UNPLAIN JANE
Interview with Jane Lynch: Author, Actress, and Activist
By Marcela Villa
J
ane Lynch has fearlessly let her creative interests take her down her “unconventional path to success”; from commercials to the Silver Screen, acting in shows, and singing in cabarets, Jane jumps two feet into whatever endeavor peaks her interest with grace and ease. Her interesting and seemingly carefree perspective on life has taken her where she never even imagined, has kept her motivated, and has kept her fascinating to watch. From being on Glee to releasing an albumturned-tour of Christmas carols with A Swingin’ Little Christmas, her magnetic energy is nothing short of captivating. Jane got together with Art Hive Magazine to tell us what led her down her path to be a creative renaissance woman, and how her life philosophy has kept her creating, growing, and inspiring positivity in others. AH: Growing up, did you have a ton of support for your artistic endeavors or did you have to search it out on your own? JL: I had to search it out on my own; I came from a family where this kind of desire didn’t compute. It’s not that they were mean or stifling of me, they just didn’t get it. Definitely I had to kind of go at it alone, and my nature, especially as a child, I wanted to be supported. I didn’t want to have to fight against anything because I didn’t have a lot confidence, so you cultivate confidence, and that was obviously a very good thing for me. I am able to seek things out for myself now and not feel alone in the world and I think it’s because of those early days when I ventured out on my own in order to do this thing that I was so compelled to do. AH: In your book, Happy Accidents, you wrote about your unconventional path to success and how one shouldn’t set goals and I found it fascinating. Could you elaborate more on that perspective?
JL: Well, let me tell you something, anybody that tells you that there is a conventional path to success is lying to you and themselves. There is nothing conventional about anybody’s path, and whether or not it leads to success is really just a quantitative judgment I stay out of. I don’t look at things successfully or not successfully, and I never did; I’m really grateful that I never had that orientation. I think if you were to ask anybody about how they set a series of goals and they knock them off one after the other, it never works out that way; it’s a convenient story. Where I really learned this was writing this memoir. I could’ve written twelve different books just depending on my point of view and the story I wanted to tell. We can make up any story we want, and I know that’s probably not going to lead to a lot of people reading my book because it’s just one of a billion stories I could’ve written about this series of events. Also, one of the things I found out is my trajectory, so to speak, is nothing that I could’ve created on a conscious level, it’s just so out of our hands, so completely out of our hands, and it’s really just about looking at what’s right in front of you. AH: Any ‘happy accidents’ in your life that stand out? JL: Everything. Everything is a happy accident, and then there’s not happy accidents too, but I use it tongue-and-cheek, the word accident, because there are no accidents; there are some that are pleasurable, and then there are some things that happen that bring more pain than pleasure. One of the happy things that have happened for me that I would’ve never been able to plan for myself is doing a commercial and it being directed by Christopher Guest, and just stumbling into that. It was just one of many commercials I auditioned for and being cast in that commercial which leads to him putting me in Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration, and then Mascots—I could’ve never planned that out.
CREATIVE + CONSCIOUS CULTURE
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