Actress Melonie Diaz

New faces are a dime a dozen. Rarer are those with staying power and the talent to back up the attention. This is true of all fields, but especially so with regards to acting, a field chock full of so many professionals that those who succeed really must be good at what they do. In the world of independent film, at least. Melonie Diaz is off to a good start, with a string of successful and highly lauded independent credits on her resume, and, as a result, a plethora of rave reviews to her name. Sundance's newest reigning queen, who has been seen in Raising Victor Vargas, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, and the new film Hamlet 2, took some time to talk about her other films Remember the Daze, Be Kind Rewind, and silly-ass sexist men. Enjoy.

Hi Melonie!
Hi!

How are you?
I’m good. Sitting by the pool. Getting a tan. Glad it’s summer!

Yeah, it’s finally summer, so time to do that!
Yeah, it’s perfect timing.

So first of all I wanted to mention how much I enjoyed your performance in Remember the Daze.
Aw, thank you!

How did you become involved with that project?
You know, I auditioned; my agent called me like, “Oh, I wanted you to audition for this movie.” And actually when I went and auditioned I thought that I did a terrible job. I left that audition, like, crying. [laughs] Because I thought I did so bad. And then I got a call and I got it. Which was really nice. That was nice to hear.

It’s definitely—I mean, it’s a youth movie, but more so than others because everybody involved is so young, including Jess Manafort, whose movie it is.
I was watching—what was I watching? And I saw this trailer for Melrose Place. And I was like, “Oh my god, the actors are so much older now! They were so much older than the kids in shows like that are.” And I think if you were to do Melrose Place now all the actors would be, you know, sixteen or seventeen. And I think that even though 1999 was ten years ago [the show] is really still significant.

Right. I understand that—the other day I was watching My So Called Life, for the first time, and everything in it totally applies to right now.
Yeah. I love that show! I think I’m going to buy that today!

So this year you’ve been in a lot of movies this year that were shown at Sundance. There was Remember the Daze and A Guide to Recognizing your Saints and also Hamlet 2—you’ve been sort of the Sundance darling.
You know, I think I’ve been really lucky. I think I’m really lucky to choose the projects that I’m really going to respond to, and the projects that will respond to people, and Sundance is a really special place for people to go and celebrate their work with other people, and I feel really lucky not only to do that but—I was there for like four movies! And I was like, “What the hell am I doing here!?” [laughs] It was so amazing, and sad at the same time. And the way I feel about Remember the Daze—I feel like it’s a really special film that—I think that it was the right thing for me, as opposed to choosing for politics. But I feel like people are going to watch this movie in a couple of years and be like, “Oh my god! I remember that!” You know? I think that people are really going to become familiar with that time.

Right. Well, you’ve certainly had no problem finding great roles—you’ve spoken to Paper magazine before about the difficulty of finding roles that are fully fleshed out rather than, to quote you, “uneducated and lost Latina girls”.
Right. Everybody loves to talk about that quote. You know, it’s true—I think it’s hard to find any good parts for women. I met this really cool lady and she and I talked for about an hour about how a lot of women are the heads of studios, are getting to that point where women are really controlling the ranks, like head of development. And I wish that because of that we could see a lot of characters for women. I don’t know, I think that the industry seems to be at the threshold where—it’s hard. And I say to my agent all the time, “I’m not going to be a piece of that. I’m sorry, I’m not going to contribute to that. I don’t care. I’ll be broke, but I’m not going to be that.”

Right. I think gender has always been a tricky issue in the media in general, because even as there are more women becoming really influential in the business there are also people like Jeff Robinov, the president of production at Warner Bros., who said—
Oh! He said that stupid-ass comment, right?

Yeah! He’s the one that said in October, “We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead.”
Yeah! I remember that! We read the article and all talked about that. It’s like—number one, we women have more numbers in terms of population. So how can you not consider how significant we are in terms of everything!? And—I don’t know. He’s just a silly man.

Right! It’s like, not only does it make your movies less interesting and not only is it chauvinistic but you’re going to be losing tons of business.
Yeah. Well, he’s silly. You can quote me on that: “He’s a silly-ass man.”

[laughs] So I wanted to talk about your role in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. Had you read the memoir before beginning work on the movie?
No. I still have not, believe it or not. I haven’t done that yet but I should at some point. You know, I worked on it, and I’m so close to it, I kind of don’t even want to—you know?

Well, I know the author [Dito Montiel] wrote the screenplay—did he direct too?
Yeah, he directed it.

So you basically got to work really closely with the man whose life you were basically recreating on-screen.
Yeah! Basically. But you know, it was really different so—I’m eating. Sorry about that. [laughs] You know, I think he had the characters in his head that he also knew, and you can never really recreate a person. I mean, you could… But I think he gave us a lot of freedom to take from ourselves.

Right. And the way the movie was structured, it got to show its past but it also got to show him in the present returning to his community and all the characters are grown up as well. And Rosario Dawson played your character in the present day. In terms of making the movie, was there a lot of connection between the two parts, or…?
No. I never met Rosario—I mean, I’ve known her for a couple years because I used to go to school with her little brother—yeah, small world. We grew up in the same neighborhood too. People draw a lot of comparisons between us. But, no, we never met or talked about the common threads in Laurie.

And you co-starred alongside Shia LaBeouf.
You know, Shia’s a really talented kid, and I think he’s going to go really far.

I read a recent interview with him where he mentioned that he’s fallen in love with every co-star or every love interest that he’s ever made a movie with.
Yeah, but that’s our job to. I fall in love with everyone too. It’s your job. I mean, I consider it my job.

Right. I also wanted to talk about your other movie Hamlet 2.
Right. It’s about this awestruck actor who decides to become a drama teacher, and when the principle of the high school threatens to shut down the drama department he has this pretty strange idea to make a sequel to Hamlet and name it Hamlet 2, and it’s just hilarious and absurd. And I play one of the students helping to put on the play. It’s really funny. It was really fun doing it as well. I hope people love it.

You were also recently in the film Be Kind Rewind. It was a really interesting concept and—what was that like?
I think—it’s Michel Gondry, so it’s going to be magical and you’re really going to have to—you know, he really allowed space to kind of use your imagination in these very strange but wonderful situations. So, it was really nice to kind of be around creative people like that, including Jack [Black] and Mos [Def]. And I really liked the production designer. I mean, everyone was just really, really great.

I wanted to ask you about—you grew up in New York, right?
Uh-huh.

What part of New York did you grow up in?
Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Oh, I live in Brooklyn. What was it like growing up here for you?
It really was the best opportunity I could ever ask for. It’s definitely—it’s a cultural melting pot. You know, I have friends of all different colors and religions. But, yeah, it was great growing up there.

Wait, I’m being told this was the last question. Thank you so much!
Thank you!

To find out more about Hamlet 2, visit its official website.