Page 165 - Flaunt 170 - The Phoenix Issue - Ever Anderson

NPR story on the bust of a sex house near their LA neighbor- hood, Polish took an interest in the problem and began devel- oping a vision for a narrative film that would, in Bosworth’s words, take a “Trojan horse approach to the subject matter.” The film, Nona (2017), begins as what seems to be a love story between a young woman and a man who promises to help her journey north to find her mother in America, before unravel- ing into a nightmare of human exploitation. The project very nearly didn’t get made: during pre-production, one of the financial backers pulled out. After some careful accounting, Bosworth decided to finance the film herself and stepped into the role of executive producer and producer, trusting their small crew could pull everything off. The resulting film was powerful, and prompted many trafficking survivors to reach out to Bosworth and Polish. “The reason I do what I do is to connect with people,” Bosworth tells me. “I love the feeling I get when I know I’ve impacted others.” She sees this satisfaction as intrinsically connected to the joy or catharsis she experiences when touched by great art, especially music and fiction, and she’s not averse to letting artists know when they’ve moved her. In one case, doing so led to one of her most significant film roles. “I reached out to the author of Still Alice over Twitter to share how much her book affected me, because my grandparents suffered from Alzheimer’s.” She asked the author, Lisa Genova, whether she had considered making her novel into a movie. Genova shared that the project was already off the ground and recommended Bosworth for the role of Anna, a daughter of the main charac- ter. “That’s literally how I got the part,” recalls Bosworth. “I had known Julianne Moore for many years and really wanted to work with her. I remember being really nervous on that project because it was subject matter that felt very person- al, very raw, but I was also nervous to work with Julie. Everyone felt that way—when you’re working with one of the greats, it’s amazing.” Moore, of course, went on to win an Academy Award for her role. Working with Moore was both inspiring and instructive. Bosworth came away understanding she needed to hold things more loosely and not try too hard on set. “There was one day where we were filming one of the most important, emotional scenes for her,” says Bosworth. “I was selling my house at the time, and we were chatting right up to the moment where the AD was quieting everyone down shouting ‘We’re rolling!’ and she’s continuing to talk to me, saying ‘If you need a good realtor, I have a good realtor.’ Right up until ‘Action!’ she was chatting about real estate and then just clicked into her role and stunned me with how brilliant she was.” “I asked her later what the trick was. And she said it’s just years and years of experience. She did all the work way before she walked on set and didn’t need to grind and pull herself apart to produce that performance—she trusted herself.” Bosworth is increasingly learning to trust herself. She’s also learning to compartmentalize all the emotional intensity she accesses in her roles so it doesn’t compromise life outside of work. “Real pros leave their shit on set,” she states, but admits that this is rather difficult when you live with your principal co-worker. To stay sane, she and Polish even tried to imple- ment a rule that they don’t talk about work after 6 PM. That lasted about two days. The blurring of work and home life is not what most con- cerns Bosworth, however. She has caught her stride profes- sionally, having self-financed and produced her own project, and she expects to soon direct her own film. But the mys- tery of filmmaking has faded some with all that experience. Bosworth fears that the jadedness that attends adulthood might rob her of the magic of reading, or even the magic of making movies. “You have to be careful not to fall out of love with the magic of it,” she says. “Especially when the commercial or executive side of things imposes itself, it can eclipse the art.” How does she try to re-en- chant her life and art? Her answer is surprisingly simple: horses. As a child, Bosworth was a champion equestrian, a skill that earned her a role in Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer and launched her career. One of her earliest memories is of being thrown from a spooked horse when she was four or five years old—and then immediately jumping back on. Riding is deeply connected to her sense of her own resilience and her sense of continuity with her past. Like her time under the wide open sky of Montana, it immerses her in the beauty and power of nature. Bosworth also looks for grace and mystery in everyday life. She has great affection for her pets, a pair of French spaniels, and two cats. “Every- one thinks they have the best animals,” she remarks, “but we actually do.” Everyday, Pol- ish—who originally trained as a visual artist—leaves a minimalist ink drawing for Bosworth to find when she wakes up. They depict scenes from the pre- vious day, often involving their pets in comic scenarios. She shares a photo of a recent sketch Polish made when she was recovering from the flu. It shows a cartoon Bosworth cough- ing while being nuzzled by all four of their pets. The caption reads “Let the zoo take care of you.” Her relationship with Polish is defined by such idio- syncratic intentionality. Each intuitively grasps the needs of the other, something Bosworth attributes to a cosmic conso- nance—his Scorpio to her Capricorn. Though she’s hesitant at first to use these words (“Talking about yourself as an ‘artist’ can sound super affected, and I don’t want to sound like a douche.”), she sees her marriage itself as a living expression of art. In my estimation, Bosworth has nothing to fear from her sense of the magic of film waxing and waning. Whatever magic exists in the creation of art is even more abundantly present in great love, which always entails its own creations. “The reason I do what I do is to conn ect with people. I love the feeling I get when I know I’ve impacted others.” 159 “The reason I do what I do is to conn ect with people. I love the feeling I get when I know I’ve impacted others.” “The reason I do what I do is to conn ect with people. I love the feeling I get when I know I’ve impacted others.”