Taryn Manning: when she got fired from her first movie, she turned to music, but in the summer's hippest hip-hop film, she's turning heads

Interview, August, 2005 by Sarah Wilson

During a pivotal scene in Taryn Manning's new movie, Hustle & Flow (directed by Craig Brewer) star Terrence Howard, as a Memphis pimp in the throes of a midlife crisis, delivers a line which may well apply directly to Manning herself: "It's not the size of the dog in the fight," he says. "It's the size of the fight in the dog." Until recently, the diminutive 26-year-old Manning has been relegated to tiny parts in big movies (Cold Mountain, 2003; 8 Mile, 2002) or two-dimensional characters in fluffy teen fare (Crazy/Beautiful, 2001; Crossroads, 2002). But in Hustle & Flow she delivers a decidedly giant-sized performance as Nola, a scrappy prostitute with a big heart and an even bigger business plan.

SARAH WILSON: Tell me about Hustle & Flow. How did you get cast in the film?

TARYN MANNING: Craig Brewer, who wrote and directed the movie, was trying for so long to get it made that he put together a look book for each character. For Nola, he cut out a picture of this girl who had short blonde hair and was wearing sunglasses, and it happened to be a picture of me from a coffee table book that I have never even seen to this day. Then, when my name happened to be on the list of people they were thinking about, Craig went back to the picture and said, "Oh, my God. This girl is an actress?"

SW: Your performance is really powerful.

TM: With every other movie I've done I've always been left wanting so much more, so this was actually the first time I got to work through a character that develops and has an arc and doesn't just pop in for one scene. I get frustrated because I get so stereotyped as an actress--like, if I want to play a girl next door or something, people don't always see me that way.

SW: You were born in Virginia?

TM: Yeah, my dad is buried there. He passed away when I was 14. I've only been back a couple times since to visit him. When my dad died, I was so torn and confused about what road I was going to take. I don't come from a money family by any stretch, so I had nothing to fall back on. Even now I do a lot of things because I'm so driven by that fear. It's not that I'm sitting here yearning to be ultrafamous--it's because I have nothing else.

SW: You're a musician, as well?

TM: Yeah. When I was 19 and first moved out to Los Angeles and started to act, I was fired from a movie. I got cast and had my rehearsals and everything, and then I did the table read, and there was some new producer who signed on who just wasn't feeling me, so they fired me. It was one of the most devastating things I've ever been through. So, my ex-boyfriend, who played guitar, began to teach me how to play, like, seven chords. I started practicing every day and learned how to write songs and sing. I mean, my ego got fat. I was like, "Yeah, I'm a badass! Beat this! You think I can't act? Watch me sing!"

SW: You're a real fighter for someone so little. You're, like, 4 feet 10 inches tall, right?

TM: I'm 5 feet 2 inches! On the Internet they have my height listed at 4 feet 10 inches, and it kills me. It's like, "Dude, I already feel like a midget."