PASADENA, Calif. _ Actress Maya Hawke has always been trapped in a dilemma. She loves reading and storytelling and acting, but she's dyslexic. For someone who has to execute cold readings and master acres of dialogue, that can be a serious problem.
"I really struggled growing up with reading and writing," she says. "I had a hard time to do that, but I was really passionate about storytelling and about books. I loved being read aloud to. I loved audio books. My relationship to the page, to reading language was an antagonistic one, a real challenge for me," she says.
"And so when I discovered that, through acting, you can speak a beautiful language aloud and have a relationship to language that isn't one that's just eyes-to-page, pen-to-page _ it's one that's full-bodied, full-voiced, full-heart ... it really opened my heart and made me feel like I could be a storyteller. I could do that too. I was hooked."
Hawke, 20, has good reason for an open heart. In her very first professional role she is starring as Jo March in the "Masterpiece" miniseries "Little Women," premiering Sunday on PBS.
Based on Louisa May Alcott's classic novel, the two-part drama features Hawke as the tomboyish and bookish sibling of three sisters who must struggle during the deprivations of the Civil War, passing into womanhood.
She admits she was terrified to take on the task. "I was really scared," says Hawke. "I had to make a lot of big choices to take the part. I had to leave school. I was studying at Juilliard and in order to do this project, I had to stop. I was really scared about making that choice and I'm really scared about having chosen not to finish my education and creating my own structure, my own learning, and be responsible for my own education," she sighs.
"That's a big task to take on and it's a very easy ball to drop, and I really don't want to drop it. And I won't."
She may have resisted, but acting permeates her DNA. Hawke is the daughter of actors Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. They warned her about her choice, she says. "They both really love what they do, but it's a hard life. And I think, in a lot of ways, they wish for me to have chosen a more simple, more structured lifestyle," she shrugs.
"But there's a reason they both do it, which is they both know what's wonderful about it. If you have the bug you have the bug, and if you're a performer, you're a performer. And there's nothing you can really do about it. They said, 'If you can do anything else, you should. But if you can't, you have to do it with your whole heart.' They said, 'If you can do anything else, you should.' But I think they knew I couldn't."
Even though she's executing her first professional part, she thinks she's prepared. "I've been, A) in the public eye my whole life, and, B) acting my whole life and developing a relationship to acting _ it's in theater and it's in school. It's full-bodied and broad. I feel ready."
While Hawke's dyslexia hampered her, it never stopped her. "I went to a dyslexic school for three years that is specially crafted to teach young dyslexic kids how to read," she says.
"So I learned how to read. That said, it's still not the easiest thing for me. I'm very slow at it. And so I often print things on blue paper, which is really helpful if you're dyslexic. And I often just take my time. What I learned is you have to be forgiving with yourself. You have to be willing to take your time and you can't expect things from yourself that you can't deliver. So learning to build your schedule and ask things of yourself that you can give, was a big step for me. And I still do that now."
Every night she scribbles out in cryptic cursive the day's experiences in her diary. "Every morning I transcribe the night's diary into my computer so I can read it," she grins.
"I keep a diary because I love this writer, David Sedaris, and he writes a lot about his diary and he inspired me to keep one. And I want to be a writer too, and I think writing down the things you hear during the day, funny things that people say, and filling these books up, it brings me a lot of satisfaction, a lot of joy."
CUMBERBATCH HUSBANDS 'MELROSE'
Benedict Cumberbatch ("Sherlock") not only stars in Showtime's "Patrick Melrose," premiering Saturday, but is an executive producer on the show. He wanted to devote such rapt attention to the five-part project, he says, because he adores the novels written by Edward St. Aubyn, on which the show is based.
The author skewers much of British society in an unyielding way, says Cumberbatch. "And not just cash-poor landed gentry, but just the inherent snobbery, the treachery, the self-loathing, the cynicism, the patronizing attitudes, the racism, the sexism _ all the -isms," he says, "and how they were exposed and rightly vilified in the most humorous, entertaining, and at times terrifyingly dark and real ways. It's an extraordinary stretch of one man's life."
'SWEETBITTER' EXPOSES KITCHEN CHAOS
A young girl's exploits in the Big Apple is not a new theme, but Stephanie Danler brought us up-to-date on the subject with her popular novel, "Sweetbitter." Starz has transposed it into a six-part drama starring newcomer Ella Purnell as the neophyte who finds herself learning the ropes at a fine-dining New York restaurant.
What's fascinating about the story is the peek at what really goes on backstage _ in the kitchen of these high-stress eateries. There's plenty of sex and drinking, too. Purnell doesn't apologize for that.
"I think I'd say that sex is a part of life, as is food and love and lust and experience. And I think that this show, it's about a young 21-year-old lady coming and developing a palate and becoming a person. And she gets a taste for everything. And I think before she comes to New York, she's somewhat a blank slate. And I think she gets a taste for, yeah, sex and love and lust and wine and food and music and poetry, and so many things. It's just one small element of what makes her her by the end."
BENING REVISITS CHEKHOV
Annette Bening finds herself executing Chekhov's theater piece, "The Seagull," on film openig Friday. Bening recalls how she became a "Broadway" actress. "I'd taught one summer at A.C.T. (American Conservatory Theater) in San Francisco, and there was a girl who was one of my students who became a friend," she recalls.
Her parents had an apartment in New York that they had for her, and it had a very big closet. So I lived in her closet and got an off-Broadway show very quickly that moved to Broadway. So, the first year I got a show on Broadway. Suddenly I was a New York actress, which was hilarious."
