It’s always warm in Park City when you’re Brit Marling. We hesitate to call the multihyphenate an “indie darling,” but she certainly has an impeccable Sundance track record, one that includes cowriting, coproducing, and starring in festival favorites such as Sound of My Voice (2011), Another Earth (2011), and The East (2013). This year is no diferent. In the haunting science-versus-faith drama I Origins, Marling plays Karen, a lab assistant to a Ph.D. candidate (Michael Pitt) fxated on disproving intelligent design by studying the human eye. The flm, promptly picked up by Fox Searchlight, is another example of the Chicago native’s propensity for loftier, mathematical, sometimes countercultural ideas. “Science fction is a way of talking about the same old dramas, but putting them under a diferent pressure, showing them in a new context,” she says. “There’s always something in a sci-f premise, even though it’s far-fung, that you fnd mirrored in your own life.” Such intellectualism is soundly based in academia. Marling was valedictorian of her graduating class at Georgetown University, where she studied economics and studio art. then she attempted an internship “plugging numbers into fnancial models,” at Goldman Sachs, before lighting out for Hollywood. “It was a long time before I had a moment of either recklessness or courage, where I was like, I’m going to try and even if I fail and make a mockery of my life, at least I’m trying something that feels beautiful on the inside,” she says. Marling moved to Los Angeles with flmmakers Mike Cahill (writer and director of I Origins) and Zal Batmanglij, who comprise her formidable and prolifc nest of regular collaborators. “It’s an amazing thing to fnd two people that you hope you can tell stories with for the rest of your life,” she says. Mark Jacobs Dress Proenza schouler s/s 2014
gabourey sidibe
“I’m trapped in L.A.!” screams Gabourey Sidibe, calling from the 405 Freeway. “I was only supposed to be here for a couple of days, but I’m nominated for an NAACP Award, and it’s here this month, so I guess I’ll stay. And I think I’m gonna go to the Oscars, so I thought I may as well.” It’s hard out here for an Academy Award–nominated in-demand character actress like Ms. Sidibe. It’s a miracle she found the time to shoot White Bird in a Blizzard, the new Gregg Araki flm that debuted at this year’s Sundance, but luckily it happened before she started work as the beloved character Queenie, on FX’s American Horror Story: Coven. “[My team] kept it a secret from me for a very long time,” she says of the TV gig. “I’m not great with that kind of exciting information. I’m like a teakettle holding it in and steam is coming out of my ears. So a week before my birthday they told me, and it was the best present.” Sidibe has earned an obsessive following with her performance as the cutting and confrontational young witch, whose power is that she can transfer her own pain onto others. “I think Queenie sort of speaks for the audience,” she says. “Everyone likes Emma [Roberts]’s character, because they like how awful she is, but it’s nice to be the one in the room saying, Girl, you’re awful.” For her role in White Bird, alongside Shailene Woodley, Gabby got to be a little friendlier, albeit unapproachably goth. “Our characters are alternative,” she explains. “They’re smarter and a little more clever than everyone else in the town. There’s one scene where I’m wearing a tutu and these boots, stockings, and like ten or more necklaces, and maybe fve or six bracelets, and then a choker. I remember thinking, it must have been really interesting being a teenager in the ’80s. You turn your nose up at everyone who’s trying too hard…but you’re wearing ffteen necklaces!” At the screening, Sidibe was thrilled when the flm won audience raves. “It was nice to see how happy the flm’s reaction made Gregg Araki,” she says. “He’s like a little kid. His movies are always so good, because he has such an interesting eye and ear. He pays really close attention to the whole teen angst thing, but not in the same way as, like, Ferris Bueller’s Day Of. It’s a skewed version of it, and it’s a version I feel connected to. The music and the color, I’m like, I don’t know who hurt you, but I’m glad you’re working it out through flm.” Patrik sandberg
Necklace eddie borgo s/s 2014 Top siDibe’s owN
Makeup, hair, and grooming (Anna, Astrid, Brit, Elle, Emily, Boyd, Jason, Michael, Pierre) Desirae Sherman using Giorgio Armani Cosmetics (Tracey Mattingly) Makeup and hair (Gabourey, Morgan, Shailene) Courtney Perkins using Chanel (Tracey Mattingly) Makeup (Rinko) Donald Shimrock using Temptu (Tracey Mattingly)
brit marling