You have had such an incredible career but is there any advice you would give to your 20-year-old self? Do you know, why change the journey? We all have our own lessons, we all have our own destiny, we all have our own journey to live. Of course, there are highlights in my career, great ones, and ones that become the glory that we can remember. But to pretend that every career isn’t without giant disasters and horrific moments, would be completely false. It is a lot of these giant disasters that lead us to make the most wonderful things that we make. I think we cannot succeed without failing. We cannot grow into our greatness without trying new things. Of course, we’re going to fail when we try them. But each new thing that we try and fail, we learn these kind of amazing and often very subtle things but those subtle things become the essence of our success. So I think in many ways some of our greatest failures become the seedlings and the foundations of our greatest success.
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How do you feel about receiving the Golden Icon award? It’s a tremendous honour. And I’m really humbled to be honoured alongside some really great people. It gives one pause to reflect and consider a lifetime of work, both as actor and in the field working as an AIDS frontline worker, both with children infants and adults. It really is a lifetime, when I stop and think about it.
You released your memoir recently - what did it take for you to do that? I started the book when I had a massive brain haemorrhage and a stroke. I bled into my brain for nine days and my vertebral artery was completely ruptured. I had a very low chance of survival – and I had a one-year-old baby. And not such a terrific marriage. It was a reckoning, I can say completely. When I was asked if I would like to write a memoir, I had been writing a lot of short stories and had not really wanted to write a memoir, frankly. So I had to think about if I did, from what perspective because there’s a lot of things I could write about of course – many things in the field, many things from work. But I felt that it might do me some good to consider why I had a stroke and a brain haemorrhage and what was the point of this journey? My father had oesophageal cancer and he was given a three per cent chance of living three months, after this happened to me. He and my mother came to live with me and I told him that if he could survive it, he would learn a lesson of why this happened. And he did survive it. Those three per cent were in his favour but it was very difficult. When he survived it, he told me that his lesson was that he discovered the wonder in each and every day. I really felt that I too had a lesson. I think that for women, we are all really facing the opportunity to say what’s real for us. And this gave me an opportunity to do that. I hope that my lesson was that it was ok not only to say what was real for me but to end being manipulated by it.
Is it true you don’t have a manager or an agent anymore? I did not have agents or managers for a very long time. I still don’t have an agent. I did hire a manager and it’s great because I hired management who defected from my agency before that fired me. I was pretty much fired by everyone about a month before my book came out. I don’t think anyone wanted to hear my life story and perhaps what I had to say about them! For a long time I was contacted just directly or through Instagram and I found that I had a lot more offers than I did when I had an agent. I think agencies take all of your offers and then discuss them at their board meetings and decide if your offer might be better for another client. So I don’t think you get all of your offers when you are with an agency. I don’t think that agencies are completely honest, unfortunately. I can only imagine this because I was getting zero offers and then when I didn’t have an agent, the next week I was getting about six to ten or 12 offers a week. I don’t think it would happen instantly if that wasn’t the case.
Which actors and directors are you looking to work with in the future? Is there anyone you couldn’t say ‘no’ to? I’m just trying to take my time but who could I not say ‘no’ to? I’d like to work with Taika Waititi - I think he’s just great. I like his way of thinking and being. So I would not say ‘no’ to working with him. I would like to work with a lot of actors but primarily I’d like to work with some actresses. Much of my career has been me and 250 men on set. And although I’ve learned to speak ‘man’ rather fluently, I would really enjoy working with some actresses and lots of them. So I’d like to see that happen.
Where does your strength come from to use your profile to raise awareness of social issues? I’m an incredibly shy person. So I say the same prayer every time. I ask to be used to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people and to be directed for today’s purpose. And then I allow myself to be completely present. And that’s it.
Was there someone who helped you to find yourself after your stroke or was it just inner strength? It was very difficult what happened to me because, as I said, essentially my marriage was over when this happened to me. So my parents came and stayed with me at the beginning and my dad helped me a lot. Then they went home and at that time, this was in 2001, there wasn’t a lot of understanding and aftercare for stroke patients. I wasn’t doing well. I had a lot of problems. I had a lot of visual distortion, a lot of trouble walking. I had lost a lot of
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