«I'm tired of feeling guilty»: actor Sasha Lane. Photo: Zabulon Laurent/ABACA/Shutterstock
Sasha Lane already knew from the title of her new film that she wanted to do it. The American actress went straight from middle-class dinner party drama in the BBC film Conversations with Friends (2022) to one of the most subversive film projects of recent years: How to Blow a Pipeline. Daniel Goldhaber's intense action movie is adapted from a non-fiction book by eco-Marxist scholar Andreas Malm calling for violent action against the fossil fuel industry. The fictional drama follows a group of eco-saboteurs who go to a West Texas oil refinery with a plan to detonate pipe bombs.
For the 27-year-old who shot to fame in 2016 as star of the stunning road movie Andrea Arnold's «American Cutie,» the move from Dublin to New Mexico was a dramatic contrast, but also a homecoming: «It was nice to be back in the gritty indie world ’ she tells me from her home. in Texas, “because that’s how I started out and got used to it. This is what I love.”
Lane enjoyed the comfort of filming a 12-episode adaptation of Sally Rooney's intellectual take on 21st-century love, uttering lines like «monogamy is meant to meet the needs of men» with scathing aplomb, but then she found herself in the wilderness outside. Albuquerque, “in shaking wagons and dust storms, cold and hot, and we're all muddy. We are not even allowed to be there. We can't even tell what kind of film we're making.”
Lane plays Theo, a young woman with leukemia thought to be caused by air pollution at an oil refinery in her hometown. Her close friend Xochitl (played by co-writer Ariela Barer) concluded that «By the time any market solution fails, billions of people will die from climate disasters.»
Sometimes during filming , Lane admits, she just enjoyed taking a shower, but at the same time, «it's much easier to be in character, to believe everything around … that's what I love about indie films: they are so raw, there is no escape from the world that you are trying to create» .
Goldhaber described it simply as «a heist film», explaining that he started out wanting to «do some of the propaganda and start a movement» but was «quickly talked out of it by my staff». However, it is not difficult to understand that «How to blow up a pipeline» can be taken as a real call to arms. Lane considered this. “This comes with a lot of risks, not only legal, but also affecting people's lives. Everyone says, «The FBI will be watching you and people will be excited about [the plot], and you know how extreme people can be.» I'm telling you to start blowing up pipelines, especially since I live in Texas and I know how people feel about their property. I'm so proud of you guys that you feel the need for a profound change because it's amazing. But don't put it on me. I'm just offering some cuteness.»
Oomph is what Lane always brings with him; rarely has an actress been more naturally convincing as an outsider. From the cannabis-growing inmate of a Christian gay convert camp in the 2018 film The Miseducation of Cameron Post to the dangerous Jessica Hyde in Gillian Flynn's 2020 remake of the British sci-fi series Utopia, Lane's characters glow with unbridled energy. “I have very strong feelings,” she says.
Lane has an origin story that can be compared to any Hollywood dream of the 1930s. In 2014, she was a teenager on the edge, suffering from schizoaffective disorder and on spring break with her friends in Florida. They were thrown out of a hotel and were on a Panama City beach when a woman in a cowboy hat and overalls approached her. It was Arnold, the Academy Award-winning British director of Aquarium and Red Road, who noticed her tattoos and dreadlocks and thought she might be perfect for a film she was soon to make about misfits traveling from city to city. and selling magazine subscriptions.
Lane was suspicious, thinking that «nobody is found on the beach for a real movie». And yet her decision to step into the unknown responded to a deep inner feeling: if this had not happened, she tells me: “I don’t think I would have survived. I was really at a very low point… I was at a point where it was simple, you have nothing to lose. So why not give it a try?”
'I have very strong feelings': Sasha Lane in American Honey. Photo: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
She is the heart of American Honey: wary, vulnerable, unpredictable. In a person, one feels shy warmth and sensitivity to her, a willingness to show vulnerability. Since she made the film, her co-star Shia LaBeouf, whom she dated for a while, has been the subject of a lawsuit from British singer FKA Twigs accusing him of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. LaBeouf denied the allegations made against him, but expressed remorse and admitted, «I have a history of hurting the people closest to me.»
Did Lane experience any of the things LaBeouf is accused of during the time they were together? “I don't want to talk about it,” she says quietly. «I don't want to be overshadowed by someone who has nothing to do with what I'm doing now.»
At first, working in the film industry exacerbated her mental health problems: “Voices got louder, my moods changed a lot faster; my lows were low and my highs were so high it was almost dangerous.» Her brother, whom she is fiercely protective of, was her lifeline. And the birth of her daughter Aster three years ago changed her. “I knew I didn’t want to die somewhere in a hotel. I had to find a way to balance.» She tells me that taking care of Asta «just makes you say, 'Tomorrow is a new day.' [If] I feel so down and then this kid looks at you and just puts his arm around your cheek, do you think I'm going to get upset?”
The impostor syndrome she experienced early in her career has also disappeared. “As if my body rejected this feeling. It was like I was tired of feeling guilty about how I started… it’s exhausting and useless.” Breaking into the film and television industry, she says, was like diving into the Irish Sea, “just diving into the coldest water in the world. It will shock your system.» Her metaphor goes back to the filming of Conversations with Friends. In the first episode, Lane and her co-stars Alison Oliver and Jemima Kirk take a dip in an icy sea just outside of Dublin — perhaps not on the wish list of someone who grew up in and around Dallas, Texas, one of the hottest cities in the world. in the world. USA.
'It was a good time': Lane with Alison Oiver in Conversations With Friends . Photo: Enda Bow
She left Los Angeles to move back closer to the family and friends she grew up with. “I don’t want billboards and people who hang out with you just for one thing and everyone is staring and the power is off and everything to do with a movie, a movie, a movie. I just want to talk about barbecue, sit on the porch and relax, and then, when necessary, I will plunge into work.”
As a child, she knew how conservative the state was. Her brother is gay, and in the past she has described herself as bisexual, as a lesbian capable of loving anyone and anything. “I always felt like I was being suppressed,” she says. “The way I chose to love or not love; how I wanted to do my hair. Her mother is from New Zealand, she is of Maori ancestry, and her father is African American, but her feelings were not so much about race, but about the need for self-expression, although she admits: “As a child, I struggled with the fact that they say that you are too white for that or you're too black for that.»
“There are good people in Texas,” she says, but finds the belief in the right to bear arms despite the school shooting very disturbing. The other day she was in a car with a friend who was annoyed by the driver because of this problem. “I’m like, ‘No, keep your mouth shut, we’re in this man’s car. And that's how we roll out here.» Especially now, being a mom is terrible.”
It was another leap into the dark to take on the role of the smart and edgy Bobby on Conversations with Friends during the pandemic; Lane moved to Ireland for a while with her daughter and brother. This led her to meet co-star Joe Alwyn's very famous girlfriend, pop star Taylor Swift. (They reportedly broke up after six years together.) Did Swift visit during filming? “Not on set, but she was there to support him. She is very sweet. I think she has a big little heart and good energy. She was very nice to my daughter. It was a good time.»
'It really exposed me, but I needed it': with Tom Holland in The Crowded Room. Credit: Gotham/GC Images
In the upcoming Apple TV series The Crowded Room, a psychological thriller starring Tom Holland, she was asked to cut her hair for the first time for the role: “They just yanked out my security blanket. It really exposed me, [but] I needed it.”
After being a track and field athlete in school, she doesn't have a problem with being pushed hard. “I love stunt coordinators because they are pushy jerks. This coach mentality makes me say, “I could do better.”
She has already appeared in action films like Hellboy (2019) and Disney+ TV series Loki (2021). However, as we speak, she has just been offered a production in New York. “This is the most terrible thing I could ever do,” she says. “I don’t even know how to do this profession because I hate being the center of attention. The idea of being on stage in front of all these people and projecting… I don't even like it when my voice sounds so high.»
But part of her “just wants to jump off a cliff. I'll probably throw up and cry every single day. I get booed and fired, which is fine, but I think I should just do it. I think I should just jump in.”
How to Blow Up a Pipeline is in theaters April 21st. The Crowded Room premieres on Apple TV+ June 9
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