A new peak for Sheryl Lee - actress - Interview

Interview, March, 1994 by Graham Fuller

Sheryl Lee brings ancient wisdom to her portrayal of Astrid Kirchherr in lain Softley's film Backbeat. Kirchherr was the elfin-faced bohemian photographer who played guardian angel to the Beatles in their Hamburg days. She also cut their hair - changing the look of rock musicians forever - and fell in love with their bassist Stu Sutcliffe, who, after quitting the group to paint like a dervish, died in her arms when he was twenty-two. The movie, agog with the notion that Kirchherr came between Sutcliffe (Stephen Dorff) and John Lennon (Ian Hart), has a winning callow energy that pumps up its Tristram-and-Isolde tragedy as much as it does the Beatles' baptism by bierkeller. For Lee - herself born in Germany - the film was an opportunity to be sphinxlike and nurturing, and she is no less iconic as Kirchherr than she was as Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks. She talked devotedly about Backbeat at a Park City, Utah, bistro a few days into the Sundance Film Festival.

GRAHAM FULLER: When did you become aware of the Beatles?

SHERYL LEE: [laughs] During the film.

GF: Really?

SL: Well, they were always present. I remembered their songs but I had never owned a Beatles album. I just found out last week - my sister told me - that my father had some Beatles records. So I must have heard them quite a bit, but it never registered, really. Now I listen to them with new ears.

GF: I'm surprised you hadn't had your own personal Beatles experience before Backbeat.

SL: Isn't that wild? But as it turns out, it was good that I hadn't because Astrid hadn't. When she saw them, it was the first time she'd ever seen a band like that live. In my research, I did nothing at all that had to do with the Beatles.

GF: Had you heard of Astrid before?

SL: No.

GF: When did you meet her?

SL: A month before I flew to London to start the film, [director] lain Softley sent me tapes of interviews he had done with Astrid years ago. I finally called her on the telephone, and we met just before we began shooting. She has a tremendous amount of artistic integrity and an understanding for the whole process of acting that I was very impressed by. She's wise, strong, focused, determined, yet sensitive. I didn't know what to expect in terms of how much information she would share, but she was completely generous with her life. She couldn't have been more open with me.

GF: Do you think she still carries a torch for Stu Sutcliffe?

SL: I think that possibly she had. As painful as it might have been for her to have to go back and remember everything after thirty years, she got very specific. And I think it was healing for her in the end. Maybe there was some release for her, some letting go, which she hadn't had before.

GF: Did you study her when you were with her?

SL: I watched her like a hawk.

GF: Were there aspects of her you wanted to convey that weren't in the script?

SL: One thing that wasn't specifically in the script but that was important to me was Astrid's image. It wasn't created out of vanity as much as it was a dramatic expression of her artistic sense and everything she and her friends were doing to break the boundaries and stereotypes that the previous generations had set up.

GF: Was it important to you that Astrid liked your performance?

SL: She was definitely the most important person. I just opened my mailbox one day, and there was a letter from her saying she had seen the film. I had come to terms with the idea that because we had to show her life in under two hours, there might be something she wouldn't be happy with. But, she was very happy, so I was able to relax. I can't wait wait to see her again.

GF: Once you'd started to become her in the movie, what were your feelings toward the real Stu?

SL: Something happened to me shooting this film that hadn't happened before. Usually, sex scenes are technical and unromantic and embarrassing and awkward, and I'm very uncomfortable with them. But lain and Stephen [Dorff] and I discussed how the sex scenes in Backbeat show the tenderness and love between Astrid and Stu. And in the middle of one of those scenes, I suddenly felt my heart just open: it was overwhelming, to the point where I got teary-eyed. Never would I have thought anything like that could happen in a love scene. But I was very aware the whole time that it was Astrid's energy, that the character was there enough to allow this to happen.

GF: There's a photograph of Astrid cradling Stu on the beach near Hamburg with Cynthia Powell ell [John Lennon's girlfriend, later his wife] looking on. Certainly Astrid mothered George Harrison; I wondered if you felt the dynamic between Astrid and Stu was also like that.

SL: There was definitely some of that. One of the first things I noticed, in listening to the tapes of her talking, was that she always referred to the Beatles as "the boys." All of them. That, right there, is incredibly telling. She read Wilde, Sartre, and Rimbaud, and Cocteau was her idol. She had this confidence in her knowingness and in her ability to open up the world to Stu. But as strong and as confident in her artistic side as she was ... well, when people start to fall in love, they become vulnerable, and that's not always comfortable.