Mischa Barton talks

Photography by David Needleman and styling by Sam Spector for stocklandmartel.com

As part of its Fall Fashion issue, on stands September 10, Time Out New York met with Mischa Barton for her first in-depth interview since being placed under alleged “involuntary psychiatric hold” at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in July.

Other medical issues nearly delayed filming of her New York–set TV series, The Beautiful Life: TBL. Barton, 23, plays model Sonja Stone, a paparazzi magnet trying to get her career back on track (real life, meet show!).

Yet during our talk—on the couch in a Tribeca photo studio—the O.C. starlet looks healthy, sits tall and comes off as self-aware and self-deprecating. Here’s a sneak peek at the interview.

Time Out New York: I bet readers don’t know you got rave reviews as a kid, in Off Broadway stuff like Tony Kushner’s Slavs!
Mischa Barton: Probably not. It was a great place for me to start as a kid because I was really shy, believe it or not. I didn’t feel comfortable anywhere. Definitely didn’t feel comfortable with kids my own age. I would go to school during the day and then go to work at night with people like Marisa Tomei and Tony Kushner and Joseph Wiseman, and they would treat me on the same level. And so I opened up and became this extrovert and amazingly crafty kid.

Was your mom a backstage mom, pushing you to act?
It was my idea. My mom was always there. I wanted to write. I wanted to do poetry when I was eight. I wrote a monologue and I performed it at the Circle in the Square in New York and a literary agent came up to me and my mom and said, “Does she want to audition here in New York?” And I said yes because I was a middle child and I didn’t have anything of my own that felt interesting. The youngest was the baby, my older sister was cherubic-looking, and I was strange and skinny and big eyed and weird-looking. I never had that cute Lindsay Lohan sweet look so I could do Disney films.

And yet somehow you landed…
And then somehow I ended up doing The O.C., this big TV show which I struggled with because it was too commercial and the character was very all-American and I was pushing to play that—pushing to play something completely opposite of me. Whereas this show, The Beautiful Life, it’s easier and more comfortable because I’m playing a worldly New York model. She’s closer to me.

You sound like an actor. I’m sorry, but I’m used to thinking of you as a brand.
Yeah. [Nods knowingly] Look, The O.C. was a storm. It was a huge show, much bigger than I realized. Thailand or Russia and London—there’s nowhere I can go where people don’t recognize me. But I don’t want to get caught up in this actress thing, so I sit back and say, Eh, whatever. And I think that’s why the press jumps at me, because I don’t care enough. I just want to do good work.

The press also jumped because you had some drama of your own: the DUI, caught with weed a few years back.
And the people who supported me from the beginning were my fashion friends, who had always been there when I was growing up in New York who know my work and indie films; they rallied around me and hired me for things like my Neutrogena campaign and bringing me back into the fashion world and dressing me in their clothes. I was and am glad to wear their clothing and show up at their events, because they were kind to me when I was a broke actor. Zac Posen is on the first episode [of The Beautiful Life], and I’ve known him since he was 15. He took me to my first nightclub.

You were going to nightclubs at age 15?
Ha. I grew up in New York and I grew up fast. I knew all these creative, interesting people, all these interesting actors and models. I went out at a young age—not doing drugs or drinking too excessively. Not drugs—I was a Goody Two-shoes at that point. I did really well in high school. If anything, I might be regressing now—acting a bit younger. [Laughs] That’s what The Beautiful Life is about too—kids who have access.

The show is about what young models do with that access—use it or abuse it.
Right, you either work or you don’t work and only play. I have an insane work drive and don’t like when I see people sitting on their ass. What I do is kind of stupid: [In a duh voice] “I’m just an actress and model half the time, God.” At the same time, I try to do good things and am frustrated that I do all this charity, and supporting my artist friends, people are like, “Why do you do that? For press?” Reporters ask that, going for the negative, and I wanna bang my head against the wall.

The press affects you.
But I don’t stop. Look back at the coolest people in history and people were always rude to them, always wondered and questioned what they were doing, and they never stopped. And that’s what I tell myself when it gets difficult: People are waiting for you to stop what you’re doing, so you never get anywhere.

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Mischa on her “nightmare” this past July