Writer: Chris Ahrens | Photography: Estevan Oriol
Beneath the famed Sixth Street Bridge in Los Angeles, where we did the accompanying photo shoot, is a mix and mismatched collection of winos and crack addicts too far gone even for a polite pan handle in the main hustle. They wait for the sun to set and knock the anxiety bear into the mud. This is a place where Natural Born Killers sometimes creep around after dark. It is not the place you would expect to find all 120 pounds of Juliette Lewis heel deep in mud in tall red boots, sidestepping human feces on the coldest day of the coldest December. She is taking direction from famed photographer, Estevan, as if he were Martin Scorsese and she were receiving six seven figures just for showing up. No wonder the world loves her.
    During the interview she made eye contact regularly, laughed loudly, played with her hair, touched her face with both hands, exhibited her trademark can’t find my way home look and I Love Lucy laugh, wedged her fingernail between her two front teeth as if trying to remove an invisible fragment of broccoli. She was open, friendly, joyful, called the people she had just met by their first names and hugged them with sincerity. She told me that after meeting her people would ask “What’s she like, man?” The question is meant to be a judgment on her sanity. And I was asked that question. I recently heard a definition of sanity as caring for others.
    So, it is my unprofessional opinion after sharing four hours and twenty-seven minutes with here that if she wasn’t performing full time, she would be working in some sort of shelter for animals or people, or tying to save the world she cares passionately about in some other way. By the power invested in me, I hereby pronounce Juliette Lewis among the sanest people I have ever met. The following should help you make up your own mind about her.

Risen Magazine: Have you ever been fat?
Juliette Lewis: [Laughs] What’s your process?
RM: Basically, I’m trying to interview you as if you had never been in movies.
JL: Okay, that’s neat. You’ll find that I’m a thorough talker, not excessive, but thorough. Wait a minute, so have I ever been fat? I was the opposite of an anorexic when I was younger. I was very skinny and I saw girls…like I always wanted to be voluptuous and curvy and super female when I was young. Now I’ve embraced androgyny and this light little warrior, the way I like to see myself now. So I did go through some little phase out of the public eye. I quit drugs when I was 22 and you naturally kind of plump up. [Laughs] I was like maybe 15 or 20 pounds heavier.

RM: A man can give full range to his emotions while acting, where women, traditionally, are supposed to be restrained. You were among the first to shake off all restraint.
JL: Thank you so much. I never like to go on that tangent of women this, men that, but there are truths to it. I’ve got to shed that kind of social veneer that we all operate with. Oliver [Stone] wants you to go to the nth degree.
    I try to bring humanity to my roles always, and that one’s [Natural Born Killers] was kind of the most ugly, inside out—apathy, rage and a kind of desperation. And ferociousness. You don’t often see that with women. Later I had that follow me. I wanted to name my first record, Is she crazy? Cuz everyone I meet, their friends always ask them, “What is she like, man?” Implying, Is she crazy? I take it as this really big compliment. I know I’ve been in some really intense films, but particularly that one, cuz you don’t see girls go ballistic. It’s just being in touch with this primal energy. It’s neither female or male, it’s just sort of primal. That’s what music allows me to do.

RM: Was getting out of character after Natural Born Killers difficult?
JL: No, that’s the funniest thing. It was really cartoonish for me. It’s something I’ve been in touch with for a long time, where you can sort of amplify your emotions. It’s kind of a knack I have. I don’t go into character and get lost. That’s not my process. It’s much more light, and I just think it’s magical. As kids, when you want to get your brother in trouble you’ll just sob, going, He did this or this. The second your mom leaves, you’re like, Oh I got you. That’s more my process. I didn’t go to school for it, so I didn’t learn a bunch of crap, or, uh, additives, to my process.

RM: Do you believe that there are Natural Born Killers?
JL: I can’t generalize, cuz some instances are unique. But predatory-type killers, I think, are born with an extra weakness or maliciousness, then environment can add to it.

RM: In the movies it looks like you’re a real smoker.
JL: I’m the kind of smoker that real smokers hate. I’ll smoke one cigarette and not want another one for a long time. I’ll sometimes smoke when I’m writing and I can blow smoker rings for some reason.

RM: You must have been aware of the status of Robert De Niro, and suddenly you’re 18 and in a movie with him.
JL: I had just turned 18 when I did Cape Fear. Actually, I didn’t understand what Scorsese and De Niro meant to American cinema at that time. I had seen Good Fellas. I hadn’t seen Mean Streets or Taxi Driver. That’s where you have youth on your side. All that meant to me was that I had to come up to the plate and do something special and memorable. I just tried to hold my own in that piece. Marty, the director, is so wonderful. He’ll just sort of give you a pat on the back when you need it. Acting’s a peculiar thing to do. If you’re gonna do it well, you’ve got to be exposing and at times, it’s sort of humiliating. You want to shed your own pretense and ego to conjure up that of another. It’s a really strange profession. [Laughs]

RM: In my notes I wrote that in your early roles, you’re like a daisy surviving a hurricane.
JL: [Laughs] That’s an amazing description.
RM: Sometimes you’re the victim, at other times you’re the predator. But I’ve never seen a movie of yours where you weren’t greatly affecting whatever was around you. Is that how you are in real life?
JL: That’s a parallel. You’ve made a parallel that could be truthful. [Laughs] You try to make parallels to your roles. All I’m trying to do is make this particular person that’s filled with contradictions, much like other human beings. The intense movies I’ve done…cuz I’ve done all kinds of movies, are the ones I call high-stakes drama movies. Martyr is not the right word. As a musician you take the crowd’s energy and have it pass through you and you sort of release it. You want it to get to anger, judgment, whatever. As long as they give it to you and then you can sort of churn it up like a tornado and spit it out and then release them. [Laughs]

RM: If you saw someone being hurt on the street, would you try to stop it?
JL: I would try to do something about it. It depends on the scenario, of course. I feel like I’m a sort of neutralizing force, even among the most mundane of people. People arguing, or in conflict with each other. I try to neutralize…

RM: Did your parents get divorced?
JL: Yeah.

RM: Is that why you act tha