San Fernando Valley native Alana Haim is no stranger to the spotlight. The youngest sister in acclaimed sibling pop trio Haim and the daughter of musicians, she’s been performing most of her life. But before shooting on Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza began last year, she’d never acted in a feature film. Now she’s nominated for a Golden Globe and a Critics’ Choice Award for her role in the movie, in which she plays a listless 1970s Valley girl also named Alana, and which features her real immediate family as her on-screen immediate family.
After a series of special preview screenings and limited release in various cities, Anderson’s latest film will hit screens everywhere on Christmas Day. (Read our review here.) The Scene caught up with Haim by phone two days after her 30th birthday amid a whirlwind media tour, and we talked about how the film came to fruition, driving a 1970s moving truck in reverse down a steep incline (one of Licorice Pizza’s most impressive sequences), shooting her first feature film during a pandemic with her family and much more.
You and your sisters have collaborated a lot with Paul Thomas Anderson on music videos, and that’s a relationship that seems to have been evolving for a couple of years now. But how did he pitch you on the premise of Licorice Pizza and the idea of starring in a film for the first time?
You know, it’s a crazy story. Paul is so secretive and never fully comes out and is like, “Here you go, this is happening.” It’s always very much in puzzle pieces that you kind of have to put together in your brain. And I’m also insanely oblivious — he said, like, “Alana, it was blatantly clear that I wanted you to play Alana.” But for me, I feel like he was putting out breadcrumbs for me that I was not picking up on. I mean, it’s a crazy thing to even imagine. I’m a musician, I’ve been in a band since I was a kid, and I never thought that I would act in something. Not in a bad way, I just never thought I could act.
[Paul] was running around this school that was having picture day, and there was this girl that was working for the picture people, and he saw this kid kind of pestering this girl, and thought, “That’s a good idea for a movie,” but that was years and years ago. He always collects stories and images in his brain, because he’s just Paul and amazing. I think the reason he thought of me was because we had done so many music videos together, and our working relationship has always been like, “Where and when?” [Paul will say] “OK, you’re going to go across the street and do this crazy thing.” I’ve never said no. I’m always like, “Yeah, let’s go, let’s do it.” I have a very vivid memory of us shooting the back cover of [the Haim album] Women in Music Pt. III, and I was on the floor at Canter’s Deli, holding two lights, and shining a light on this window so he had enough light to shoot the back cover. That’s very much our relationship. There’s no job too small or too big. “What do you need, Paul? I’m here. I got you.” And that really inspired him to make this movie, because I was very much up for driving a truck backwards, you know? [Laughs] Why not? I never say no to a challenge. And that was really where it started. I got this script in my email one night, and I read it and I loved it, and we were off to the races.
Anderson does movies every three or four years, and they’re always acclaimed, so I think he has this auteur image — a master-filmmaker type. But how is he as a collaborator? He sounds like he’s a lot more approachable and collaborative than the aloof-director persona suggests.
Yeah, I was lucky enough to do music videos with him, so we had a great working relationship before. And really, he’s — especially with music videos — he has these ideas where he makes it sound so simple, where you’re like, “Of course, you’re Paul.” It’s so crazy, he’ll be like, “We’ll send [my sister] Danielle through a car wash.” And we’re just like, “Oh that’s a cool image.” And then he makes it happen, and it’s so simple for him. It’s almost aggravating at some point, because I’m like, “God, you’re such a genius.”
Working on a movie with him, it was so nice. He’s basically a part of my family at this point, and to be so comfortable with someone in such a new journey was the biggest deal. Sometimes he would turn to me and be like, “Well, what would you do in this scene?” And just that question, I’m like, “What do you mean? Why are you asking me? I don’t know!” If I had an idea, he would let me really run free. And some ideas didn’t work, but some ideas did, and a lot of them are in the movie, which is so insanely surprising. But anytime anyone had an idea, he was so up for it and made you feel like there were no bad ideas. Which is so important to make art. That’s how me and my siblings make art. There’s no bad ideas. You never feel put-down if you have an idea that doesn’t work out, and Paul is very much the same way. Every day we had smiles on our faces because we were doing this crazy thing — it was a different adventure every day, and every day we were so stoked to be making art. He set the tone. He really did set the tone for an incredible experience.
This was your first feature-film starring role, shot in a pandemic, with your entire immediate family in the movie, and you’re on your home turf but a 50-year-old version of it. Did all that make for a surreal experience, or was it natural once you were in that space?
It was a little bit of both. I would always tell Paul, “I’m so sad to leave set” because that was where we were having so much fun. The only time I was excited to go home was because I knew I was going home to fall asleep to wake up the next morning at 5 a.m. and come back to set. It was the most perfect scenario for me. The fact that he was gracious enough to involve my family — my whole family. I work with my siblings every day, but also to involve my parents. … And his whole family is in it, including [his wife] Maya Rudolph, and Cooper [Hoffman]’s whole family is in it. And it really just felt like a weird family vacation — we all Back to the Future’d, went back in time. It was great.
PTA’s ninth feature opens Christmas Day at the Belcourt, Regal and AMC locations
And none of your family was hesitant to be in the film?
My parents were so excited. They’re always excited — they just want to be involved in everything we do. They love coming on tour, they love playing music, and sometimes we let them come onstage and play some shows with us, which is very funny. I think a lot of our fans love my parents more than they love us, and they get upset when my parents don’t play with us. But they were completely up for it, and it was so great, because at that point it was almost the very beginning of the pandemic, and I wasn’t allowed to see my parents for a very long time, because [we were] making sure that they were safe. We were very lucky to have an incredible COVID team that kept everybody safe. And that Shabbat dinner scene was basically the first time that my whole family was sitting at a dinner table for, maybe at that point, months. We hadn’t been at a dinner table for a very long time, so we were just happy to be together.
It was of course Cooper Hoffman’s first time in a starring role as well. Your two performances here are so dependent upon one another. Did you approach it as a learning experience together? Did you get much time to rehearse ahead of time?
I was so lucky that me and Cooper were in the same boat. We both had never done this before, and we both had the same insecurities. If I felt like I wasn’t having a good day, he was my cheerleader. And when he felt like he wasn’t having a good day, I was his cheerleader. I would be lying to you if I said to you that every day we were 100 percent confident, because we had never done it before. I would love to meet a person who doesn’t have insecurities in something new. But it was great, because every day we would call each other and we would go, “Oh, I screwed up today,” and he would go, “No you didn’t! I was the one who screwed up.” … It was constantly just us apologizing to each other for not knowing what we were doing. But really our anchor was Paul. He always believed in us, and every time we felt insecure would reassure us. If anything, he probably got annoyed by how many times we asked him if we were doing a good job. “At some point you’ve gotta believe in yourselves, guys! There’s only so many times I can reassure you that you’re gonna be OK.” But Paul really did believe in us from the beginning, which is what we needed to do this movie.
Talk about insecurity — if it’s your first movie and you’re in a scene with Sean Penn, how are you not going to be like, “This is insane.”
Exactly. I was like, “This is insane.” That week of shooting at Tail o’ the Cock [a long-shuttered restaurant and bar in the San Fernando Valley that features prominently in the film] was maybe the greatest week of my life. To have the legend Tom Waits and the legend Sean Penn — to be sitting at a table with them, it actually feels like you’re in a dream. Thank God there’s video evidence of that week, because [otherwise I’d be like] “That never happened.”
You mentioned the truck sequence. Surely there’s a stunt driver, but is any of that you?
Oh yeah! I would say 80 to 85 percent of that driving was me. I’m exactly like you in the sense that, when I was reading the script I was like, “Oh a stunt driver is going to do all these things, I’m not going to do it.” And Paul was like, “Oh no, you’re doing it. You can do it.” Also — and I feel like I’ve just been gushing about Paul — but it really does go back to Paul. When PTA says you can do it, you really feel like you can. I think he’s the only person in my life who’s been like, “Oh no, you can do this,” and I’m like, “I can do this. I think I can do this! OK, I think I can do this.”
I went to truck school. I spent months with that truck before we even began filming. Just putting it into reverse took me months, because it was a real ’70s moving truck. It was real, and it was from that era, and it took my whole body weight to put it in reverse. That took me a very long time. All of the super-crazy stunts where I’m doing a doughnut in the truck, that is not me. But everything else is me. Which is crazy. And I’m also a terrible driver, which I didn’t let anybody know. That was the first week of shooting, with all the truck stunts, which I’m actually very thankful for. Because that was the one thing that I was like, “Oh my goodness, I’m just going to be nervous until this is over.” So the fact that it was the first week and I got it over with, I was very thankful. I was like, “If I can safely drive Bradley Cooper in this truck with a film camera strapped to one side and a bunch of movie lights on the front, I think I can handle anything.”
How does it feel to finally see Licorice Pizza on screen?
I was shocked — it was kind of the same way I felt the first time I shot anything with Paul. We did a short film called “Valentine,” funny enough — another full-circle [thing]. The film was called “Valentine,” and it was just [Haim] playing in the studio. I remember watching that and being like, “Is that me? That’s crazy. That is how I’ve always wanted to look. Oh my God, is that me?” And seeing the movie as a finished product, I said the same thing. “That’s me?! We did all that? That’s crazy.” It’s just mind-blowing. Even showing my parents for the first time, they had the same reaction. “What?! Wait what, that’s us?” It was just very shocking in the best way.
Do you have plans to do more acting? Obviously you and your sisters are hopefully returning safely to touring. But are there plans after that?
Yes, I mean. After everything comes to a close with Licorice Pizza, I go right back on tour. But if Paul ever wanted to work with me again, I would a thousand times say yes. Because it was just such an incredible experience, and I would love to act again. I would love to work with Paul again, period.
Do you have any favorite films of the year that have stuck with you?
I think I’ve watched Spencer like 15 times at this point. It’s such a beautiful movie, and I think Kristen Stewart is an incredible actress. I’m so in awe of her. I’m obsessed with Spencer, and I can’t wait to see every other movie — I’m just waiting to see all the movies. But Spencer, I’ve seen it so many times and I’m so in awe. It’s an incredible film, and also an incredible score by Jonny Greenwood [who also scored Licorice Pizza].
