thing he just did."
CH: He never really gave me any advice. It was mostly work when we got on set. Paul Bettany taught me a bunch of guitar licks. He was teaching me Beatles songs. And at the end, he gave me a Beatles songbook and teaching me all these great riffs. Harrison was pretty much all business, pretty awesome. Now me and all my friends call him H-Fo [laughs].
We were talking one day, and I asked him "What is your favorite food?" He's like, "I like a good burger." And I asked, "What kind of burger?" "I like those A&W burgers." He also said he liked those Dairy Queen burgers. I'm like, "Really? Over steak and lobster?" "I always go for a good burger." That's awesome. And he's always wearing jeans. I'd expected him to come to work in business suits or something. Nope, he wore Wranglers.
C: You mentioned EYE OF THE DOLPHIN before. Didn't that just play at Tribeca?
CH: Yeah, it did.
C: How did it play?
CH: I think it went well. I wasn't there because I was doing this tour, so I'm stuck in this whole. That should be coming out sometime this summer. It's a little indie thing, so it might come out in five theaters. I don't know what the release plan is.
C: What's it about?
CH: It's with Adrian Dunbar and Katharine Ross, she plays my grandmother. It's about a girl in California, who's a bad girl because her mother died, and she never knew she had a father because he was never around. Grandmother takes her to the Bahamas where dad lives because she can't control her any more, she gets kicked out of school.
C: Another rebellious girl role?
CS: Of course! I don't know why I keep getting these. Everybody asks me, are you typecast. No I'm not. But she gets taken to the Bahamas where her dad is an echolocation researcher with dolphins. I kind of make friends with the dolphins and realize I don't need the fast-paced life.
C: What do you have lined up after this?
CS: I have a movie lined up that I'm very, very excited about, and it'll be shooting in Hawaii. I can't say the name yet. But I'm going to wait for the script revisions before I sign onto it. If that one doesn't work, I have two others lined up. One shoots in Connecticut and the other shoots in England, so I'm not quite sure which is happening. I like all three of them, but I can't shoot all three at one time. [laughs] I'm going to have to pick. I'm looking for the next good script that has a good meaning to it. I feel like there really aren't a lot of good role models in Hollywood right now, like you were talking about before. And I think that as an actress, if you're doing this and the people who go see your movie are automatically going to look at you as a role model, so it might as well be in good movies that have good morals to them.
C: I noticed that you do seem to have made a priority of your fan base. You've done several Q&As with fans on various web sites. Is that part of that role model attitude, more than just people coming to see your movie but interacting with you?
CS: My mom decided that I had to get a MySpace page [HERE] because the fan mail is getting out of control. I answer all of it and try to get it out in a timely fashion. I've gotten a few notes saying, "Why haven't you responded? You're such a mean girl." I'm like, "You must be kidding. You must have sent it to the wrong place or something. I'm very busy." But I'm trying to get it out there.
I finally got a MySpace page, and my mom watches over it to make sure I don't write anything bad. I try and do as best I can with the fan mail, but there are so many people who write and have very high expectations; they want me to send 100 posters. Some kids write me and say, "Can you come to my sleepover?" [screams] That's not going to work! But it's kind of funny because I've gotten a few girls write me to come to their school and act like their best friend to get back at another person. I'm like, I can't do that.
C: Welcome to your fan base.
CS: Yeah. I got guys writing to me saying they can't breathe, or that if I just met them once I'd fall in love with them. Really? Okay. I get fan mail from all over the place. My mom just had me sign a letter to someone from Japan who wants to be my big sister. It's incredible how these movies can reach people. I still get people who've just seen MEAN CREEK and how it changed their life, and how at one point they were a bully and now they've decided not to be a bully and how they were trying to be nice to these people that they did bully at one point because they realize that that could be them. I think it's a very powerful thing.
If you handle it with class, it will only benefit you. I definitely try and help out the fans anyway I can. They're the ones that are getting me these jobs, and they've been following me since I was six. I had a lady call in the other day, we were in Atlanta. And she called in any said, "I just want to say to Carly that you have thousands of fans." And I said, "Is this my mother? This is the coolest thing ever." I guess I don't really think about it. I don't read magazines that would possibly have me in them. Even if there is an article about me, my mom and dad will read it, and that's about it. The only magazine I've ever read was some soap opera magazine that said I was trying to be a younger Paris Hilton, and my dad wigged out. He flipped, because I'm a good Midwest girl, I'm from Indiana.
C: That's right, you're from Valparaiso.
CS: Yep, I'm a Valpo girl. I was just the Grand Marshall for the popcorn festival.
C: Sweet!
CS: That was the coolest thing ever for me. I went out and got this dress, and I was all fancy. And everybody else was wearing jeans, and I was like Oops. But the magazine said I was Paris Hilton-ish and that I dye my roots. [She grabs her hair.] I'm natural, I'm a toe head. I don't know what roots you're seeing. There's always going to be somebody who has something mean to say to you or about you. You just gotta throw those people out because it's part of their nature. They can't help themselves. You have to look at them and say, I'm sorry that's the way you feel. And there are always going to be people who are really nice to you.
C: You mentioned earlier about wanting to go to college. When do you have to start thinking about that?
CS: I'm a sophomore right now, so I still have two years to make that decision, thank goodness, because I have no clue what I want to be. Everybody always asks me if acting is what I want to do for the rest of my life, and in Hollywood they love you one day and totally hate you the next and put xx's all over your face. You never know, so you've got to have a plan be.
When I was younger--and I always tell this to kids who say they want to be actors--I say make sure it's not the only thing you want to do. When I was younger, I wanted to be a garbage man, because I thought it would be cool to go through other people's stuff. I wanted to work at a gas station, because I love talking to people. There are so many different things you can do, and people always think that acting is this huge glamorous thing. It is at times; other times it's not. You automatically lose your privacy after you reach a certain point, and I'm trying to avoid that, which Andrew and Elizabeth keep telling me that once this movie comes out, I'm not going to have privacy.
And I'm like, Oh no. It was that way with "Lizze McGuire," though, I had all these little girls come up to me, and they'd want to meet me but then they wouldn't. They'd ask, "Are you as mean as your character?" And I'd say, "No, I'm not." That was really cute, but that faded out after I stopped looking like that character. It's definitely going to change a little bit after this movie comes out, but I'd still like to keep to myself and not have all these people all over me and watching me all the time. That's going to be the hardest thing. People in Hollywood especially, they like to throw rocks in a glass house, for sure.
They're watching you grow up, and they're waiting for you to make a mistake, so they can write about it because that's what sells their papers. I think trying to keep to my family is the way to go, because they're the ones who are going to keep you grounded and keep you the way you are.
Capone
