GROWING BOLDER WITH

GROWING BOLDER WITH

Lea Thompson

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"Back to the Future" and "Caroline in the City" actress Lea Thompson’s new project is a true family affair. She recently collaborated with her two daughters and husband on a new film called The Year of Spectacular Men.

If you’re going to take a scary leap of faith with your career, why not do it with those you trust most? “It’s been a really loving, handmade, personal, grassroots project, for sure,” Lea Thompson says.

She set the idea in motion when she suggested her daughter, Madelyn, who was struggling through a terrible year, write out her feelings in a script.

Thompson loved the result so much, she took it on as her first feature-film directing project. Since the budget was small, Madelyn, a singer/songwriter, also starred in and scored the film and her sister Zoey (Why Him?, The Disaster Artist) played her on-screen sister. Thompson’s husband Howard pitched in with producing duties.

“You watch your kids go through these difficult things, and you want to protect them but you can’t. Life is messy and full of mistakes, so some of that was hard to read,” Thompson says. “I’m so happy to be part of the story written by a young woman for young women.

All the words that I ever spoke when I was an ingenue were written by men. I was made to play their idea of what the perfect girl was so many times. To be able to tell this story and all its messiness was particularly gratifying for me.”