Fashion Neurosis with Julianne Moore

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1:10Hi, come in.

1:18Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Julianne Moore. Hi. Can you tell me what clothes you're wearing today and why you chose them? Well, I'd like to say that I didn't think at all about what I was going to wear, but that's not true. I thought about it because I thought about what your couch looked like. And I had another choice. I had sort of an ivory kind of a boucle-like sweater. And then I realized that your sofa was like an ivory boucle and I would just look like a floating head. So I thought, so I'm wearing a black Bottega Veneta sweater dress that I knew wouldn't be too overwhelming on the couch.

2:06I thought a lot about your location when I chose this. I was very excited to see you wearing black because I'm wearing black too. and partly because I've just come back from Paris and I'm so tired and I just wanted to disappear into the color black and you seem illuminated within the color black. That's such a nice thing to say. I love black. I love black. I like ivory. I like gray. I like navy. I like things that are I find it soothing I'm challenged by color I sometimes I like to look at it but I sometimes get overstimulated by it so I'm trying to allow myself to be soothed That's so interesting because I suppose it's unusually that I think of you with color because of the beautiful colour of your hair and you have the colours that roses have in them.

3:18There's this incredible subtle prettiness. And then to see you in black, it's really an exciting contrast and interesting to hear how you feel about colour and these kind of muted colours like grey that you kind of bring them to life with your colouring. What a nice thing to say. My God, I should come here all the time. It's funny that you said that about my hair. I think that, you know, I've never really liked having red hair. Like if I could choose, I'd want to have dark hair like you. I always liked dark hair. But then of course, I realized as I became an adult that I can choose. If I wanted to, I could change my hair color but I don't so I sort of wonder about that I think even the times that I've done it I've done a job where I had to dye my hair which is infrequent but I've done it a couple of times when I haven't worn a wig the minute the job's over I change it back so even though I'm not crazy about it and that I would have chosen something else if I'd been given an opportunity I also choose not to so I think that that's interesting and I don't know I don't know why except that that I'm I'm I'm identified with something that I don't particularly love it's odd that the way those things change isn't it that the things that have been conflicting suddenly become your allies in in in an odd way I mean I've got millions of of them of self-criticisms and but now I'm quite attached to the things that I found so um you know just devastating when I was when I was younger but right I was going to ask you actually if when a director asks you to change your hair color for the character, do you think, come on, you know, I don't need to be blonde or dark to do this.

5:33I can do this. Or is it just part of the way you work backwards from a... It's very much part of it. I don't have any issue with changing my physicality for a job. In fact, I feel like that's part of it. I think that my, you know i'm i'm i'm really good at looking at things from the outside and i think that that who we are how we dress the color our hair um what we present to the world all of these things are signifiers of of who we are or how we want to be perceived so i'm when i'm working on a character i think about that i'm like who is this person where does she live what are her cultural references what are her interests what is she trying to communicate i think about that a lot and so if director says to me i see this character as x as long as we're kind of in accord you know i'm happy to do it i mean even you know even in the case like with with todd haynes and far from heaven he had written the character as a redhead because he wrote it for me and i was like i don't think she's a redhead todd i think she's an all-american blonde i said i want her right in the center of that American narrative I don't want her to be anything in any way marginal and he was like okay you know and so we ended up going with a blonde wig so I don't I like that when I'm working on a character I think I probably oddly have a harder time defining myself like in my own life because I can't get I can't get outside of myself in the way that I want to you know you're always inside it's like I can't even look at my physical self the way I can an object or a room there's always something in the way but what you said before about the things that you don't like in a way it's like incorporating boundaries like you decide well this is just it so it can also give you some relief it's like well this is just it this is my physicality and if you kind of accept that then it becomes then you're like well easier I guess and have you always felt like that because it's taken me my whole life to feel like that and it's so liberate I love it now yeah I think it does have to do with age and experience and also I don't know there is that yeah I do love it too I think there is like I said like I now have the knowledge that if I wanted to change my hair color I could and yet I sort of stay there so so yeah I think I've been liberated by by time I guess yeah and you're an actor who's universally loved as believable and moving in your roles and your ability to peel back the artifice is second to none and I wondered what the phrase fashion neurosis made you think of

8:44well you know it's interesting because I think what I was just saying about that the inability to get outside your own self right like a neurotic is someone who's very or neurosis you're sort of wrapped up in your feelings in your own nervous system and in it's like it can almost be like a trap and so i think that i think that the with fashion neurosis can be the same sort of thing like why can't i why can't i escape this thing or why do I feel like I have to be defined by this? Or why do I keep going toward this one thing? Or what does that say about me? It's, I think that's what's so wonderful about this podcast is that people are talking about what makes them feel like themselves, and what they struggle with.

9:38And it's all kind of, it's inside and outside at the same time, which is wonderful. and what was the first piece of clothing you became obsessed with as a child I'm so glad you asked that I had a dress it was brown and it was so beautiful I was eight I think and it was brown it was like a sort of a poplin and it had a sash and and and like white smocking and a white collar oh it was so beautiful i loved it i don't know what it was for it was like my special dress you know i was supposed to wear it i think when we went to church or wear it like you know on a holiday or something but it felt really good to wear and i remember i would wear it on special occasions and we used to go to my parents were my dad was a student um he was going to to law school at the time my parents didn't have a lot of money and so they would take us for teeth to teeth checkups to get the dentist to it to a dental college so so that that meant the people who were cleaning our teeth and examining us were very very young and so i had a big crush on the guy that was my dentist and he was probably i I mean, looking back, I realize he must have been 22, 23.

11:06But I wore my special dress, you know. So nice. I wore my brown dress. And like I said, the sash, it was very full and had the smocking. But he liked me too because I'm just like a little girl. So I was so excited to see him, but he picked me up. And because my dress was so full, I was absolutely humiliated because I realized that everybody could see my underpants. But so I had this, you know, I had all these romantic feelings for this dentist and I wore my special dress, but he just, of course, I was just a little girl. But I can't believe I remembered that actually. It's, yeah, I can, it's a really definable moment, isn't it?

11:49That moment of shame, any shame moments of really, they just like go into your DNA. I was trying to be so glamorous in my brown dress. Oh. Yeah. You give the impression of having confidence in your body and it behaving well for you. And I wondered how your transition from girl to woman, how was that for you? Huh. I think that I don't, I have a lot of, and this is probably another thing about being an adult too and having lived with your body for a long time. I have a lot of appreciation for my body. I have a lot of gratitude for how well it's functioned over the years. There were things I think I felt when I was younger about being really pale and having a lot of freckles and, you know, once again about my coloring and being thin and not feeling, you know, particularly, I don't know, womanly.

12:54But all those things sort of have disappeared because I feel like I've always been able to walk really fast. That's such good. Yeah. Right? My view. My body responds well physically. If I have to learn something, my body's able to do it. It doesn't, hasn't really failed me. Even in terms of like being sick, I heal quickly. um so i have a lot of appreciation for everything that it's done and i would i'd feel like you know like we're saying before i think i got attached i think i'm super attached to it now that's great yeah it's really it's like a such an ally when it is allowed to be a friend instead of a failing system which was yeah i viewed it for so long and i think because i never was a person who was defined by my body you know i never really thought about it it was never like i think for some women and young women in particular i see it happening because i have a daughter who's 22.

14:14I have a son who's 27. And I think that you can see with girls, like suddenly, oh, it's like so-and-so has an amazing body or this or that becomes some sort of defining characteristic. And because that wasn't the case with me, it was just, I just appreciated the fact that I could walk quickly. Then it stayed. It just feels okay. It feels good. Because you talk about in your childhood traveling a lot and moving a lot and how you kind of scoped out the other kids and watched how they danced and how they talked. I wondered if your survival mode is blending in or being different. Blending in. God, I love to blend in.

14:58I was thinking about that with fashion, too, because people talk about this is so interesting. this because this has happened recently in lots of interviews will talk to someone like they someone who's particularly good on the red carpet say and and she might say i think of fashion as armor i go out there and i am you know i'm wearing this armor and i'm like wow wow i don't if i were in kind of a a big gown with like a lot going on and a headdress and this and that i would be like no no no no this doesn't feel like armor to me this feels like you know here i am you know so i don't feel i don't feel protected by that kind of fashion i don't feel protected by standing out or looking different or i feel really comforted you know if i'm in a black sweater yeah i feel really good if i'm able to go into a situation i think certainly like i did as a kid and understand that everybody here was a certain kind of corduroy pant and everybody here wears a you know wears a puffer that's like this or these are the kind of sneakers you're supposed to wear or i wanted very much wanted to do that yeah not even having like a uniform people talk about having a personal uniform but i think about literally what is the uniform yeah i think that can be very satisfying and was your mother supportive about making sure you had these things that mattered so much yeah i think that there was probably less um emphasis i think put on those things like certainly when i was growing up that i saw with my own children um but yeah my mother was someone who had great aesthetics you know she really understood things that were um what was beautiful what was attractive or what made you feel good and she would give us as we got older i remember we'd get um a little bit of money to buy school clothes you know and we could shop ourselves was like we could choose it ourselves and my sister was the kind of person who would take that money and go to a store and buy a million different things and I would go and I buy a skirt and a pair of shoes you know it was like we were both really specific about what we liked and she she allowed it you know she was she was very um supportive god that's so nice it I think that really helps with your learning what suits you to have that kind of backup and given how much you've had to move around in your upbringing i wondered if you're a heavy packer or a light packer wow we struggled oh we all struggle we all struggle so much packing i'm a nervous packer i'm an anxious packer i think packing you know as as it becomes um imminent as it's on my horizon and I start to really, really worry as if it were, you know, a task that I wouldn't be able to complete.

18:24I'm exactly the same. Yeah, right? It just does my head in completely. Why? Then I take everything. That's my solution. I don't take everything, but I bring too much of one thing. like when i came here i am only here for three days and i think i brought five sweaters five really really similar really really similar sweaters you know so i'll do that and then i'll go in and i'll realize that i that i'm i'm short on socks or something and and this is this is pretty you know i love those lists of what people pack and you know why they somebody says i always bring a pair of white jeans and i bring a black trouser and i wear my jacket on the plane and i you know i bring this many t-shirts and a pair of running shoes and i'm like oh god she's got it together and i'll sometimes like take a screenshot of it to remind myself of what this person how she packs i know i've got a friend who does that she's super organized and but part of my kind of anxiety about packing is that I don't look at that list yeah because I just I don't know why I just make it I make it as painful as possible I know I don't have as much patience with it like I realize sometimes that people who are really good at that have actually taken the time like i'll take a lot a lot of time picking out a piece of furniture and i'll think about it for a really long time and i might even try the piece of furniture out bring it to my house look at it bring it back I'll do all of that but I won't for some reason I Won't take the kind of time I need to take With fashion, I don't know why I Don't know why I quite like with clothes that the mistakes that occur and I want to always to leave a little room for that Even though it's a bit nerve-wracking, but I realized that that seems to work for me.

20:49So I'm sort of accommodating the whole kind of neurotic thing about it and thinking well there's going to be something I'm going to get a new outfit out of this somehow by being so obsessed yes there is something too I mean I was talking before about like the soothing colors and I have this joke with my husband about dressing blank what does it mean to dress blank like when you are in in a crisis or when you're just trying to determine like what you're going to wear and you feel stuck like what's blank how could you choose something that's like totally neutral like how do you find a way to um to to just like like you're the sorbet course a fancy restaurant yes what is that thing that's a blank that's like blank there's something kind of uh interesting about that because then it sort of forces you to think about um what's essential because there's a huge difference between blank and anonymous and i'm worry about anonymous in case I disappear into that and then I can't come back from it.

22:11I don't think you could ever be anonymous. Well it's it's funny how you can try on I tried on something really beautiful from a brand and I just vanished and I just looked like a middle-aged woman in a shop and I thought oh god how interesting because I've got a friend who wears the same thing and she just looks like a manga cartoon warrior or something right anyway i definitely didn't well that's interesting because i do think there is that thing and that's why fashion could be so worrying right because it doesn't always work and that's why when i talked about dressing blank or something you're like well how do you i think like i'm always want to see who someone is sometimes you don't remember what they were wearing right you just remember someone's face or their expressiveness or or to the way they felt um and if you remember what they were wearing too clearly then you think like well did i see their face so so it's always do you what what is the what's the garment what what's the what's the sense that lets someone's self come through and when I said I don't think you can ever be anonymous what I meant was like I don't think you you Bella could ever be anonymous like I feel like your face is so arresting you have such a um a presence that I can't imagine that anything that you would wear would render you anonymous gosh truly I'm taking the compliment from Julianne Moore truly I mean it yeah and do you do you find And if you're feeling insecure, do you dress up or down?

24:04Is there something that's a linchpin for that kind of, you know? Because if I don't feel great, I lean into what feels good physically. Like I just had a revelation, which is so nutty, about fabric. Like I realize, like all of us, I think we're all sensitive to fabric in one way or another, how something feels. and I realized I don't like the way anything that's slippery feels um because I was wearing I was I was playing a character in something who was very elevated really wealthy and so so the costume designer had dressed me in all these beautiful clothes and a lot of them were silk and I was losing my mind like my skin was crawling absolutely crawling because every day I would get to work and I'd pull on these silk pants and like a silk blouse and like, and I was like, oh, and so suddenly I said to this really wonderful costume designer who I love a lot, I was like, I can't take it anymore.

25:11I can't take one more silk outfit. And she was like, what? I said, I just realized it. I just don't like the way it feels. And she said, oh, I love it. I love it. so she's someone she goes oh she goes i'll go home and put on like a little silk camisole it makes me feel good and i realized i'll go home and i'll put on something like like you know a sweatshirt is it to do with where it where it touches the body that it is doesn't contain you enough because i find i can wear a silk shirt but i couldn't wear anything below the waistline in silk or I just would not cope. It's all of it. Like all of it.

25:58Like I just hate the way it feels in my skin. So yeah, so if I'm not feeling great, I will resort to, you know, like a sweatsuit set. You know, I'll go there. I'll go to like, I have a pair of hiking boots that I love. um they're made by a company called danner and they've actually discontinued this particular boot and i have two pair and i keep them in the country where i walk a lot with my dog i put those boots on and i feel like i could fly they feel so good on my feet yeah and there's a woman you portray brilliantly who i'm so drawn to and this is a woman who's glamorous and losing it and you bring this pathos and it's all and it's impossible to stop watching how beautiful you are like in the character you play in boogie nights and i wondered what you draw on for that person who's so touching oh for amber well oh i love that character first of all she's someone who has kind of a lovely heart right like she's kind and she's soft and she's pretty you know but she's also she's heartbreaking because she's completely delusional you know i think at the heart of amber she's someone who who you know she sort of plays at being a mother or plays at being a caretaker but in in reality you know she's lost custody of her kid because she's been arrested several times and because she's a drug problem yeah you know so she's someone who lives in a fantasy i'm always interested in any time we've concocted our own reality you know you when you think about i i your question about what gives you comfort you know where do you go do you dress up or down do you retreat some people retreat into fantasy some people you know will elevate themselves somewhere some people want to ground themselves in in something you know tactile or real but you know where do you go and it's so much easier for us to observe someone and say like well this is their reality and you know this is their fiction i think that's one of the other reasons that we love reality television when people come in and they have all these issues and you as a viewer or look at it and say like well she's well she's nuts or you know i think he's right in the situation or why don't they understand this or but when you're inside your own drama you don't necessarily have have the perspective so i'm always interested as as an actor in how you and how you capture that or how you manifest that.

29:03I found it fascinating. And you have such an ability for this that with the character of Amber, she was obviously falling to bits and she was a drug addict and everything, but she's still so sympathetic and just this way of not reducing people with lots of problems and breaking the law or whatever. But you kept this aspect going. And it creates so much more understanding of how difficult it is to be in a trap. Right. But to be alive. Yeah. Like to be alive. It's like so none of us want to be defined by our coping mechanisms. so i always think that i always think often you'll see this in in film scripts where they'll talk about a woman and it'll be like a successful woman and they'll talk about her being controlling right and i'm like huh what is that what are they what is that what are they trying to define or what is it they think who is it they think this person is that she is controlling well someone who appears that way to me is someone who feels that they have to in order to maintain their lives their sense of self or whatever they have a mechanism of maybe trying to get something done so they can protect themselves so you always see it's like what someone is projecting to the world in terms of their behaviors or the way they dress their attitudes it's not necessarily who they are um there's there's there's what everyone sees and then there's the other thing so that's the that's what's so fascinating about behavior and then also the fact that behavior fashion these are things that are also controlled or or or or defined by culture or by by an era um you know or by class or by gender or by you know so I'm always you're always looking at like what what what lens what's the point of view you know what what lens are we using to see this person what what lens are they projecting themselves through yeah there's always so much going on and and um a lot much more going on with any individual at any given time than we ever are able to know sometimes you're very good at it very good at reminding people of the humanity and it's always so exhilarating to see that and you've worked a lot with Todd Haynes and he gave you your first break in safe and you seem to have this wonderful relationship with each other that you seem to get each other and I read that he makes an image book for each character as a way of communicating something beyond words about the mood and the temperature and stylistic references and do you work on that with him when you work together?

32:24No, he presents things to you. I mean, Todd is just magnificent. I mean, he is just a magnificent artist, you know? And he's someone who is so strong in terms of his language, his writing, and his storytelling ability there. And then also, he's equally strong visually. So in terms of how he tells the story with the frame, how he moves the camera, what his palette is like, he uses all the tools that you have available in cinema. And he makes everything very easy. I always say about Todd that he's done the work for you because it's like there's so much framework there. You know, with his language, I always feel like I just need to kind of stay out of the way of it.

33:15You know, it's like how do you, when I first read Safe, I'd never read anything like that in my life. It was so spare. It was so, it was enthralling. And then being held by his frame, you kind of know what story he's telling by like where he's put you in the frame. you know often he'll storyboard everything and you'll look at the storyboard and see kind of where your little figure is and where the rest of the people are and and he tells the story that way and Todd and I were I think I guess we're a month apart in age really um he grew up on the you know on the west coast yeah I grew up like I grew up everywhere we both had really young parents which I think is interesting both of our parents were I think his parents were teenagers when they were married my parents were 19 and 20 um so i think growing up in in a relatively similar environment with young parents um at the same time in in the united states um i don't know i think it's i think we share a vernacular you know um there's there's something that we kind of understand and i think we understand about the the the mutability of identity yeah the idea that it's not that that it's not fixed but so many other things are are defining it and so it's always really fascinating to to get to work with him and a real privilege there's something about i went to a screening of the last film that you did together and he was there actually and i managed to chat to him and He was so much fun.

34:53It was like me sort of seeing someone at school and thinking, oh, they look nice. Maybe I can talk to them. And then he was really friendly and just so adorable and just fun and like a teenager. He is. He laughs really hard. This is actually a funny story that Christine Vachon told me. Christine has been his producer since they were to school together at Brown, actually. They've known each other since then. And she's one of the producers of Killer Films. And I've made seven movies with Killer, I think. Five movies with Todd and seven with Killer. And we were working on May December. And I was doing the scene with Charles where he comes in and he discovers my character sobbing.

35:46Like he walks into the house and he hears her, he hears her sobbing and sobbing and sobbing and comes in. And we did it a few times. And Christine told me that she turned to Todd and said, have you checked on her? Is she all right? And Todd said, oh, no, she loves this. That's so great. And it made me laugh so hard because he's right. Like when I'm with Todd, I feel so safe. Like I said, I know how he's shooting it. Like I know where the frame is. I know what the temperature of the film is. I know where I need to go. I feel very kind of held by his filmmaking. And so I'm able to do it because it feels safe.

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38:32And A Single Man, the Tom Ford movie, that was like huge buzz in the fashion world. Yeah. You were the Tom Ford chosen one. And somehow being chosen by Tom Ford is like being anointed by a deity. He's such a big deal. and how specific was he about what he wanted in your appearance? So specific. Yes. You know, he's marvelous, Tom. I mean, he really is just a marvelous person. Talk about an esthete, you know. But one of the things that I love about Tom is that he doesn't have any mystery about it, you know. And I'm sure you know him. I'm sure you've met him. He doesn't. I think there are sometimes people in the world who can be very mysterious about process um tom's not one of them neither is todd you know they'll tell you oh well you know i'll say to tom why why what's wrong with that dress and he'll be like because the armhole's too low you need a higher and i'm like oh you know or he'll say it needs to be this way it needs to be that way he's not he he really does he's he's got a very very developed aesthetic but he'll he shares it they'll be like no it needs to be like this um with the acting and stuff i mean he gave us first of all i think he directed that movie beautifully yeah and i i was so moved by colin in it and i and he gave colin so much space for the grief that the character had and as a director i think tom knew instinctively how to do that it was very gracious and really beautiful um but he you know he respects actors and respects the kind of the time the space that they need but yes aesthetically he's like this is how it is this is how i want you know i want you to be made up like this this is how your hair is going to look the dress was you know he's very particular about that but then he'd be like i remember saying to him i said what do i do you know where it was a song it was a scene where we were dancing i said so how do i get over to the record player he said we're gonna walk over the record player put the record on he goes and then you're gonna dance back and i was like what he said just dance over there i was like okay all right fine but then you know once we did it it was like i was like okay you know and then and then it was all just sort of what we ended up with that kind of dancing yeah this tremendous freedom in that but um but he did everything i'm sorry i remember he came over he flopped up our pillows and our head he would do he'd kind of you know he was just very precise yes because when he after the heider ackerman show for for tom ford um he said i love the control that's the biggest compliment you can get from me and it was so touching it yeah it was it was so different from how anyone else might mean it it was just like everything was molecularly perfect and your demeanor in that film I remember so well how the sort of almost angle of your head it It's just such a captivating imprint and, you know, the shades of your makeup and your hair.

42:00It was amazing. I think it's interesting as you say that because I think that, like, what comes to mind for me is intentionality. You know, it's like that idea of, like, what is the intention? What's the communication? the specificity of like that the honey blonde of her hair and how shiny it is and how it kind of falls apart yeah and her the pink cigarettes that she smokes and the the the eye makeup and getting dressed up even though she never goes out and all of that specificity all of that intention and that's that's what's so wonderful about tom is that he like i said he is precise that precision is important and it's his like i said there's not mystery around it yeah you know he doesn't he's not mysterious but he's he's um he's he's singular in his intention yeah no it's really sort of extraordinary so it's so brilliant and you know unforgettable when it you know when you get it it just never leaves you you come across as a securely attached person many actors say they don't watch their performances but you do not anymore oh really because i was going to ask do you find it helps you detach from your own critical voice i mean even though you seem like someone not tormented or you're very well versed at not showing that I well yeah I think when I was younger I was really assiduous about watching myself because I felt like I had so many bad habits I had a lot to learn I felt like I couldn't I thought my voice was terrible on camera and I I was fidgety and tense and I didn't know how to breathe.

44:03I didn't seem like a real person. And so I really watched and I was really critical. And I tried to change things. You know, I tried to learn from that. And now I just can't bear it. You know, I really love what I do. And I love the process of it. I love rehearsing. the actual shooting is so fantastic like there's never a better feeling than like getting in the van on the way to the set getting ready to do something being on a set with all these other people and constructing something like that's my favorite my least favorite part is when somebody says i'm gonna send you a link so you can see it i'm like oh please don't make me watch this because I want the experience.

44:56I want to create it. And I like the pretending. I like the buzz that you get when you have constructed this imaginary thing with these other people. And then when I see it, I don't want to... I'm like, it's still me. Not again. Not her. you know because in your head you can sometimes convince yourself that you've actually transformed yeah you know you see this other person and you're like there she is but then when you're forced to look at it you're like oh that's my face oh no is it because you can't do anything about it in that you can't be back in that moment because i mean everybody i mean you are so good at the things you just described and people are so caught up with your you know how this character that seems so unacted it's so real but oh thanks it's true yeah i don't know i guess maybe it is like it doesn't ever i don't know that sometimes the feeling is unmatched yeah you know like the seeing it is not going to match what i felt at that moment and so i'd like to kind of move on to the next thing yeah and it is like a you know it's like a gig thing right people talk a lot about with what we do our career oh your your career and at this point i've been doing this for a long time so i have a lot of stuff behind me but i very rarely think about what i did i worry a lot or i think a lot about what i'm about to do yeah um so it's almost like i've just it's like back there somewhere yeah you know yeah that sounds quite good really it's a good place Yes.

46:59We've talked about your hair and the color of it and your children's book, Freckleface, that's just been pulled from the Pentagon. Is that? So this is interesting because there recently was this edict. There are all these books that are under advisory and they're books that are in libraries and school systems run by the Department of Defense by the Pentagon. So a lot of people don't know what DOD schools are, because they are schools for kids who have parents in the service. So if you happen to be on an army base, that school you most likely go to. I'm, of course, familiar with the DOD school because I went to them.

47:45And I think most particularly graduated from one, I went to Frankfurt American High School back when there was a large military presence in Frankfurt, Germany. So I'm a DOD kid. so this affects about 67 000 children k through 12 so all these books are under advisory right now including jd vance's book hillbilly elegy so clearly one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing yeah but i think it's alarming because i wrote this series of children's books you know called freckle face strawberry about this little girl who doesn't like her red hair and freckles because it makes her feel other. And of course, it's really about how sometimes the things that make us feel other, which we were talking about the beginning of this, don't go away when we're older, but they cease to matter quite as much, right?

48:38So that was sort of my message in these books. So it's hardly a challenging message. And I think that as a kid, one of the things that I found as an adult is it's how important it is to model to children what their lives can be or where it is the same and so for for for a little kid to be able to read a book and know the person who wrote it went to a school on an army base and has had these experiences and this life is important so I was really gratified by the response which was that so so many people bought the first book again that is being reprinted so i think that was a it was just a it was a wonderful wonderful response for me yeah i read that it was gone out of print and i tried to get a copy and i couldn't get one they're reprinting it oh good yeah sorry i like to have people's books on the on the console thing how do you cope with criticism though you know there's not a kind of a lifelong thing isn't it interesting you know when you think about i was talking about this just last night that sometimes when i'm acting i think i used to be much more defensive about direction and about criticism um so if a director said to me you need to do, you know, X.

50:08I'm not seeing X. When I was first starting out, I would be so mad. And I think like, well, I'm doing X to see, think that I'm just so, you know, that I don't understand. That's what I'm supposed to do. And now I'm like, I'll say to somebody, well, I am trying to do x but clearly it's not coming across so let me take a look at this like i'll look playback sometimes or i'll talk about i'll say well maybe i need to do something else to give you that like i understand that sometimes what i am attempting to communicate is not being communicated so i try to i try to handle criticism or direction or something that way yeah on the other hand there are times when it might be a matter of taste people don't always like what you're doing or what you're trying to communicate and that has to be okay too but we're all human beings right so you know nobody we all we all crave praise yeah right i mean i think that's an interesting thing too how much people want to be seen want to be acknowledged and sometimes criticism feels like um a slap in the face or something or someone someone being dismissed so so i think that no i try to understand where it's coming from try to use it constructively and I also try to think about like where I'm critical and why I'm critical of something yeah they say it's like it's in the recovery from something that you can experience something quite devastating or quite abusive but it's how you come back from it that's the the important bid right um if you if you can right right so if you fancy someone and they're wearing something you don't like does it kill your attraction to them yes that's a hard one i don't like shirts with pictures you know i don't like like a sunset on a t-shirt like i don't like like a, I don't like, you know, a cartoon on a, I don't like any of that kind of stuff.

52:47So I'm always curious, once again, like what the intention is. I'm like, hmm. So because I also, but I also know that like that can change, like, you know, it's just a shirt. It can, you could have a reaction to something, but, but maybe, you know, maybe, I don't know, maybe it's not defining. but it comes between you it can sort of pusher aware it can be a it can yeah it can be something that's a once again a signifier right so i'm always like well what is that person signifying to me oh that's so interesting because often people wear these things without even knowing yeah but they chose it at some point but then i'm also i mean that's not fair because i realize that there are things that i think that i've chosen or i chose them at some point but somehow they ended up in there and so then i just like put it on and then i look at my what i've put together even like in the house and i'm like wow wow what are you saying what is this it's different though from having a kind of almost allergic reaction it's like a screech to a halt of oh no you know that thing and whether whether it goes beyond that or right right well i don't know you i think that if my attraction to someone were strong enough i wouldn't be deterred completely i'd have to go a little deeper i'd have to go i'd have to give it little little more time if there was something compelling there to realize if it was you know was it the shirt or was it an accident yeah and you're very good at being the focus of attention but you're also very good at being anonymous and I mean I'm just read you can travel on the subway and listen to people's conversations.

54:51And I wondered, what clothes do you go to when you want to be the film star? Where do you start with an outfit? Ah, well, if I'm going to be a film star, if I'm going to, I mean, shoes matter for me because I'm not very tall. So it's like wearing, you know, I'm going to wear something it has that gives me some height. um i'm probably going to keep my hair out like if i were if i'm walking around new york city i'll put my hair inside a hat um so maybe my hair will be out i might be made up i'll be wearing something that's probably more elevated than what i would usually wear but if i'm just myself and i'm on the subway i just have on usually some some jeans and and coat and hat and sneakers and I move quickly and it's also just about I think size you know there's a little kind of story that Pema Chodron tells about not knowing what size she's supposed to be and going to a lecture where she's supposed to give a talk and she kind of walks in the back and somebody grabs her and says, no, no, no, you come here.

56:08You're in the front. You should stand here. You're going to be on this dais and you're going to talk. And she says to herself, oh, I guess I'm supposed to be big. And then the next room she goes into, she's thinking she's going to be big. She's supposed to be big in this room. They say, no, no, no, you're sitting on the floor. You're sitting on the floor with the rest of us. And she's like, I guess I'm supposed to be small. And at the end of the story, she's like, no, I realize I have to be able to be big and to be small. I can be big and small at the same time. So I think that's that other idea too about like mutability, about that we don't constantly have to be anything, not to feel like you have to be so defined by size or identity all the time.