Three Great Things is Talkhouse’s series in which artists tell us about three things they absolutely love. To mark the October 11 release in theaters of Heather Graham’s romantic comedy drama Chosen Family, which she wrote, directed and stars in opposite John Brotherton, Andrea Savage, Thomas Lennon and Julia Stiles, the longtime fan favorite shared some of the things that make her life meaningful. — N.D.
Friends
One of the inspirations for my new movie, Chosen Family, was how much I love my friends, and how I think of them as my chosen family. I have been extremely lucky in my life, having really great friends, and I just feel like they're so special. When I introduce one friend to another friend, they almost always end up becoming friends with each other and will just say, “Wow, you have such great friends!” So now all of my friends are pretty much friends with each other.
I think friendships are so central to my life, because I'm not very close with my family and so I didn't have that kind of support. I met my friend Alison (who the character played by Andrea Savage in Chosen Family is loosely based on) when I was 14. I met my friend Michael (who Thomas Lennon’s character is based on) when I was 17, and he actually produced the movie and was on the set every day. So some of these people I've known since I was a teenager.
I became particularly bonded with my friends when I was in my late 20s and we started going on awesome vacations together. We took a lot of photos and my friend Michael shot a bunch of Super 8 movies, and I recently made a shared file with all of those for my friends. It's great because Alison actually has two kids, who are now both going to college, and they have all these movies of themselves when they were babies – and now they're part of our little family as adults! It’s pretty awesome, because they are my extended family and call me Auntie Heather.
We try to see each other two or three times every year. And then, of course, we have our calls and group chats where we send photos back and forth. But going on vacations together, that's really meaningful. This year we went to Costa Brava, Spain, for a week and it was awesome.
My friends really know me – they see my good qualities, they see my bad qualities – and they love me, flaws and all. One of the things I love about them is that we can really lovingly tease each other; we just really have so much fun making each other laugh, all of our different personalities together. I try to capture that in Chosen Family: how we love eating food and traveling and giving each other a hard time. We have so many fun memories that it's just fun remembering all of the moments of our lives we've spent together.
Yoga
My second thing is yoga, which is also in Chosen Family, as my character is a yoga teacher. I started doing yoga when I was about 25. Before that, I always thought, “Oh, yoga is not really a hard workout,” and people kinda made fun of it back then, before it became very mainstream. But when I started to go, it just made me feel so good. I went to these really hard classes where by the end I’d be drenched in sweat. I tend to worry a lot, so I’d go into the class feeling stressed out, and then I’d do all these hard poses and by the end, I’d take a shower and feel renewed, like all my worries were gone and just feeling so alive. I like a very hard yoga class where I struggle to get through it, but then at the end I get that reward of just feeling completely blissed out. I've been doing yoga three times a week for the past 27 or 28 years and I love it so much. It really helps me stay happy and stable in the entertainment business.
The physical benefits of yoga are that it builds both strength and flexibility, but it's also almost like a moving meditation. It helps me get into my body, and makes me really think about what's important, because sometimes my life is really good, but I lose sight of that just by being stressed. Sometimes I’ll suddenly get inspired when I'm doing yoga, like a creative thought will come or an insight about my life, because I'm just getting out of my head. I just really love yoga so much!
Psychology
I'm really interested in understanding people's motivations, why we do things, and psychology in general. As an actress, when I’m playing a character, I’m basically analyzing, Why does this person think this way or act this way, or get involved in these situations? I also think about it in terms of my own life, like, Why do I make the decisions I make? What are my subconscious motivations? And if I have pain, it helps me ask, How do I heal this pain?
I've been going to therapy for about 25 years and I also go to a 12-step group called Al-Anon, which is for people who are struggling with unhealthy dynamics in relationships, who have someone in their life who is difficult to deal with, maybe because of addiction or other issues. It helps people learn how to not worry too much, not to people-please too much, how to set boundaries. That has been really helpful in my life and I wish I had started going when I was younger.
I also learn about really interesting different kinds of therapies, like Internal Family Systems, which is a really powerful kind of therapy that I've been using on myself. You look at your family of origin, what happened to you as a kid, and how it affects you today. I've been trying to become a loving parent to myself, because my parents didn't give me things I really wanted and needed. That's definitely something I'm working on right now.
