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In "The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” actress Bel Powley plays Minnie, an artsy 15-year-old girl who begins the movie by confessing she’s just had sex for the first time.
There’s a problem, though: Her lover, played by Alexander Skarsgard, is two decades Minnie’s senior — and also her mother’s boyfriend.
In reality, actress Bel Powley is 23 and hails from London — she mastered the art of the California accent for the role. “Diary of a Teenage Girl” was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, where it debuted, and now opens Aug. 7 in theaters. But in Powley’s native England, no one under the age of 18 will be allowed to see the film. Even with a parent. Here, the film is rated R.
Powley was initially attracted to the script because she believed the movie contained commentary on the sexuality of young women that teenage girls aren't usually exposed to. But with a rating of "18" in the UK, it's likely that very few teens there will be able to see the film in theaters.
Bel Powley stopped by The Frame ahead of the film's release to talk about what attracted her to the role, re-learning how to walk and talk like and teenager, and how she's disappointed in the strict rating.
What are your thoughts on the movie getting an "18" rating in your homeland?
It's just so upsetting because I feel that we made this movie for teenage girls. That's one of the reasons I wanted to do it so much. As I was reading [the script], it felt like I wish I'd seen a movie like that when I was a teenager, because it presents a young woman in terms of her sexuality in such an honest, real way. In a lot of movies that I watched growing up, women were presented in very 2D characters. Your virginity was seen as something that was so precious. You had to wait to give it away to this nice boy — your Prince Charming. You're just this kind of virginal princess. If you felt horny or you felt like you wanted to have a lot of sex it was seen as a very negative thing. I feel like this film, even though it is in a weird situation because she is sleeping with her mom's boyfriend, it normalizes sex for females. So it's really disappointing that young females aren't going to be able to see it.
The idea that popular culture — the way that women are depicted and women's sexuality is depicted — starts to affect the way you see yourself and the way you see your sexuality. I think what you're describing is what happens to a lot of people. The information and the stereotypes that are fed your way start to become the reality.
Yeah, I'm the first to admit that it took me a really long time to learn to love my body and even my face. I probably didn't learn to accept physically who I was until I was in my 20s, and I'm only 23. Having all this imagery pumped in our faces when we're young women ... is very damaging.
These people, their lives and the way they look is not real to the average young girl and is unattainable if you want to be like that. I think projects like "Diary of a Teenage Girl" are really important because they show a relatable character in a young woman.
The way that Marielle Heller directed the movie and your costume designer and hair and makeup people depicted you, Minnie doesn't look glamourous. She looks ordinary. She looks run of the mill.
Yeah. She almost looks kind of awkward and gawky in some ways. That is how you feel when you're a young girl — when your body is changing so much and you don't really understand what is happening. In one week you don't have breasts and the next week you've got these tiny weird things and you don't know what to do with them. One week you don't have your period and then your get your period. It's very affecting.
I feel like when you're a teenager is when your physical body and your mind are most connected because you're changing in those ways. I think also in terms of the sex in the movie, it was important that it wasn't over-glamorized. We showed that awkward first-time teenage sex because that is what it really feels like.
Marielle Heller is a first-time director. She has acted a lot. When you were talking to her about being in this movie, what were the kinds of things that you thought were important to preserve? What were the kinds of things that started being reflected in the film that were not drawn as much from the graphic novel and the screenplay as they were from your personal experience?
The stuff that was drawn from my personal experience wasn't necessarily like practical situations that Minnie was in that I could relate to, it was just more the way that Minnie is. I feel like — and I'm sure this applies to teenage boys as well — the way you feel emotionally as a teenager is very specific to being a teenager.
Your emotions are much more heightened. You oscillate between loads of different emotions at one time. You see things in a very black-and-white way, so if someone expresses sexual interest in you, maybe you feel like you're in love with them or they're the one. If someone is mean to you, you hate them and they're the worst person in the world. I think it was just tapping back into that way of thinking.
Also, weirdly I found the way of physically moving about. When I watch it with my friends they say, "You're walking really funny in this movie." I think that the way you hold yourself as a teenager is very different. You're much more gangly. I think it was just more the essence of being a teenager. I had to really look back into how I felt when I was a teenager.
I want to talk a little bit about your upbringing. Your dad is an actor. Your mom is in casting. Were they people who were supportive of your becoming an artist? At what point did you recognize that you were interested in it and that you might have some talent to do it?
Well, when people hear that my parents are in the industry they think, Oh, that is why you're doing this. You're some like young child actress prodigy. It wasn't really like that at all. I went to a Saturday drama group that loads of normal kids went to and there was an open audition for a kids TV show. I basically accidentally got the job. My parents were basically like, "Oh god no. We were hoping that you were going to go to Oxbridge and be a lawyer."
I was super academic and very geeky when I was a kid. So anyway, I did this TV show for a few years, really wasn't interested in pursuing it. I thought, Great, I'm saving money to take myself to law school or whatever my parents want me to do.
Then I started doing theater when I was about 17 years old and that really just opened up my eyes to a whole different side of the industry and just a whole different technique to acting. I was untrained. I was really lucky that I was very young and able to work with some amazing high-profile theater directors who I felt really taught me what I can do and taught me to be confident in what I can do. Obviously, working on stage really builds your confidence.
It was probably around the age of 18, after I had done about a year of theater, where I decided this was something I wanted to pursue, much to my parents' dismay. I still applied to university and got in. I was like, I'm going to go study politics, and then deferred it a year because I was doing a play. Then I deferred it another year, then another year, then another year. And then I had to break the news to [my parents] that I was never going to go.
How did you hear about this part and why did you want to do it?
I got sent the script by my American agents in just the normal way, to do an audition tape. But I felt very differently about it compared to other film scripts I read. I just feel like it was the first script I read that I felt really passionate about. I just feel it was something that hadn't been done before.
As I was reading [the script], I was thinking female sexuality hasn't been approached like this in film. Actually, people don't talk about it in life. It's such a taboo subject. People don't want to discuss 13-18 year old girls feeling horny and wanting to have sex with people. I was like, That's crazy and this is a conversation I want to be a part of.
So I made an audition tape and then I added — it was really unorthodox and really weird — an extra bit onto the end of the audition tape in which I talked to the camera in my own voice and was like, "Hi Marielle Heller, I'm Bel. I'm in London, I'm not in Hollywood so I can't meet you in person, but I really need to have a conversation with you about this script. Please contact me." We just wanted the same thing for the movie.
Which is what?
We just both believed in Minnie as this entity and this representation of young women and older women all over the world. We wanted to present this story without any judgement on what Minnie was doing.
I don't think that there is a lesson or a message to the movie, but if there was anything going towards that way, it would just be for teenage girls to realize that the mistakes you make or the stupid things that you do when you're a teenager, if someone judges you for them, then they're an idiot. Also, the world isn't going to implode. You're going to be fine. You'll move on with your life and it will become part of who you are.