The Interrogation of
Alicia Witt

words by Devoe Yates, photos by Robert Todd Williamson

At age 18, Alicia Witt wowed critics with her award winning turn as a crazed and confused murderer in the indie favorite, Fun (1994), and from that point on she’s gone on to grace the screen in Urban Legend, Cecil B. Demented, Playing Mona Lisa, Vanilla Sky, Two Weeks Notice, and the long running TV series Cybill. Currently she can be found solving nasty murders in a six episode run of the hugely popular Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and running from explosions with Al Pacino in the thriller 88 Minutes, which opens in theaters on April 18th. That being said, it’s tickling the ivories and enrapturing crowds with her siren-like voice that seems to be her passion of recent. We sat her down for a Law and Order style interrogation at the h offices, and immediately, she is disarming with a sweet chuckling laugh which she offers up often. At the same time she is fiery, as her hair might suggest, and fast on her feet.

h: How was it working with Al Pacino in 88 Minutes?
Alicia: I auditioned four times for the movie. I honestly never thought I was going to get that part, and then when I finally got it, it was amazing. I was so excited about meeting him and spending an hour and a half with him reading the script, but I was so nervous! He’s my favorite actor! But as soon as I shook his hand I wasn’t nervous anymore, he was very unpretentious and not grandiose in any way. He immediately struck me as an ordinary actor and it was clear that he wasn’t trying to intimidate anybody. So that was the end of me being nervous around him.

h: In the film, Pacino’s character has 88 minutes to live and you’re the woman by his side for all of that time. Was there any romance left on the cutting room floor?
Alicia: There is an implied romantic thing going on between them and we actually filmed a kiss which isn’t in the movie anymore. So a lot of the time I was filming it, I thought that our characters were currently involved or maybe had had sex at some point. But in the movie, it’s left very ambiguous. You don’t really know if they’ve ever gone there with each other but you know that he’s not going to take it to any next level if there was a first level to begin with. But she’s kind of in love with him.

h: Strange question, but one thing that seems to stand out in the movie is Al Pacino’s hair, it seems to have a life of its own. Did you notice anything strange about it when you guys were shooting?
Alicia: (Laughs) I’ve heard that before! I didn’t notice it to be honest, but yeah, there’s definitely a couple of shots in the movie where it jumps around a little. But I didn’t see it on the set, I guess just because he was running a lot it couldn’t always be exactly the same I guess? I don’t know (laughs).

h: I hear you have an interesting tale about how your acting career began.
Alicia: Like many things in my life, it came about in a very weird way. My mother had written a letter to Good Housekeeping saying that her three-year- old daughter enjoyed reading Good Housekeeping and enclosed a picture of me reading it (laughs). They ended up running the picture in the magazine and producers for the TV show That’s Incredible saw the picture and called my mother and asked her what I was up to. She had taught me how to do some scenes from Romeo and Juliet and I ended up going on the show and doing a scene. Several years later, the casting director for Dune was having a hard time casting the little girl part and happened to see a re-run of That’s Incredible and thought that maybe I’d be good for that part. The casting director dialed 411 and got a hold of my mom and asked me to come to New York to audition.

h: How did the audition go?
Alicia: David Lynch had just flown in from Mexico City where he’d been doing a location scout and, on the plane ride, there’d been a huge lightning storm. He explained it to me in vivid detail, how the plane had been lurching back and forth and all the lights had gone out, he’d really been scared. I think the plane actually got hit by a bolt of lightning. I remember talking about that and then telling him all about the dogs that lived on my street. We read the lines and when I left the audition I said to my parents, ‘I think I’m going to end up doing that movie.’ And I did (laughs).

h: But after Dune you were groomed as a concert pianist, when did you drop that and decide to pursue acting?
Alicia: I kind of knew by age 14 that I didn’t want perform as a classical pianist for a living. I didn’t feel like I had a whole lot of freedom of expression when I was competing and I didn’t feel like the best pianists or the ones who had the best take on the piece were the ones that would win. Someone would put their heart and soul into a performance and it could be the best interpretation of the piece, but if they decided to slow it down in a certain place where a speed change wasn’t indicated then that would count against them. I didn’t want to have such a rigid approach to music, so I decided to do what I’d been begging to do for seven years, which was to move to L.A. and actually try and do the acting thing.

h: How did you decide to return to music after all these years?
Alicia: Singing has always been something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember. I remember writing a song when I was 18, when I was working on Mr. Holland’s Opus. I’ve always taken singing lessons off and on and worked at it.

h: How’s your journey been as a music artist?
Alicia: It’s going great, I just played in New York and I have a show coming up in L.A. on Tuesday, April 29th at the Mint, which is very exciting. The whole thing’s kind of new to me. I’ve been writing songs for a really long time, but in terms of playing them out, that’s only been in the last year. I used to keep them around and go back and tinker with them, but now I realize you really have to focus if you want to finish a song. I usually write the lyrics first and it’s usually inspired by something that I’m feeling at the moment, so if it’s the way that I’m feeling in a certain moment and then the entire song doesn’t all come out at once, then I have to go back to it the next day and I may not be feeling that way anymore; sometimes you have to stick with it and concentrate and make it finish.

h: How often do you sit down to write song lyrics?
Alicia: I have several little books I write my lyrics in, sometimes I even write them in my Blackberry. If I’m in a restaurant having dinner and I get an idea, I’ll excuse myself and go to the restroom and jot it down. Sometimes good things come out of that, sometimes not. There’s always songs that are coming, and the more that you write the more that they come.
h: For people that haven’t heard your music before, how would you describe it?
Alicia: I hate comparing it to other people but some of the people that it’s inspired by are Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, Ben Folds, Billy Joel, Rufus Wainwright, and Damien Rice. So it's a culmination of all that, with a little bit of Barry Manilow thrown in for good measure.

h: Whaaat?
Alicia: (Laughs) There’s definitely a little Barry influence. He wrote some good songs, they’re beautifully structured and he always has a great theme. His songs kind of have a reputation for being really cheesy, but I think for the most part they’re really underrated.

h: Do you have an album coming out soon?
Alicia: I’m still trying to figure that out, I don’t have a manager or a producer or anything like that yet. I definitely want to put out an album, I’m really proud of the stuff that I’ve got, but I think to make an album the best that it could be it’d be really useful to have somebody helping me make sure that everything is on the right track. =

h: How does writing and performing music compare with acting?
Alicia: I love playing music more than I can even explain. I’m used to playing other people’s music and I’m obviously used to acting, but to be expressing myself in songs that I wrote is such a personal thing, and when people cry or identify with it or anything, even just tapping their toes, it makes me so happy.

h: You’ve made people cry?
Alicia: Yeah (laughs). Unfortunately a lot of my songs are pretty sad. One of the first songs I wrote, I co-wrote with my friend Jeff Fiorello, who’s a singer songwriter based out of New York. He writes a lot on his own like I do, but when we write together, it’s kind of freeing for both of us simply because we both have a very specific style of writing and when we mix them together something very cool happens. So, we wrote this song called “Right Now” and we played it for a mutual friend of ours and it touched a nerve with something she’d been going through. She was sitting there on the couch with tears rolling down her cheeks struggling not to make noises while we were playing the song. That’s the nicest compliment anyone’s ever given me.

h: Why are most of your songs so sad?
Alicia: Well, heartbreak is very inspiring. It sounds kind of masochistic, but as much as it hurts when you can’t make something work in a relationship or otherwise, those are the times that I feel the need to express myself most. I tend not to write as much when I’m happy, but I’m trying to get better at that too (laughs).

h: In terms of acting, is there anything you’re dying to do?
Alicia: One thing I haven’t done yet that I want to do is a really goofy comedy, something like a Farrelly Brothers type of thing. No one has any idea that I could do that but I totally can (laughs). That’s really my type of humor.

h: I read somewhere that you once said, ‘I’ve made out with more people on camera than in real life,’ is that true?
Alicia: That may not be true anymore (laughs). I’m definitely a late bloomer, we’ll just leave it at that. I’m much more comfortable with myself in a way that I never was back at 22. When I see pictures of myself from back then I seem awkward and gawky and trying to figure out how to look pretty and now I don’t even worry about any of that. I just feel very confident and I love being a single girl, it’s really fun (laughs).

To have a listen to Alicia’s soulful tunes, check her out at www.myspace.com/aliciawittmusic. You can also catch Alicia’s final episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent when the series returns on June 8th.

---

styled by Monica Schweiger
makeup by Miriam Vukich/Exclusive Artists/Dermalogica
hair by Jeremy Clark/Exclusive Artists/Redken