Evan Rachel Wood Grows Up

Wood hopes that in dressing the way she wants to, that she can inspire girls who look different than the norm to feel confident: “People who are different usually get the most crap because it scares people and they don’t understand,” she says. “People didn’t understand my relationship so they didn’t like it. But who’s to tell you how to live? I lived so long the way people wanted me to, that when I broke out of that, I broke out with a vengeance. I don’t mind if I get criticized. I’m in good company because all of my favorite artists got crap. I’m not gonna compare myself to these people—Charlie Chaplin, John Lennon—but all these people got pounded. And now, long after they’re gone, suddenly they’re geniuses.”

And though she won’t openly compare herself to Chaplin, Wood says she is channeling a very specific type of actress from the past in both her looks and career choices. “I’m inspired by a very large block of time in history,” she says. “Clara Bow, Jean Harlow—I love those women. Which isn’t to say I’m trying to be a perfect pinup girl. I don’t like perfect. It doesn’t exist. I like taking that old Hollywood idea and putting rock and roll on top of it and messing it up and smudging it. I like being a messier version of that.”

Perhaps that is the secret to Wood’s appeal to both directors and fans—she looks beautiful and yet, conveys a sense of internal darkness—it takes a dark woman to date Manson—and messiness that makes her somehow accessible. She doesn’t act because she wants to be the perfect, bubble gum, Disney product, but because she wants to expose viewers to the more sinister aspects of growing up as a woman in America, to the way girls really feel—and its an admirable goal. “The older I get, the more I really see the art behind acting,” she says. “There can be a rock and roll kind of actor, and that’s what I want—to be like the Johnny Depps out there. I see too many celebrities just kind of being an image or a persona, because it is a business. And I think people started being embarrassed to call themselves artists. But I don’t know why, because it’s absolutely artwork, what you do, if you approach it that way.”

Lately, Wood has been getting into other aspects of the craft besides film acting. In the fall, she will star in Julie Taymor’s new Broadway musical version of Spider-Man (in the Mary Jane Watson role originated onscreen by Kirsten Dunst). She is auditioning leading men this week (“I’m giddy about it! Broadway is the dream.”). She has also been adapting books for the screen and “playing around with making short films.” She says that it was Warren Beatty who inspired her to do more than simply act. “Everybody keeps telling me that I need to direct something. Warren actually sat me down—he’s a friend of mine—and he said, ‘You need to get off your fucking ass and direct something, because until you do, you will have to be chosen. Do it while you’re young. Do it now.’ So I’m working on it now.”