LYNN LOWRY

Interview by SJ Lykana

Lynn Lowry, horror movie goddess and queen of scream. Welcome to The Digital Dead Magazine.

You have had an absolutely amazing career so far, did you always want to act? Yes, I pretty much wanted to act since I was about five years old. I used to sort of try to entertain the neighbourhood kids and was in my first church play where I played a sheep or something. I always loved, you know, getting up in front of people, giving reports. I just always felt comfortable doing that. So, I wanted to do it pretty much all of my life.

That is wonderful, did you just have confidence from a young age? Well, I wasn’t really confident when I was young. I was really shy and pretty insecure. But the thing was, when I got to act or get up in front of people to do anything, I was really confident and that was one of the reasons I liked doing it so much. If I had somebody else’s words to use then I was really confident in doing that.

Around 1984 you appeared to withdraw from movie making for a decade. What did you do during this period? I actually didn’t stop really pursuing film acting until 1995. For ten years, between 1995 and 2005 I didn’t really do a whole lot. I mean I always did theatre work. In the 80’s I moved to California. When I got to California the writers were on strike, the directors were on strike and it was really difficult to get an agent, to get work and get started in California. But I did do “Cat People” in the 80’s, and I did a couple of TV movies of the week and I did a soap opera so I did keep that going, but I was always involved in theatre and doing that so I never stopped acting. I just got burned out around 1995 and the thing is, I didn’t know that I had a big fan base in horror. So I didn’t know to pursue independent horror films. I was just thinking, oh I need to be in the mainstream and I need to do stuff like that and, you know, it was very difficult to get into that level of acting. So I didn’t realise I had all this big horror cult following until about 2004 and that’s when I started up again. The horror community are amazing. They are so committed and supportive. It’s only because of them that I’m working now, just because of all of them. So, I love them.

You starred in David Cronenberg’s “Shivers” (1975) and George A. Romero’s “The Crazies” (1973). How do you feel about working with two legendary film makers? The thing is, you see, at the time I worked with them, they weren’t really big names. I was in David’s first movie that he ever wrote and made, so he was just a beginning director at that time. But “Shivers” was definitely a landmark film. It was the very first body horror movie ever to be made and so that influenced “The Thing” and “Alien” and all of those movies, you know, where things come out of people’s bodies. So he was phenomenal in getting that whole movement started and just a really, really nice person. I enjoyed working with him and he was very professional. He was fun, and it was just great experience and it was a pretty easy shoot.

George Romero; he had done “Night of the Living Dead” at that point and a couple of other things, but he wasn’t what he is now. George was absolutely one of the nicest gentlemen I have ever met or worked with. Just so sincere and so helpful. He was just wonderful, I just adored George and I was so lucky and fortunate to get to work with him at such an early age, and in his early career as well. Both of those were phenomenal experiences.

I remember the first time I saw the original “The Crazies”, I was very, very young and stayed up to watch it on TV with my mum. When I was an adult, I recognised you right away making a cameo in the remake. What do you think about the reboot / remake trend? It was very sweet of them to pay a homage. I thought the remake of “The Crazies” was actually good. I thought it was entertaining and a fun watch. But I don’t think, honestly, in 45 years anyone is going to remember it. But I do believe in 45 years people are still going to be watching the original because it’s just different. Back in the 70’s everybody’s mind-set was different. You wanted to make something that you were passionate about and that you believed in and that you wanted to last. You wanted people to see it. But the remake of “The Crazies” for most people was just a job to do. There wasn’t any passion, or magic, or anything like that. People were just there to do their job, and they did a good job but it’s just not the same as the original. I find that with all the remakes, although I haven’t seen “Rabid” yet and I understand that is quite good so I’m looking forward to seeing that.

Is that the Soska sisters’ movie, “Rabid”? Yes, a-ha. I like them a lot. They wanted me to be in it but they shot most of everything in Canada and so I couldn’t do it, but I do think that they played the last scene of “Shivers” at some point in the film and they also had my picture up in the doctor’s bedroom. So they really sort of paid homage to me a little bit which was great. They are very sweet. I have my fingers crossed that I’ll get to work with them in the future.

In 2016 you starred in “Terror Tales” by Jimmy Lee Combs. I’ve had the pleasure of screening a couple of his pieces in the past, and I’ve always found his work to have a very unique flare to it. Can you tell us a little about your role in “Terror Tales”? I was in the first segment which is called “By Proxy”. I play a woman who has Munchausen syndrome by proxy. It’s somebody who does really horrible things to their child to get attention drawn to themselves. So she was not a very nice person, but a very bad thing happens to her at the very end of it which I won’t tell you so that the fans might watch it and see. But she definitely gets her comeuppance in the end for what she does. It was a great shoot, I think we filmed that segment for four days and Jimmy was wonderful. He’s funny, and clever and it was great, I had a great time with him. I stayed with him and his wife in their house, that’s actually where we shot as well. I would love to work with Jimmy again. He’s talked to me about a feature he is trying to get the money for and I hope that happens because he’s a wonderful person.

We are huge Sid Haig fans here at “The Digital Dead” and were all deeply saddened by the news of his passing. In 2018 you co-starred with Sid Haig and Scout Taylor Compton in “Cynthia”. Could you tell us about your role and if you got to spend time with Sid? I didn’t actually have any scenes with Sid. I’m dead, he finds my body, I’m in a body bag. I can hear him talking but I’m in the body bag so I didn’t actually get to have a scene with him. But I knew him quite well, I’d done several shows with him and had drinks with him. What a lovely, lovely man. I got to sit next to him at one convention and so we got to know each other a bit. He was such a fan favourite. He never raised his prices and just always spent time with everyone. He was really quite lovely. I really enjoyed working on the film. I had a scene with Taylor and that was a lot of fun and I loved the directors. There were two directors and they were wonderful to work with. It was a fun role, you know, she was kind of ditzy and a broad, she had a lot of fun and I had a lot of fun doing it. I would love to work with those directors again as well. I’m always trying to get out there and get more work.

I’ve recently watched “Ready For My Close Up”. I thoroughly enjoyed it, it was such a fun film. You got to change your look a lot for that role. Was it a fun film to work on? Yeah, it was a lot of fun. We shot the whole thing in two days so it was pretty tiring to make all those changes and have all those different characters. But Michael Haberfelner who wrote it, he’s a wonderful writer. I’ve actually done four short films that he wrote and he has wrote all four of them with me in mind. But actually the idea for “Ready For My Close Up” was my idea which I gave to him, and then he wrote it. But I gave him the idea of a B-Movie star who didn’t like delivery boys and he just came up with this wonderful script. I had just a blast doing it and seeing the characters come to life once I was there. Because when you’re at home and you’re working on the characters, you don’t really know. I didn’t even think about doing the Asian character with an Asian accent until the day before it was shot and then it just occurred to me that it wasn’t a very good Asian accent, but that was the whole point, that she wasn’t a very good actress. So, to play a bad actress, but I don’t want people to say that I was a bad actress but my character was definitely a bad actress. I had just so much fun doing it. I loved working in the UK. Stuart Morris, he produced it and Jason Rhee directed it. It was the second film I’d done with them, we had done one called “Ripper Tour” before that which was also quite successful and got a lot of good reviews. But this was one of my absolute favourite things to do of my whole career. I just loved it.

Do you have a favourite role from your career? I think my favourite film from my entire career is “Model Hunger”. I really loved doing that film because I have worked on Tennessee Williams characters since I was like 16 years old and I was really a pro at doing these hysterical, schizophrenic, crazy southern women. So when this role came up, I talked to Debbie Rochon who directed it and I told her I would like to do her as a southern character and she loved that idea. So I was able to take all these years of experience of playing that type of character and then just add on top of it that she was a serial killer and a cannibal. She was a charming southern belle and she is very funny but she’s really horrible. I loved it. It was such a great, freeing experience to absolutely play someone that was that mad. Just the madness of the character, it just came out of me and it was an extraordinary experience for me and I loved my performance in it. I won several awards for it and so I’m very proud of it. There were definitely some problems with the film. The sound was not very good, it took Debbie (Rochon) two or three years before she was really able to get the film to where it could be distributed and brought out because there were so many problems with it, but overall I really like it and I love my performance. It’s my favourite performance ever.

I need to watch this movie, it sounds fascinating! You have to see it, but don’t eat while you’re watching it. It’s really bloody.

I’m actually going to make a note of that, do not eat while watching this movie. Yeah, it’s bloody. And I’m not going to tell you what I do, but I do this one thing that I have never ever seen anyone else in any film ever do. I almost sort of turned the film down because I didn’t want to do it, this thing, but I knew it would push the envelope to the furthest extent that you could imagine. So I did it. But it’s pretty shocking when you see it. So definitely watch that and let me know what you think of it.

With a career spanning almost 6 decades, you must be very wise to the ways of the industry. Have you any words of wisdom for any of our readers trying to carve out a career in the horror industry? My advice to anyone that wants to be an actor is to take acting lessons and especially get involved in the theatre, because I think the reason that I have lasted this long is because I studied many years and I did lots and lots of theatre work and really honed my craft and really became an artist at what I do. I have so much versatility because of all of that training that I had. I would definitely recommend to anyone that they should take acting classes and get involved in the theatre and then really treat it like it’s a business. Just really network and try to get yourself out there and do whatever you can do. Student films, extra parts, anything to get yourself started and going. Sometimes it’s easier to get yourself a commercial agent, if you have a commercial look, sometimes it’s easier to get a commercial agent to work with you, and then after that you can get a theatrical agent to work with you.

If you could choose any part in any movie or production throughout history, what would be your dream role? I have two. I would choose Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With The Wind” and I would choose the Meryl Streep role in “Sophie’s Choice” (Sophie). Those are the two roles that I would choose. At the age I am at now, if I had to pick a theatre play that I would love to do, it would be “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night” by Eugene O’Neill, I would love to do that.

February was Women In Horror Month. Being a female horror icon, how do you feel about the Women In Horror movement? I think it’s great, I had so many people contacting me during February. I don’t do very many interviews anymore, just because I don’t like to really talk about myself all the time. And also I feel it’s important to kind of save up and then do an interview that you think is really good. The reason I’m doing this interview is because you reviewed the film (“Ready For My Close Up”) so there was a purpose to doing the interview. But there are so many wonderful women in horror. I love Caroline Williams, I love Camille Keaton, Debbie Rochon. All of those women, they are just great and I think that we deserve to get that kind of attention. It’s great, I totally support it. I am proud to be a woman in horror.

You have been a very busy lady with so many projects in post-production. Can you tell us about any of them yet? Well the one that I just finished in Chicago, I’m very excited about. I play a woman who has Parkinson’s, advanced Parkinson’s and dementia and she is not very nice. She is driving her son mad. I mean, she is just driving him insane to the point where he actually thinks that he is turning into a rat. It is very unique, this is the film that the director with autism, Richard, wrote and it is a very unique, very unusual film and it was an extraordinary experience. I think that honestly, I think that it is going to be a huge cult classic because it’s just so different. So I have that coming out.

I just had “Necropolis Region” which Chris Alexander directed. That came out a couple of months ago and I think he’s re-working it right now to get a better cut of it. It was part of the films you could actually watch as they were filming it on Facebook. So that was pretty amazing to be filming and to be filming our filming. I am shooting a film next month in Los Angeles with Dustin Ferguson. It’s a zombie film so that should be fun.

Have you attended any cons recently or do you plan on appearing at any soon? I am actually going next month to “Dead By Con” in Edmonton. I believe that is on March 13th 14th and 15th. Then I believe I’m doing a special guest appearance in Buffalo in May and then in August, I’m doing “Tampa Bay Screams”. Then in October I’m doing “Chiller” in New Jersey. I’m also doing one in Iowa in October I think it’s called “Halloweenapalooza”. Those are the ones I have scheduled this year.

As a Belfast girl I have to ask: I saw on your Instagram that you visited Belfast, Northern Ire- land not too long ago. I was born and raised in Belfast. Did you enjoy your visit? I did. Actually I had two friends there. They came and got me in Dublin, they drove there and drove me back to Belfast and they just took me around and showed me The Giant’s Causeway and the castles. It was just great. It was actually in November though and so they kept telling me how gloomy it was there and how it was so much more beautiful there in the summer but God, it was beautiful. It was just what I thought Ireland would look like even though it was raining and cloudy but it was just so green and so beautiful and breathtaking. It was really just a wonderful trip, I really enjoyed it a lot. The people are so sweet and there’s an innocence about them. When we were up some mountain, and we stopped and were looking at the view, this person stopped in his car and was having this long conversation with my friend George. Afterwards I said, “Oh, who was that George?” And he said “Oh, I have no idea.” I just thought, oh my gosh, a complete stranger just stops and has a half hour conversation with you, that just does not happen in the states. It was really, really lovely and I got to have a Guinness and do all the American touristy things.

Imagine for a moment that the zombie apocalypse is upon us. I don’t know, maybe a bunch of teenagers decided to skinny dip in a toxic lake or something. If you could pick just one co-star from your entire career to be your survival partner, who would you choose and why? It would have to be somebody who really knew how to survive. I’m trying to think of who I would choose. It’s tough. Well, I think I would choose Bill Moseley. I think Bill would know how to do things. He seems to be very equipped to take care of stuff like that. So I would pick him.

Lynn Lowry, it has been an absolute honour and complete fan girl moment to be able to interview you. Thank you for taking the time to talk to The Digital Dead, is there anything else you would like to add? I think you’ve covered everything. I’m very flattered that you watched my film and that you wanted to interview me. I hope that the fans keep on watching and that I get to have another couple of decades of work before I no longer can.