"I would definitely probably get into production. I could never see myself directing. I don't have that visual image thing. I could see production because I enjoy business so it's just another angle. I've always enjoyed putting the right people together to make something happen." Though she is prominent among the fashion cognoscenti, Michele Hicks is not in the supermodel stratosphere brought to prominence by ubermodel Cindy Crawford and the Holy Trinity of Linda, Christy and Naomi (that's Evangelista, Turlington and Campbell for the uninitiated). It is a standing that greatly benefits Hicks for she has always been one to go her own way or at least one to go with the flow.
Modelling was a happy accident and now the twenty-eight-year-old, New Jersey-born and raised model and businesswoman (she co-owns a successful Pilates club in downtown Manhattan) is now pursuing an acting career. Hicks makes an auspicious debut in the haunting and original Twin Falls, Idaho. The film, co-written and starring Mark and Michael (who also directed) Polish, tells the tale of conjoined twins Blake and Francis Falls and Penny, the prostitute who falls in love with Blake and forces the brothers to confront the reality of their situation. It's a dicey, potentially risible story made lyrically eerie and resonant by the delicate work of the Polish Brothers, who are identical but not conjoined twins, and the unaffected warmth of Hicks.
"This was a very risky project on paper, if you think about it," Hicks admits. "OK, so I'm going to play a prostitute who falls in love with these Siamese twins. Cool! That's not your obvious. . .that's not your easy in way. A small independent that could have never been seen."
Hicks, minimally made up and attired in an orange tank top, blue hooded cardigan and slim black pants, displays a cheery, almost Valley Girl bubbliness that is in direct opposition to her sweet but gothically pale melancholy in Twin Falls, Idaho. Still, there's no overlooking her strikingly pale eyes as she assesses her decision to join the ranks of other models-turned-actresses. She concedes to feeling some trepidation in the transition. "Yeah, but everybody's been something before, haven't they?" she laughs.
"So everybody's been a waitress before, a waiter-turned-actor. Does that mean you can't be an actor? I think that in choosing your material, you have to choose material that proves something. I think that in the model-turned-actress thing, you can easily try to take the easy in. I've never done that in anything in my life so I guess I wouldn't do that getting into this."
Hicks, who originally aspired to be a dancer, made the decision to be an actress about two years ago though she can't quite articulate what prompted her to do so. "I don't know. I felt like I was. . .ready to go there. I don't know how to explain. Like I was in a place personally, emotionally, mentally. . .whatever, but I really could go there. If it was something that I would have tried to pursue six or seven years ago, I wouldn't have been able to."
So Hicks began to study acting and it wasn't too long thereafter that she came across the Twin Falls, Idaho script through a friend of a friend. Displaying her determination and enthusiasm to play Penny, she called up Michael Polish and, for about three weeks, held lengthy, long-distance conversations about the film, the characters and their motivations. By the time she flew to Los Angeles to audition, "we were so on the same page," Hicks enthuses. "I was just so in sync about everything about her character and the other characters, even how they were going to shoot it, how each room would look, and how the mood of the film. . .and how her look would change."
Despite the riskiness she acknowledges, it was the quality of the script that fueled her determination. "I was really moved by the script, it really drew me in. The script is really beautifully written and exactly what you saw in the movie is how the script was, and I hear that's kind of rare sometimes," Hicks laughs. "I just responded to [Penny] really, really well," she continues. "I just understood her. I don't know particularly why because I've never been in that situation before. But she had a sensitivity that I really understood. Also a hardness [with the] sensitivity -- that complexity going on at the same time."
Already at work on her next film, a drama costarring High Art's Radha Mitchell, Hicks has no plans to divide her time between modelling and acting. "This is a full time job," she laughs, "so I think you have to do it all the way or not at all. Basically what I do now that would have been [thought of as] modelling is kind of called press."
- Michele Hicks
