From child star to acclaimed actress via Marilyn Manson, vampires and psychedelic childbirth: meet the extraordinary EVAN RACHEL WOOD. By SANJIV BHATTACHARYA.
On her way to our brunch meeting today, in her neighborhood of Silverlake, Los Angeles, Evan Rachel Wood started dancing, apropos of nothing. Right there on the high street. On her own.
“I have these moments where I just want to dance!” Wood laughs. “Part of me says, ‘Don’t, that’s weird, people are going to stare,’ but then there’s this other voice that says, ‘Who gives a s**t? You’re going to die one day. Just dance!’”
She was listening to Electric Love by US singer BØRNS at the time, but, by the sound of things, music may not even be necessary; life is that sweet for her these days. A former child star who was acting in made-for-TV movies by seven, winning award nominations by 15, and dating Marilyn Manson by 19, Wood has shed her wild-child reputation and settled down. At 27, she is a mother of a two-year-old son by her ex-husband, actor Jamie Bell, and her career is about to peak again. This fall we will see her in Into the Forest, with Ellen Page, as one of two sisters trying to survive in the woods while the world veers toward apocalypse. Then there’s the much-vaunted, J.J. Abrams-produced HBO series about artificial intelligence, Westworld, not to mention a cute animated family film, Strange Magic, out in the UK tomorrow.
Wood’s exuberance is plain from the minute she comes skipping into the café, wearing denim and a T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of Richard Attenborough. “I turn 28 in a couple of weeks and I can’t wait!” she says. “I love getting older. I feel like your twenties are such a s**t show, I just want to get to 30 and say, ‘I made it!’”
The American actress has made it through three life phases, more or less. The first began with her attending auditions at the age of five – her parents ran a theater in North Carolina and they had high hopes for young Evan, eventually moving to LA when she was nine years old. And those hopes came good – in her breakout role as a rebellious teenager in Thirteen, Wood was nominated for several awards, including a Golden Globe, and was billed as the next big thing. She was just 15 years old.
“I was very shy and insecure,” she recalls. “I was expected to handle myself like an adult, but I didn’t have the tools. All I knew was how to be an actor and work a red carpet. I didn’t know what I wanted or who I was outside of the industry. You start thinking, ‘Do people even like me as a person?’”
Wood had lived a sheltered life until then. “[My parents] didn’t want anything bad to happen, so they held on tight – so tight that I couldn’t breathe,” she says. “And I pushed away really hard. I was like, ‘Wait a minute, I didn’t get to be a teenager and make mistakes!’ I felt I’d been cheated.” The analogy she uses is of a bottle of soda being shaken all through her teens. And at 19, the cork came off. Enter phase two – her four-year on-off relationship with Manson.
They cut a swathe together, Wood and Manson; the pristine blond teen and the notorious rock star twice her age, whom conservatives blamed for high school shootings and teen suicide. In his video for Heart-Shaped Glasses, the couple simulated sex while covered in blood. Wood had made her name playing a wayward teen in Thirteen; was life now imitating art? She shakes her head. “I thought I was in love. I wasn’t doing it to prove a point or be rebellious. I wanted to break a mold for sure – I knew I was edgier, more alternative, and weird. And he was just what I needed, because I felt really free with him. And that freedom was attractive.”
The backlash was sharp. Since Manson had divorced burlesque performer Dita Von Teese shortly before, Wood was dubbed a homewrecker; another child star going off the rails. “People were cruel,” says Wood. “You build immunity to that sort of thing, but I wasn’t used to negative feedback, so it got to me. Then I got angry, and pushed away even more.”
Still, she has no regrets or hard feelings. “I wouldn’t trade any of [our relationship],” says Wood. “I appreciate everything he taught me. I just don’t think we were right for each other.”
After the split, Wood retreated from the public eye: “ went into a cocoon to work through my demons and let go of my anger,” she reveals. What followed was a period of self- discovery, as she relocated to New York to live in a tiny apartment on the Lower East Side. “My bed was literally a shelf on the wall,” she says. “But I was so happy. New York gave me back to myself. Everyone should do it – just go to New York with a backpack and figure it out!”
Her career blossomed, with roles in The Ides of March with Ryan Gosling, the TV miniseries Mildred Pierce with Kate Winslet, and hit vampire show True Blood. Once again, Wood was up for awards, but the red carpet felt more natural this time. She was more assured.
New York also coincided with a sexual awakening; she discovered – and declared – her bisexuality. “I knew it was part of me, but I hadn’t allowed myself to explore it,” she says. “I didn’t realize how crippling it was until I finally opened that door and went, ‘Wow!’”
A few weeks ago, Wood got a tattoo of that New York address. It joins her 10 others, which include quotes from Edgar Allan Poe’s A Dream Within a Dream and Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax; her lucky number (15); and her very first tattoo, the initial J, for Jamie Bell.
Bell and Wood first fell in love as young stars, when Wood was 17. Post-Manson, they reconnected and were married in 2012. Their baby boy soon followed (they have never revealed his name). “It was a psychedelic experience,” says Wood of the natural birth by candlelight. “I felt like I was hitting every corner of the room. Everything was vibrating.”
The couple separated last year, after two years of marriage, and they have been happily co- parenting ever since. Her affection for Bell is no secret – “Jamie’s lovely. He was the love of my life.” Today, she has a significant other, but won’t elaborate (she has been linked to several names, including actress Katherine Moennig and musician Andy Tongren).
So now is phase three: a settled domestic life. The former wild child stays in these days. “People say, ‘What about when the baby goes to sleep?’” says Wood. “But that’s when I’m doing laundry, cleaning the house, answering emails. I pretty much always have a stain on my shirt. That’s my life!”
She has no strict plans for the future (“Life doesn’t give a s**t about your plans”), but she is as busy as ever. She is writing her own material – “Women have to write the kind of roles they want to see” – and working with at-risk teens as a mentor, going to camps in Malibu where she does a lot of hugging. What about family plans? “I don’t want to have another baby, but my little sister is adopted, and I was hoping that one day I could do that...” She looks out of the window at the Silverlake hills where she lives – where she just danced her way down from an hour ago. “There are so many possibilities,” she finishes. Without a doubt, Wood looks set to explore them all thoroughly.
She doesnt even need any makeup to look flawless and gorgeous
