Los Angeles brand Enfants Riches Déprimés is currently showcasing their Spring 2024 collection at Maxfield LA, and the event was attended by Marilyn Manson and his wife Lindsay on April 17th. On March 16th, Manson posted photos on his social media wearing the Enfants Riches Déprimés brand, which is French for "Depressed Rich Kids". Enfants Riches Déprimés is a Los Angeles and Paris based luxury fashion brand founded in 2012 by the conceptual artist Henri Alexander Levy, who has created a French punk streetwear line based on the movements of the late 1970s and Japanese Avant-garde movements of the 1980s. One of the core precepts of the brand is high price points, with T-shirts ranging on average from $500 to $1,000, and haute couture jackets priced as high as $95,000. ERD consistently utilizes the business model of artificial scarcity. In this regard, all styles are sold on an extremely exclusive basis, and thus in relatively small quantities. In a 2016 interview with Complex
One of the oddest things, out of a number of odd things, about part one of Evan Rachel Wood's documentary Phoenix Rising, is how she and the documentary as a whole depicts her father, Ira David Wood III. Just as she does with her relationship with Marilyn Manson, Evan rewrites the story of her relationship with her father. And just like with Marilyn Manson, when you walk away from this documentary you will think Ira David Wood III, the esteemed founder of Theatre in the Park in Raleigh, North Carolina, is nothing short of a monster. I think this was done intentionally.
Evan's relationship with her father wasn't always portrayed this way. In fact, we first hear about it this way in the documentary. If you go back to old interviews with Evan and her father, some predating her relationship with Marilyn Manson and some during, you will find that what Evan is describing as her relationship with her father in Phoenix Rising is sometimes similar, more often contradictory, and sometimes it's just new information altogether.
Evan's relationship with her father wasn't always portrayed this way. In fact, we first hear about it this way in the documentary. If you go back to old interviews with Evan and her father, some predating her relationship with Marilyn Manson and some during, you will find that what Evan is describing as her relationship with her father in Phoenix Rising is sometimes similar, more often contradictory, and sometimes it's just new information altogether.
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| Evan with her Dad and Ira on July 4, 2002 |
Evan and her Father in Phoenix Rising
Let's first examine how Ira David Wood III (from now on referred to as David) is depicted in the documentary.
1. Evan describes her life as a child in North Carolina as "nice", but it had "a dark side".
2. David is interviewed very early in the documentary, where he basically describes Evan being raised in the theater he founded and showing a natural tendency towards acting from an early age. This is his only appearance in the entire documentary, completely shutting him out of what was to come.
3. Very quickly the documentary just focuses on the perspective of Evan and her mother Sara, with Evan's older brother Ira David Wood IV (from now on referred to as Ira) interjecting as well.
4. Evan and Sara talk about the fighting and the tension that went on in the house, especially between Sara and David. David is depicted as the one who instigates the fighting and the tension.
5. Evan describes witnessing violence. She doesn't exactly explain what this means, but it implies that her father physically abused her mother. Whether this is true or not, is not clear. Evan quickly changes tune and says she was smacked a few times in the face and there were threats, but doesn't say if it was from the father or the mother.
6. One particular fight is described as being especially bad, to the point where Evan and her brother went outside and could hear their father and mother yelling at each other from inside. This is where the over-dramatic animation/recreation part of the documentary begins. For example, Evan is seen in her nine year old animated form outside crying, being held by her brother Ira as their parents, depicted as two large quarreling trees, are in the house yelling.
7. When Evan asked why they yelled at each other, her father told her that they fight because they love each other. Sara began to regret this explanation to Evan, so they "fled" from the house with one suitcase each when Evan was nine years old and she and her mother moved to Los Angeles for Evan to become an actress. Evan says that when they moved to Los Angeles, they never went back to North Carolina. Ira stayed behind with his father because he didn't want him to be alone, and thus the siblings and best friends were "completely" separated.
8. Evan then describes what happened with her relationship with her dad after they moved to Los Angeles: "When we left, I began to see another side to my dad, which terrified me. We were getting crazy phone calls and faxes, so our relationship got really fractured, and I really avoided him after that, for like years, well after I turned 18."
Let's first examine how Ira David Wood III (from now on referred to as David) is depicted in the documentary.
1. Evan describes her life as a child in North Carolina as "nice", but it had "a dark side".
2. David is interviewed very early in the documentary, where he basically describes Evan being raised in the theater he founded and showing a natural tendency towards acting from an early age. This is his only appearance in the entire documentary, completely shutting him out of what was to come.
3. Very quickly the documentary just focuses on the perspective of Evan and her mother Sara, with Evan's older brother Ira David Wood IV (from now on referred to as Ira) interjecting as well.
4. Evan and Sara talk about the fighting and the tension that went on in the house, especially between Sara and David. David is depicted as the one who instigates the fighting and the tension.
5. Evan describes witnessing violence. She doesn't exactly explain what this means, but it implies that her father physically abused her mother. Whether this is true or not, is not clear. Evan quickly changes tune and says she was smacked a few times in the face and there were threats, but doesn't say if it was from the father or the mother.
6. One particular fight is described as being especially bad, to the point where Evan and her brother went outside and could hear their father and mother yelling at each other from inside. This is where the over-dramatic animation/recreation part of the documentary begins. For example, Evan is seen in her nine year old animated form outside crying, being held by her brother Ira as their parents, depicted as two large quarreling trees, are in the house yelling.
7. When Evan asked why they yelled at each other, her father told her that they fight because they love each other. Sara began to regret this explanation to Evan, so they "fled" from the house with one suitcase each when Evan was nine years old and she and her mother moved to Los Angeles for Evan to become an actress. Evan says that when they moved to Los Angeles, they never went back to North Carolina. Ira stayed behind with his father because he didn't want him to be alone, and thus the siblings and best friends were "completely" separated.
8. Evan then describes what happened with her relationship with her dad after they moved to Los Angeles: "When we left, I began to see another side to my dad, which terrified me. We were getting crazy phone calls and faxes, so our relationship got really fractured, and I really avoided him after that, for like years, well after I turned 18."
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| Evan spending the holidays with her Dad in 2003 |
Evan and her Father in an Interview from 2002
Now let us look at how Evan's relationship with her father is described in interviews from 2002 until 2009. As of right now, many of these interviews are no longer available online. There used to also be photos of their affection towards each other during this time that are no longer online. My summary below and the photos posted are just samples of what I was able to recover. For this reason, I will post an entire article below from when Evan was 14 years old, in 2002, five years after her parents were divorced, while she was visiting her father in North Carolina for two weeks. Notice already the contradictions with the Phoenix Rising documentary? Didn't Evan say she was terrified of her father after the divorce and avoided him until well after 18? Didn't she say she and her mother fled North Carolina and never returned? Keep reading. The 2002 article below, which is no longer available online, is from NewsObserver.com.
RALEIGH - Evan Rachel Wood stands transfixed by a window in a dark corner of Theatre in the Park. This is her moment, the spectacle she has been craving for ages.
"Look!" she exclaims, pointing to a long lightning bolt that connects Earth to sky for what feels like minutes. Then, "Kablam!" the thunder cracks, punctuating the rat-a-tat of rain on the window pane. Evan stares, marveling at the theatricality of it all, and briefly her big blue eyes enjoy a role reversal that has become increasingly rare in the last few years, the chance to be a spectator.
Ever since Hollywood discovered Evan Rachel Wood, those eyes have been the source of drama, and lots of it. From the television series "Once and Again" to the forthcoming Al Pacino film "Simone," the 14-year-old Raleigh native has had little time lately to kick back and enjoy a hot Southern storm. Even this two-week hiatus in Raleigh isn't without drama; she has just been named "tortured teen" extraordinaire, landing on the "it-list" in Entertainment Weekly's "The 100 Most Creative People in Entertainment" special issue. In a full-page color spread on magazine racks across the nation, there's Evan, offering show-biz advice and discussing the music she likes and what it was like to work with Pacino.
Just days after her Raleigh jaunt, she's scheduled for a screen test opposite Annette Bening for a remake of "Freaky Friday" that's set to begin filming in the fall. Then it's off to rehearsals with Holly Hunter for an indie film called "Thirteen," an autobiographical tale co-written by a 13-year-old girl. After that, she'll join Jena Malone for a film called "Pretty Persuasion."
Marshall Herskovitz isn't surprised at Evan's success. The executive producer of "Once and Again" -- as well as the older series "My So-Called Life" and "Family," both of which starred pensive and popular teen idols --Herskovitz knows what a young actor needs to transfix an audience. Evan has it.
"She has a sort of God-given quality that allows you to believe that you are seeing into her soul when you look into her face," Herskovitz says. "That's not something you can learn. It's either there or it isn't."
Evan has learned much about acting, though, and many of those lessons took place in the very theater where she's now huddled, enjoying the rain and reminiscing. She has learned by sitting in the TIP audience watching her father, Ira David Wood III, perform in countless plays.
On this night, it's "On Golden Pond," which Evan has seen four times already during her two-week hiatus from Hollywood. She notices the nuances, the changes in her father's performance and audience reaction from night to night. She likes noting these things, discussing them afterward as her father removes his makeup, talking about what worked, what didn't. She loves watching people watch her father, too.
When you're acting for a television camera, she says, you forget what an audience feels like. You forget you even have one.
Early performances
Before the cameras first captured her in the 1994 television drama "In the Best of Families: Marriage, Pride and Madness," Evan's only audience was right here at Theatre in the Park. And her only director was dad. Acting was truly a family affair back then, with Evan's mom, Sara Wood, and brother Ira often on stage right by Evan's side.
Evan's debut was at age 3 as a rabbit in a play called "Briar Patch," which required little from her except to sing a few tunes and scuffle with the other rabbits, including Ira, who is now 17 and also an actor.
Even in those early TIP shows, Evan recalls, the atmosphere was serious and all actors were expected to behave professionally, including the director's little girl. Still, it all felt quite natural, she says, not nerve-racking. "It was just something you figured everyone did."
Evan had to dig far deeper when she reached star billing at TIP, portraying the young Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker," with her mother as Annie Sullivan and her father directing. Evan was only 8 then, but the critical acclaim she received from that performance proved she'd already learned the difference between playacting and acting. The News & Observer said her performance was "unforgettable. ... The breakfast room scene where she is finally forced to eat from her own plate and to fold her napkin is a masterpiece of sustained acting."
"It was a lot of hard work, a lot of rehearsal," Evan recalls of that first star turn. "I was in basically every single scene. I was one of the main people it focused on. So there was more pressure. I guess that was the first time it was really like a craft."
Herskovitz praises Evan's parents for the dramatic skills they taught her. "Usually, it's a hindrance," he says of the theatrical training many aspiring child stars boast of on their resumes. "In her case, it's a benefit."
Just a year later, Evan began landing screen roles with regularity. She scored an episode of "Touched by an Angel" and had recurring roles in "American Gothic," which was filmed in Wilmington, and "Profiler." She was cast in made-for-TV movies, and she quickly advanced to major films, including "Digging to China," with Kevin Bacon and Mary Stuart Masterson, and "Practical Magic" with Stockard Channing, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock. And major defeats, like losing a role to Kirsten Dunst in the Tom Cruise film "Interview With the Vampire."
By then Evan and her mother had moved to California. She clearly had a future in the business.
The breakthrough
"Once and Again" premiered in 1999 on ABC with a gush of critical praise. The series, with Billy Campbell and Sela Ward at its center, gave Evan her breakthrough role.
From 1999 until this year, she played Jessie Sammler, a daughter of divorced parents who must contend with her father's remarriage as well as the everyday angst of being an adolescent. It was a poignant and riveting drama, praised by critics and fans alike.
Evan didn't have to reach far to find Jessie's pain. Her own parents had split up, and she was living a continent away from her father and brother. The series' plot lines were make-believe, but Evan's grief was real, and it often emerged through Jessie's tears.
Evan recalls one especially heartbreaking scene with Campbell, her television dad, from the first season.
"I was asking if we'd ever be a family again and telling him how the divorce was affecting me and everything, and he was telling me how it was affecting him," she says of their characters. Suddenly, Campbell broke down and cried, and so did Evan. "It became so real. It was just, like, they yelled, 'Cut!' and we were standing there hugging and crying, really into it."
Divorce was just the beginning of Jessie's "Once and Again" woes. By the time the series ended this year, Evan's character had been at the center of three dramatic plot developments: anorexia, a romantic attraction to a female pal, and her mother's clinical depression and near death from an auto accident. That's an awful lot for a young actress to pull off, but Herskovitz had confidence in Evan's chops.
"I think it's only when you start to work with someone that you begin to see what the depth of their resources are," he says. "I haven't really found her limits. ... She is remarkably truthful as an actor, which is very rare at that age -- to understand what it is to tell the truth emotionally. In that sense, she can do no wrong. Whatever she does is interesting and real."
When "Once and Again" was slated for cancellation, fans and critics rebelled, claiming that ABC doomed the series by moving it around to different time slots every time a fan base built. Fans circulated petitions, critics slammed ABC in print, but to no avail.
Still, Evan left the series in a blaze of glory, most notably with Jessie's homosexual dalliance, which Evan handled with her trademark subtlety and poignancy. Fans approached Evan in the streets and sent her letters thanking her for her performance. Detractors called it offensive, griping and debating in online forums. One Virginia ABC affiliate refused to air the episode that featured the girls' first kiss.
"That made me so mad," Evan says of the censorship. "I know some people who'd say, 'Well, they can't show that, it's a sin, and you don't want to encourage other people to do it.' And I'm like, 'OK, take off all the murder, take off all the rape, you know, because, God knows, somebody might see that and they might want to go and do it, so take that off, too.' Heaven forbid we show two people falling in love. It's terrible."
As for filming the romantic scenes with co-star Mischa Barton, Evan says she and Mischa didn't give it a second thought. "I wasn't weird about it at all. It was just like a storyline with a boy."
As for the series ending, Evan thought that was unfair, too. But she's moved on, grateful to have had the series, despite its brevity.
"I got really lucky on that show. It was a great learning experience," she says. "I'd never done anything that intense before."
The big screen
To date, Evan has been most visible from her television work. And not just for "Once and Again." In May she guest-starred in an episode of NBC's "The West Wing" as C.J. Cregg's niece.
Soon, though, her work as a film actress will be in view with the opening of "Simone" on Aug. 23. Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, who wrote "The Truman Show," the new film concerns a producer who creates a digital actress to star in a film. Evan got third billing after Pacino and Catherine Keener.
And what about Pacino? Oh, yeah, she says. Working with him was intense. She filmed the movie a couple of years ago, but she still recalls how awed she was to work with such a master.
"I wouldn't approach him, I was so nervous at first: 'Al Pacino, one of the greatest actors of all time,' " she recalls of her first days on the set. "But once you get to know him, he's just the sweetest person in the world. He really takes care of actors and makes sure that everybody is all right and comfortable."
The possibility of starring in a remake of the 1976 hit film "Freaky Friday" is also daunting, as it would require that she redefine a role made famous by her idol, Jodie Foster, when Foster was Evan's age. Evan loved Foster in that movie, but she vows not to watch it again if she nabs the role, for fear of mimicking Foster.
As for the Holly Hunter movie she's filming now, Evan describes it as a horror movie of sorts for teens and parents alike. Evan plays Hunter's daughter, a wild child who has just discovered the thrills and perils of sex, drugs and living life unleashed.
"It's meant to open the eyes of parents, and it's meant to really scare kids into not getting involved with that stuff," Evan says of her character's dangerous escapades. "It shows her changing and shows her getting involved with these kids and then she's at this great point and it all just crashes down and blows up in her face and everything goes wrong."
Evan confers with her mom on all film possibilities, as she burrows through the ever-growing towers of scripts that pile up on her bedroom floor. She wants to choose wisely, doesn't want to do anything too stupid or fluffy.
"I mean, I love sweet movies, or a romantic comedy or something," she says. Where she draws the line is at "over the top" fare, "like a movie about, like, a killer snowman, something like that."
Some people might consider "Pretty Persuasion" worse than a killer snowman flick. "It's kind of bad," says Evan, likening the film's mean-spiritedness to "Heathers," in which Winona Ryder played a malicious high school student who kills her classmates but makes the murders look like suicides. In "Pretty Persuasion," Evan and Malone will play two students who exact revenge on a teacher they dislike by falsely accusing him of sexual harassment.
"It's got an interesting sense of humor," she says. "It's kind of a comedy, and it's like, 'This is funny, but should I really be laughing at this?' "
Evan's no stranger to creeps, or the idea of them. Her mom screens her fan mail, sifting out all the weirdo's. As for Web surfing, Evan is well aware of the dangers therein, having filmed a "Touched by an Angel" episode in which her character falls prey to a pedophile masquerading as a teenage boy. Evan's character narrowly escapes a sinister fate. Evan shrugs off the episode's dark overtones, noting that the actor who played the villain was a really nice guy. But she confines her own Web surfing to e-mails and the occasional anonymous online card game.
Evan hopes to head back to the East Coast someday, whether it's to land her dream role on Broadway as Eponine in "Les Miserables," or to study drama at New York University.
Living in California, she misses her dad, but she speaks to him often on the telephone. And throughout the run of "Once and Again," she sent him secret signals. Carol Wood, her aunt, had given her a ring. Whenever Jessie touched it on her finger, twisting it around, it was Evan's way of saying, "Hi, Dad. I'm thinking of you."
Now let us look at how Evan's relationship with her father is described in interviews from 2002 until 2009. As of right now, many of these interviews are no longer available online. There used to also be photos of their affection towards each other during this time that are no longer online. My summary below and the photos posted are just samples of what I was able to recover. For this reason, I will post an entire article below from when Evan was 14 years old, in 2002, five years after her parents were divorced, while she was visiting her father in North Carolina for two weeks. Notice already the contradictions with the Phoenix Rising documentary? Didn't Evan say she was terrified of her father after the divorce and avoided him until well after 18? Didn't she say she and her mother fled North Carolina and never returned? Keep reading. The 2002 article below, which is no longer available online, is from NewsObserver.com.
RALEIGH - Evan Rachel Wood stands transfixed by a window in a dark corner of Theatre in the Park. This is her moment, the spectacle she has been craving for ages.
"Look!" she exclaims, pointing to a long lightning bolt that connects Earth to sky for what feels like minutes. Then, "Kablam!" the thunder cracks, punctuating the rat-a-tat of rain on the window pane. Evan stares, marveling at the theatricality of it all, and briefly her big blue eyes enjoy a role reversal that has become increasingly rare in the last few years, the chance to be a spectator.
Ever since Hollywood discovered Evan Rachel Wood, those eyes have been the source of drama, and lots of it. From the television series "Once and Again" to the forthcoming Al Pacino film "Simone," the 14-year-old Raleigh native has had little time lately to kick back and enjoy a hot Southern storm. Even this two-week hiatus in Raleigh isn't without drama; she has just been named "tortured teen" extraordinaire, landing on the "it-list" in Entertainment Weekly's "The 100 Most Creative People in Entertainment" special issue. In a full-page color spread on magazine racks across the nation, there's Evan, offering show-biz advice and discussing the music she likes and what it was like to work with Pacino.
Just days after her Raleigh jaunt, she's scheduled for a screen test opposite Annette Bening for a remake of "Freaky Friday" that's set to begin filming in the fall. Then it's off to rehearsals with Holly Hunter for an indie film called "Thirteen," an autobiographical tale co-written by a 13-year-old girl. After that, she'll join Jena Malone for a film called "Pretty Persuasion."
Marshall Herskovitz isn't surprised at Evan's success. The executive producer of "Once and Again" -- as well as the older series "My So-Called Life" and "Family," both of which starred pensive and popular teen idols --Herskovitz knows what a young actor needs to transfix an audience. Evan has it.
"She has a sort of God-given quality that allows you to believe that you are seeing into her soul when you look into her face," Herskovitz says. "That's not something you can learn. It's either there or it isn't."
Evan has learned much about acting, though, and many of those lessons took place in the very theater where she's now huddled, enjoying the rain and reminiscing. She has learned by sitting in the TIP audience watching her father, Ira David Wood III, perform in countless plays.
On this night, it's "On Golden Pond," which Evan has seen four times already during her two-week hiatus from Hollywood. She notices the nuances, the changes in her father's performance and audience reaction from night to night. She likes noting these things, discussing them afterward as her father removes his makeup, talking about what worked, what didn't. She loves watching people watch her father, too.
When you're acting for a television camera, she says, you forget what an audience feels like. You forget you even have one.
Early performances
Before the cameras first captured her in the 1994 television drama "In the Best of Families: Marriage, Pride and Madness," Evan's only audience was right here at Theatre in the Park. And her only director was dad. Acting was truly a family affair back then, with Evan's mom, Sara Wood, and brother Ira often on stage right by Evan's side.
Evan's debut was at age 3 as a rabbit in a play called "Briar Patch," which required little from her except to sing a few tunes and scuffle with the other rabbits, including Ira, who is now 17 and also an actor.
Even in those early TIP shows, Evan recalls, the atmosphere was serious and all actors were expected to behave professionally, including the director's little girl. Still, it all felt quite natural, she says, not nerve-racking. "It was just something you figured everyone did."
Evan had to dig far deeper when she reached star billing at TIP, portraying the young Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker," with her mother as Annie Sullivan and her father directing. Evan was only 8 then, but the critical acclaim she received from that performance proved she'd already learned the difference between playacting and acting. The News & Observer said her performance was "unforgettable. ... The breakfast room scene where she is finally forced to eat from her own plate and to fold her napkin is a masterpiece of sustained acting."
"It was a lot of hard work, a lot of rehearsal," Evan recalls of that first star turn. "I was in basically every single scene. I was one of the main people it focused on. So there was more pressure. I guess that was the first time it was really like a craft."
Herskovitz praises Evan's parents for the dramatic skills they taught her. "Usually, it's a hindrance," he says of the theatrical training many aspiring child stars boast of on their resumes. "In her case, it's a benefit."
Just a year later, Evan began landing screen roles with regularity. She scored an episode of "Touched by an Angel" and had recurring roles in "American Gothic," which was filmed in Wilmington, and "Profiler." She was cast in made-for-TV movies, and she quickly advanced to major films, including "Digging to China," with Kevin Bacon and Mary Stuart Masterson, and "Practical Magic" with Stockard Channing, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock. And major defeats, like losing a role to Kirsten Dunst in the Tom Cruise film "Interview With the Vampire."
By then Evan and her mother had moved to California. She clearly had a future in the business.
The breakthrough
"Once and Again" premiered in 1999 on ABC with a gush of critical praise. The series, with Billy Campbell and Sela Ward at its center, gave Evan her breakthrough role.
From 1999 until this year, she played Jessie Sammler, a daughter of divorced parents who must contend with her father's remarriage as well as the everyday angst of being an adolescent. It was a poignant and riveting drama, praised by critics and fans alike.
Evan didn't have to reach far to find Jessie's pain. Her own parents had split up, and she was living a continent away from her father and brother. The series' plot lines were make-believe, but Evan's grief was real, and it often emerged through Jessie's tears.
Evan recalls one especially heartbreaking scene with Campbell, her television dad, from the first season.
"I was asking if we'd ever be a family again and telling him how the divorce was affecting me and everything, and he was telling me how it was affecting him," she says of their characters. Suddenly, Campbell broke down and cried, and so did Evan. "It became so real. It was just, like, they yelled, 'Cut!' and we were standing there hugging and crying, really into it."
Divorce was just the beginning of Jessie's "Once and Again" woes. By the time the series ended this year, Evan's character had been at the center of three dramatic plot developments: anorexia, a romantic attraction to a female pal, and her mother's clinical depression and near death from an auto accident. That's an awful lot for a young actress to pull off, but Herskovitz had confidence in Evan's chops.
"I think it's only when you start to work with someone that you begin to see what the depth of their resources are," he says. "I haven't really found her limits. ... She is remarkably truthful as an actor, which is very rare at that age -- to understand what it is to tell the truth emotionally. In that sense, she can do no wrong. Whatever she does is interesting and real."
When "Once and Again" was slated for cancellation, fans and critics rebelled, claiming that ABC doomed the series by moving it around to different time slots every time a fan base built. Fans circulated petitions, critics slammed ABC in print, but to no avail.
Still, Evan left the series in a blaze of glory, most notably with Jessie's homosexual dalliance, which Evan handled with her trademark subtlety and poignancy. Fans approached Evan in the streets and sent her letters thanking her for her performance. Detractors called it offensive, griping and debating in online forums. One Virginia ABC affiliate refused to air the episode that featured the girls' first kiss.
"That made me so mad," Evan says of the censorship. "I know some people who'd say, 'Well, they can't show that, it's a sin, and you don't want to encourage other people to do it.' And I'm like, 'OK, take off all the murder, take off all the rape, you know, because, God knows, somebody might see that and they might want to go and do it, so take that off, too.' Heaven forbid we show two people falling in love. It's terrible."
As for filming the romantic scenes with co-star Mischa Barton, Evan says she and Mischa didn't give it a second thought. "I wasn't weird about it at all. It was just like a storyline with a boy."
As for the series ending, Evan thought that was unfair, too. But she's moved on, grateful to have had the series, despite its brevity.
"I got really lucky on that show. It was a great learning experience," she says. "I'd never done anything that intense before."
The big screen
To date, Evan has been most visible from her television work. And not just for "Once and Again." In May she guest-starred in an episode of NBC's "The West Wing" as C.J. Cregg's niece.
Soon, though, her work as a film actress will be in view with the opening of "Simone" on Aug. 23. Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, who wrote "The Truman Show," the new film concerns a producer who creates a digital actress to star in a film. Evan got third billing after Pacino and Catherine Keener.
And what about Pacino? Oh, yeah, she says. Working with him was intense. She filmed the movie a couple of years ago, but she still recalls how awed she was to work with such a master.
"I wouldn't approach him, I was so nervous at first: 'Al Pacino, one of the greatest actors of all time,' " she recalls of her first days on the set. "But once you get to know him, he's just the sweetest person in the world. He really takes care of actors and makes sure that everybody is all right and comfortable."
The possibility of starring in a remake of the 1976 hit film "Freaky Friday" is also daunting, as it would require that she redefine a role made famous by her idol, Jodie Foster, when Foster was Evan's age. Evan loved Foster in that movie, but she vows not to watch it again if she nabs the role, for fear of mimicking Foster.
As for the Holly Hunter movie she's filming now, Evan describes it as a horror movie of sorts for teens and parents alike. Evan plays Hunter's daughter, a wild child who has just discovered the thrills and perils of sex, drugs and living life unleashed.
"It's meant to open the eyes of parents, and it's meant to really scare kids into not getting involved with that stuff," Evan says of her character's dangerous escapades. "It shows her changing and shows her getting involved with these kids and then she's at this great point and it all just crashes down and blows up in her face and everything goes wrong."
Evan confers with her mom on all film possibilities, as she burrows through the ever-growing towers of scripts that pile up on her bedroom floor. She wants to choose wisely, doesn't want to do anything too stupid or fluffy.
"I mean, I love sweet movies, or a romantic comedy or something," she says. Where she draws the line is at "over the top" fare, "like a movie about, like, a killer snowman, something like that."
Some people might consider "Pretty Persuasion" worse than a killer snowman flick. "It's kind of bad," says Evan, likening the film's mean-spiritedness to "Heathers," in which Winona Ryder played a malicious high school student who kills her classmates but makes the murders look like suicides. In "Pretty Persuasion," Evan and Malone will play two students who exact revenge on a teacher they dislike by falsely accusing him of sexual harassment.
"It's got an interesting sense of humor," she says. "It's kind of a comedy, and it's like, 'This is funny, but should I really be laughing at this?' "
Evan's no stranger to creeps, or the idea of them. Her mom screens her fan mail, sifting out all the weirdo's. As for Web surfing, Evan is well aware of the dangers therein, having filmed a "Touched by an Angel" episode in which her character falls prey to a pedophile masquerading as a teenage boy. Evan's character narrowly escapes a sinister fate. Evan shrugs off the episode's dark overtones, noting that the actor who played the villain was a really nice guy. But she confines her own Web surfing to e-mails and the occasional anonymous online card game.
Evan hopes to head back to the East Coast someday, whether it's to land her dream role on Broadway as Eponine in "Les Miserables," or to study drama at New York University.
Living in California, she misses her dad, but she speaks to him often on the telephone. And throughout the run of "Once and Again," she sent him secret signals. Carol Wood, her aunt, had given her a ring. Whenever Jessie touched it on her finger, twisting it around, it was Evan's way of saying, "Hi, Dad. I'm thinking of you."
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| Evan and Ira in the Theatre watching their Dad in 2002 |
Why Did Evan and her Mother Really Move to California?
While Phoenix Rising focuses on the fighting and the "violence" Evan witnesses with her parents growing up, to the point where she and her mother had to hastily flee with only one suitcase each, prior to the documentary, for 20 years, the narrative was very different, which we get a glimpse of in the article reprinted above. The narrative in all the interviews was that from the age of 5, Evan's mother would fly out her daughter to Los Angeles to audition for movie roles and television pilots. According to the Los Angeles Times (Aug. 24, 2002), her first audition at 5 was for a role in Interview With the Vampire, which she did not get. After this, we are told the following on the official website for Theatre in the Park that was archived in 2001:
"Evan and her brother, Ira David, began auditioning for television work in Wilmington, North Carolina when they were quite young. Ira David's career started with a major role in the television mini-series IN THE BEST OF FAMILIES in which Evan was also featured. Evan's career began in earnest with appearances on the AMERICAN GOTHIC series and several Movies Of The Week. She stepped into the world of motion pictures with a co-starring role opposite Kevin Bacon in the motion picture, DIGGING TO CHINA. Shortly after this motion picture project, Evan's mother, Sara, separated from Evan's Dad -- taking Evan to live in California where she could pursue her acting career in earnest."
When Evan was 15, she was asked about why she moved to California from North Carolina. She replied:
"I didn't really decide to move to Hollywood and pursue acting. My parents got separated, and my mom decided to move out here. I wasn't happy that my parents split up, but I figured now that I was in L.A., I might as well audition for stuff. I was making the best out of a bad situation. My first big break was Practical Magic. Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock are good role models. I lucked out to work with them early on."
While Phoenix Rising focuses on the fighting and the "violence" Evan witnesses with her parents growing up, to the point where she and her mother had to hastily flee with only one suitcase each, prior to the documentary, for 20 years, the narrative was very different, which we get a glimpse of in the article reprinted above. The narrative in all the interviews was that from the age of 5, Evan's mother would fly out her daughter to Los Angeles to audition for movie roles and television pilots. According to the Los Angeles Times (Aug. 24, 2002), her first audition at 5 was for a role in Interview With the Vampire, which she did not get. After this, we are told the following on the official website for Theatre in the Park that was archived in 2001:
"Evan and her brother, Ira David, began auditioning for television work in Wilmington, North Carolina when they were quite young. Ira David's career started with a major role in the television mini-series IN THE BEST OF FAMILIES in which Evan was also featured. Evan's career began in earnest with appearances on the AMERICAN GOTHIC series and several Movies Of The Week. She stepped into the world of motion pictures with a co-starring role opposite Kevin Bacon in the motion picture, DIGGING TO CHINA. Shortly after this motion picture project, Evan's mother, Sara, separated from Evan's Dad -- taking Evan to live in California where she could pursue her acting career in earnest."
When Evan was 15, she was asked about why she moved to California from North Carolina. She replied:
"I didn't really decide to move to Hollywood and pursue acting. My parents got separated, and my mom decided to move out here. I wasn't happy that my parents split up, but I figured now that I was in L.A., I might as well audition for stuff. I was making the best out of a bad situation. My first big break was Practical Magic. Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock are good role models. I lucked out to work with them early on."
In Indy Week (May 13, 2009), when Evan was 21 years old, this narrative is repeated and expounded upon:
When she was only 7, Evan began appearing in made-for-television movies, often shot in the then-booming film market of Wilmington, N.C. ... In 1997, Evan, then a 9-year-old actress who had been all but raised in the brick building, curled into sleeping bags in the prop room with her older brother Ira and watching as her father played Othello and her mother played Desdemona, had just wrapped the shoot of Digging to China in western North Carolina. For her first lead role on screen, she played the 10-year-old best friend of a mentally retarded man played by Kevin Bacon. When mother and daughter returned to Raleigh, Sara asked David for a separation. She planned to return to her native California with the family's emerging star, Evan.
We read in the same article:
We read in the same article:
Evan says she didn't have a chance to say farewell to the theater or her father when she left more than a decade ago. She didn't realize she was heading west permanently, but the roles kept coming. As David puts it, she has been making movies constantly since she was 8. Though they'd see each other on holidays, special occasions and movie sets, there was never much time for father and daughter to reconnect without having to drift apart again soon.
"I was so young, I just didn't understand what was going on. Now that I'm older, I can see both sides. I was more scared because we just missed out on so much time," Evan says of her relationship with her father after she moved to California. Ira remained in North Carolina but eventually moved to California, sharing her Venice apartment and roles in films like Down in the Valley and Across the Universe (his scenes in both were cut for time). "It was painful to see [my father] again because I always knew it would be so short,' Evan says. "I would have to say goodbye to him over and over again. I couldn't do it for a little while."
While on screen she was playing roles with difficult father-daughter relationships, in real life she was being constantly separated from her father, and she didn't know how to deal with this emotionally, so it created for her, as she calls it, "daddy issues". In response to this, David says in the same article:
"It's been difficult for me because I know where a lot of it's coming from," David says of watching her play roles where men mistreated the kid he missed. "But in watching it, my prayer was that she was working through things. Always in talking to her I would say, 'You know it's pretend. Your head knows it's pretend. But you're putting your body through those emotions, anger, crying, and you have to learn to walk in the grass.' That was our code: Walk in the grass. Get out in the sunlight. Take distance. Don't drag the luggage home."
Such renewed family intimacy, David says, simply took time, but admitting that was too difficult for too long. He understood that he couldn't rush his relationship with Evan, just as he realized he couldn't make his marriage work across two coasts.
While on screen she was playing roles with difficult father-daughter relationships, in real life she was being constantly separated from her father, and she didn't know how to deal with this emotionally, so it created for her, as she calls it, "daddy issues". In response to this, David says in the same article:
"It's been difficult for me because I know where a lot of it's coming from," David says of watching her play roles where men mistreated the kid he missed. "But in watching it, my prayer was that she was working through things. Always in talking to her I would say, 'You know it's pretend. Your head knows it's pretend. But you're putting your body through those emotions, anger, crying, and you have to learn to walk in the grass.' That was our code: Walk in the grass. Get out in the sunlight. Take distance. Don't drag the luggage home."
Such renewed family intimacy, David says, simply took time, but admitting that was too difficult for too long. He understood that he couldn't rush his relationship with Evan, just as he realized he couldn't make his marriage work across two coasts.
"I had to stay here and work. I would go out when I could and be on location with Evan, with Ira. But that was a tough time, a really tough time," says David, who confides his family and theater history during two largely chaperone-free hours. "It was always tough to say goodbye when you were out there looking at that 10-year-old. The absence of a father in her life was a void for her. She was lucky enough to get Once and Again and have Billy Campbell be her onscreen dad. I think it was a form of therapy for her. Theater certainly has been for me and for Ira. It's better than sitting on a shrink's couch for $200 an hour."
Evan insists it has been: "I work so that I have to face certain sides of myself," she says. "I believe more in facing your pain and your darkness. After doing The Wrestler and hearing all those words come out of Mickey Rourke's mouth and facing those feelings I didn't want to have to face, it was years of therapy in a week. I realized, 'I've got to go back. I can't be afraid.' ... I definitely personally relate to [The Wrestler]. I came equipped with my own daddy issues, and the film actually helped me deal with a lot of them. Every emotion you see on screen is completely real for me."
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| Evan and her Dad in c. 1999 |
Comments from Evan's Father in 2018
The only comment I could find of David even related to his daughter Evan's current situation comes from a 2018 interview, after Evan testified before congress. The interviewer asked him what he thought about it, and about his children being raised in his theater, and David replied:
"When my children were young, we used to bring them to the theater when we would perform. I remember one night we were doing Othello. I was doing Iago, and my wife had to die onstage every night. Othello choked her to death—strangled her. My kids were sleeping in sleeping bags right offstage in the prop room, and the door was open. Every night, when Othello finally strangled Desdemona, they’d wake up, they’d look out, and they’d look to each other and go, 'Mom died really well tonight,' and they would go back to sleep. So, this theater was their playhouse. I would pass by some days and look in, and my daughter would be sitting alone on the stage doing a monologue that she was making up. I just quietly watched. I’ve heard her speak now, so eloquently and beautifully, not long ago, to a Congressional committee. I sit back, and I marvel. Kahlil Gibran said, 'Our children are arrows that we shoot.' We don’t know where they’re going to land, but we’re the bow that sends them forward, and we hope we’re aiming it in the right direction. I look at my grown children now, and I’m so proud of them. I’m so humbled by who and what they have become."
The only comment I could find of David even related to his daughter Evan's current situation comes from a 2018 interview, after Evan testified before congress. The interviewer asked him what he thought about it, and about his children being raised in his theater, and David replied:
"When my children were young, we used to bring them to the theater when we would perform. I remember one night we were doing Othello. I was doing Iago, and my wife had to die onstage every night. Othello choked her to death—strangled her. My kids were sleeping in sleeping bags right offstage in the prop room, and the door was open. Every night, when Othello finally strangled Desdemona, they’d wake up, they’d look out, and they’d look to each other and go, 'Mom died really well tonight,' and they would go back to sleep. So, this theater was their playhouse. I would pass by some days and look in, and my daughter would be sitting alone on the stage doing a monologue that she was making up. I just quietly watched. I’ve heard her speak now, so eloquently and beautifully, not long ago, to a Congressional committee. I sit back, and I marvel. Kahlil Gibran said, 'Our children are arrows that we shoot.' We don’t know where they’re going to land, but we’re the bow that sends them forward, and we hope we’re aiming it in the right direction. I look at my grown children now, and I’m so proud of them. I’m so humbled by who and what they have become."
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| Dad, Evan and Ira in North Carolina in 2009 |
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| Evan, Dad and his wife in Paris in 2009 |
The Truth
I don't know anything about Evan's relationship with her father today. She never talks about him. He has not been asked about her since 2018, except in 2020 for Phoneix Rising. Evan's Instagram account, which may refer to her mother here and there, is eerily silent when it comes to her father, especially after 2019. But if I were to judge her relationship with her father based on how he is portrayed in Phoenix Rising alone, I would say the relationship is not a good one. That is not to say this is how it is, but the fact of the matter is that David is portrayed as an abusive monster. And I believe that this is done on purpose. Evan no doubt had daddy issues growing up, like most children I would say, but hers stemmed from the fact that she grew up wanting him to be around more, yet due to the divorce of her parents and living on opposite sides of the continent, the little time she had with her father came with long periods of separation. But in the documentary, Evan's daddy issues stem from her witnessing him being abusive, which makes her easy prey to fall for an older man at the tender age of 18 with someone else who is also portrayed as a monster in the documentary and is its focus, namely Marilyn Manson. If Evan and her father do indeed have a good relationship today, it seems like he completely sacrificed his respectable image in order for Evan to totally besmirch his image to show she had the daddy issues that made her vulnerable to her alleged abuser Marilyn Manson. But there is no indication he consented to this. He is never interviewed in the documentary when the fighting and abuse and divorce are discussed, so we can hear his perspective. If he was interviewed, it seems like his perspective was very different from what the documentary portrays, and it was cut out. He was totally silenced and not given a chance to possibly defend himself, or maybe even acknowledge his wrongdoings.
The truth of the matter is this. Evan's mother Sara is originally from California and sought out an acting career. She eventually found this in her husband's theater in North Carolina, and they diligently raised their children to pursue acting. While Sara concentrated on the careers of her children by flying them out to Los Angeles and staying with them during filming in Wilmington, North Carolina, Evan's father concentrated on his Theatre in the Park work. No doubt, this constant separation made them estranged, and yes they probably got into disagreements and arguments, but it is interesting that the documentary never says what those disagreements and arguments were about. The documentary only cares about making David into an abusive monster. My guess is that the arguments were about Sara wanting to pursue the acting career of Evan in Los Angeles, where she could get much better roles, and Sara must have been exhausted constantly traveling and living away from home for the sake of the careers of her children. Ira would eventually choose to stay with his dad in North Carolina and pursue a career in theater. This, in summary, is most likely closer to the truth than what you will get in the documentary.
We also read above how Evan tried to see her father as much as she could while she lived in California and he was back in North Carolina, and was not terrified of him at all. There was never a bad or bitter relationship between the two. In fact, it was a very loving relationship, because Evan talks about how hard it was to always have to say goodbye to her dad for months, but they still kept in constant contact over the phone. The divorce was no doubt difficult on Evan, but her multiple roles with troubled fathers were like therapy for her, even while she was dating Marilyn Manson and was filming The Wrestler. It was after filming The Wrestler and during a short period she was not dating Manson, when she was 21 in the summer of 2009, that she realized she wanted to spend some time with her father and help in a theatrical production. It wasn't about making good on a bad relationship, she just developed daddy issues from not spending the time she wanted to spend with him growing up, because she loved him. And as far as she and Ira being separated from each other, though this was true for a few years, Ira did eventually move out to California and lived with Evan and their mother for years.
I don't know anything about Evan's relationship with her father today. She never talks about him. He has not been asked about her since 2018, except in 2020 for Phoneix Rising. Evan's Instagram account, which may refer to her mother here and there, is eerily silent when it comes to her father, especially after 2019. But if I were to judge her relationship with her father based on how he is portrayed in Phoenix Rising alone, I would say the relationship is not a good one. That is not to say this is how it is, but the fact of the matter is that David is portrayed as an abusive monster. And I believe that this is done on purpose. Evan no doubt had daddy issues growing up, like most children I would say, but hers stemmed from the fact that she grew up wanting him to be around more, yet due to the divorce of her parents and living on opposite sides of the continent, the little time she had with her father came with long periods of separation. But in the documentary, Evan's daddy issues stem from her witnessing him being abusive, which makes her easy prey to fall for an older man at the tender age of 18 with someone else who is also portrayed as a monster in the documentary and is its focus, namely Marilyn Manson. If Evan and her father do indeed have a good relationship today, it seems like he completely sacrificed his respectable image in order for Evan to totally besmirch his image to show she had the daddy issues that made her vulnerable to her alleged abuser Marilyn Manson. But there is no indication he consented to this. He is never interviewed in the documentary when the fighting and abuse and divorce are discussed, so we can hear his perspective. If he was interviewed, it seems like his perspective was very different from what the documentary portrays, and it was cut out. He was totally silenced and not given a chance to possibly defend himself, or maybe even acknowledge his wrongdoings.
The truth of the matter is this. Evan's mother Sara is originally from California and sought out an acting career. She eventually found this in her husband's theater in North Carolina, and they diligently raised their children to pursue acting. While Sara concentrated on the careers of her children by flying them out to Los Angeles and staying with them during filming in Wilmington, North Carolina, Evan's father concentrated on his Theatre in the Park work. No doubt, this constant separation made them estranged, and yes they probably got into disagreements and arguments, but it is interesting that the documentary never says what those disagreements and arguments were about. The documentary only cares about making David into an abusive monster. My guess is that the arguments were about Sara wanting to pursue the acting career of Evan in Los Angeles, where she could get much better roles, and Sara must have been exhausted constantly traveling and living away from home for the sake of the careers of her children. Ira would eventually choose to stay with his dad in North Carolina and pursue a career in theater. This, in summary, is most likely closer to the truth than what you will get in the documentary.
We also read above how Evan tried to see her father as much as she could while she lived in California and he was back in North Carolina, and was not terrified of him at all. There was never a bad or bitter relationship between the two. In fact, it was a very loving relationship, because Evan talks about how hard it was to always have to say goodbye to her dad for months, but they still kept in constant contact over the phone. The divorce was no doubt difficult on Evan, but her multiple roles with troubled fathers were like therapy for her, even while she was dating Marilyn Manson and was filming The Wrestler. It was after filming The Wrestler and during a short period she was not dating Manson, when she was 21 in the summer of 2009, that she realized she wanted to spend some time with her father and help in a theatrical production. It wasn't about making good on a bad relationship, she just developed daddy issues from not spending the time she wanted to spend with him growing up, because she loved him. And as far as she and Ira being separated from each other, though this was true for a few years, Ira did eventually move out to California and lived with Evan and their mother for years.
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| Evan and Dad in 2008 |
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| Evan, Ira and Dad in 2009 |
Concluding Remarks:
Evan Rachel Wood lied in her documentary about her relationship with her father. Though deeply grieved by the divorce of her parents when she was nine years old, she was not angry with her father or even scared of him because he showed signs of abuse, as portrayed in the documentary, but as she noted in 2009, she was scared of having to spend wonderful time with her dad and then having to say goodbye for months. If Evan was ever angry at her father, there may be some indications that this was because he chose to remarry pretty quickly after the divorce, but it doesn't seem like this was ever a long term issue. Nonetheless, from 2002 and moving forward, when we have a bunch of interviews with Evan and her father, the relationship seems to be very good and loving, with Evan even sending secret messages to her father while she is being filmed to show him that she loves him, by turning a ring on her finger that was given to her by her aunt. They talked often over the phone and he would even visit her on sets. They spent vacations together and Christmas and any time she had off in between filming, which was rare. Photos show them sharing an intimacy and affection with each other that is rare between a father and daughter. It was the going back and forth that was difficult for her.
Evan Rachel Wood lied in her documentary about her relationship with her father. Though deeply grieved by the divorce of her parents when she was nine years old, she was not angry with her father or even scared of him because he showed signs of abuse, as portrayed in the documentary, but as she noted in 2009, she was scared of having to spend wonderful time with her dad and then having to say goodbye for months. If Evan was ever angry at her father, there may be some indications that this was because he chose to remarry pretty quickly after the divorce, but it doesn't seem like this was ever a long term issue. Nonetheless, from 2002 and moving forward, when we have a bunch of interviews with Evan and her father, the relationship seems to be very good and loving, with Evan even sending secret messages to her father while she is being filmed to show him that she loves him, by turning a ring on her finger that was given to her by her aunt. They talked often over the phone and he would even visit her on sets. They spent vacations together and Christmas and any time she had off in between filming, which was rare. Photos show them sharing an intimacy and affection with each other that is rare between a father and daughter. It was the going back and forth that was difficult for her.
One thing is for sure. There are no indications that she saw Marilyn Manson as a father figure. If anything, it was quite the opposite. In Manson, Evan found the freedom to be who she wanted to be and explore herself in ways she was unable to while living so closely with her mother and in the grips of the Hollywood system. Evan wanted to grow up, not to revert to her childhood. Marilyn Manson was an opportunity for her to finally grow up the way she wanted, and he allowed her the freedom to do so. Before Evan Rachel Wood would talk about "Marilyn Manson raped me", in interviews she would say "Marilyn Manson had a hand in raising me." And when Marilyn Manson finally met David and spent time with him, they reportedly got along great, drank a little bit too much together, and had a great time together at Disney World. Perhaps to Evan, Manson and David are a lot alike, and she is not afraid to throw either of them under the bus if a narrative she is pursuing requires her to do so.
