Exclusive: Interview with Tanna Frederick of "Hollywood Dreams"
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Tanna Frederick, an actress who grew up in Iowa and moved to Hollywood to pursue her dreams. She’s succeeding, too, but not without a lot of hard work and perseverance. We talked about film festivals, staying the course, and her collaboration with filmmaker Henry Jaglom. Read on for our conversation.
Jane: You starred in Hollywood Dreams, about a girl who moves from Iowa to Hollywood and pounds the pavement with the hopes of becoming a movie star. Is this your story?
Tanna: I do feel like it’s kind of a Cinderella story, but I don’t think people realize how much work it takes to establish yourself in a field. My friends in Iowa are just starting to open their own practices as lawyers and dentists or whatever, and it’s taken them a long time to establish themselves. It’s taken me a long time, too. I really had to pound the pavement, and I lived on Raman noodles for a solid five years.
More after the jump…
Jane: And you’re making a sequel to Hollywood Dreams?
Tanna: Yes, I’m co-starring in a sequel in November, with Noah Wyle, whom I love. It’s ironic, because you never expect when you’re sitting in your living room in Iowa watching E.R., that I’d be kissing Noah Wyle on these films.
Jane: Talk about how you got from Iowa to Hollywood.
Tanna: There’s a saying that “success is opportunity meeting hard work.” I’ve done the work, all the years waitressing and everything. If you come to Hollywood from the Midwest, it’s just a matter of how long you can stick with it. If you wait it out long enough, that hard work will eventually meet opportunity — and there are so many opportunities out here.
Jane: That’s a good message for young people trying to get into the business.
Tanna: Yes. When I started the Iowa Film Festival, that’s really the message I wanted to create. College students and, really, anyone can create work for themselves. With all the accessible filmmaking equipment out there, you can create amazing films and send them out to Hollywood. Success can happen anywhere now. You don’t have to be living in Los Angeles to make amazing films.
Jane: So, you started the Iowa Film Festival?
Tanna: Yes, I was in Ashland, Oregon, at the Ashland Film Festival, and it was so neat. A bunch of people really excited to watch great art and participate in the filmmaking process. It reminded me so much of Mason City, my hometown, and I said to Henry Jaglom, who I was there with, “I want to start a film festival in my hometown, and I know tons of people that I can get there.” So, that’s how it got started. We have a big board of volunteers and people who work hard and are thrilled to have the film industry come into Iowa.
Jane: I can identify with that, because we’re into our fourth year of the Traverse City Film Festival in my hometown of Traverse City, Michigan. People flock to see all these great movies, and it’s like a big cultural party.
Tanna: It’s so much fun. It’s this great group of people with tons of energy and enthusiasm, and you’re there for three or four days. I’ve gone to 11 or 12 film festivals around the United States, and it’s the same excitement every time.
Jane: What else are you working on right now?
Tanna: We have another film coming out called Irene in Time. My co-stars are Karen Black and Victoria Tennant…
Jane: I love her. She was in L.A. Story.
Tanna: She’s great. She plays my mother, and it’s a really beautiful story about the relationship of fathers and daughters. It’s about a girl who lost her father in a boating accident when she was 13, and her trials and tribulations of finding the right man. Her father sort of speaks to her from beyond the grave, and it’s a really lovely, magical story that I think a lot of women and fathers will appreciate. It’s going through rough-cut screenings right now, and should be released in theaters towards the end of the year.
And we’re filming the sequel to Hollywood Dreams. In that movie, Margie’s become a movie star and made some hit films, and she’s dealing with what happens after you become famous. It’s what happens to a lot of actors out here when they fulfill their dreams, but still feel an emptiness or emotional void that hasn’t been filled by success.
Jane: What’s “Katie Q”?
Tanna: We’re filming that in a week, and it’s kind of a madcap comedy thriller, starring Karen Black and Paul Sand. He plays my uncle and Karen plays my mother. It’s going to be a blast. It’s about a girl whose family gaslights her. They try to drive her insane to get to her inheritance. It’s a great cast. Zack Norman, who was in Romancing the Stone, and has been in several of Henry’s films, is also in it. Ron Vignone is directing it. His film Say I Do has done amazingly well.
Jane: What’s “Underwish,” directed by Wendel Meldrum…?
Tanna: That’s a girl I met at a film festival, and she’s written a beautiful script about two women scientists. She came to me and wanted me to play the lead in that, so we’re looking at filming that in February.
Jane: You have a lot of stuff coming up.
Tanna: Yes, you kind of have to. If you have 12 projects on your plate, maybe four of them will come through. It’s the nature of the business, but you just keep chugging along.
Jane: What’s the “Make a Wave” project?
Tanna: It’s a fundraiser I started. I grew up in Iowa, so when I got near the ocean, I became this big surf nerd. It’s really devastating to see all of the trash and pollution in the water, so I became part of a great organization called Oceana, www.oceana.org, based in Washington, D.C. My girlfriend and I who surf every day, we thought, let’s do a 24-hour surf-a-thon where we get everybody involved, have prizes, a silent auction, and we’ll just have surfers in the water 24 hours and have people pledge money. We ended up raising $86,000.
Jane: Awesome!
Tanna: Yes, it turned out great, so we’re holding a second surf-a-thon in January. I’m calling it the Polar Bear Surf-a-Thon.
Jane: Neat. You’re a go-getter! Want a film festival? Let’s start one. Too much trash in the ocean? Let’s do something about it! You think big, and that’s great.
Tanna: Thank you so much. I try to be like that. Talk is cheap, but if you want to fix something, just go out and do it.
Images: Tanna Frederick, 2008
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