The Malibu resident, who has as role in “Factory Girl” about the rise and fall Andy Warhol muse, Edie Sedgwick, talks about her work with Warhol, and being one of the original Factory Girls.
By Sean Caffey / Special to The Malibu Times
From the luxury of her Malibu guest house, actress Sally Kirkland talks about her latest project, “Factory Girl”-a biographical film about Edie Sedgwick, who pop-art star Andy Warhol helped launch to stardom in the underground cinema world, naming her queen of The Factory-and how it is a particularly fitting addition to a long and varied career.
“This film brings me back full circle to New York in 1964,” Kirkland said.
Kirkland played Sedgwick’s grandmother in the film, and is the only original “Factory Girls” from the ’60s to be in it. (Sienna Miller plays Sedgwick, and Guy Pearce plays Warhol.)
Kirkland explained how she came to work with Andy Warhol, first working with him in his 1964 film, “The 13 Most Beautiful Women,” (the original screen test for that film appeared in “Factory Girl”) and then receiving his help in promoting her film “Anna” two decades later for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. Warhol was returning a favor to her mother, a former Life magazine fashion editor, also named Sally Kirkland, who had put a photo of his Gold Shoes in the magazine.
The “Factory” was a former downtown New York hat factory that Warhol transformed into a makeshift film studio and hangout for an eclectic variety of artists during the 1960s. The “Factory Girls” were a group of models and actresses who frequented the place and appeared in a variety of Warhol’s early films. Sedgwick was probably the most famous, or infamous, having burst on the scene in New York with the help of Warhol in the mid-1960s, skyrocketing to fame but fairly quickly spiraling into a self-destructive lifestyle. Her most poignant role was the portrayal of a drugged-out former model in “Ciao Manhattan” (1972). Sedgwick died of a drug overdose just weeks after the film wrapped in 1971, and the role is often referred to as a parallel to her own tragic career.
Kirkland was also a part of the Factory scene, but, she said, she didn’t quite buy into Warhol’s movie making at the time, and felt more like a peripheral participant.
“At the time I was sort of a snob about acting. I started when I was 10 and by 17 I was doing Broadway,” Kirkland said. “Andy used to say to me, ‘Just sit in front of the camera and do nothing,’ and I would say, ‘I’m a Strasberg-trained actress, what do you mean do nothing?'”
“In retrospect, it was just ludicrous,” she added. “But, back then, I don’t think anybody knew how big Andy would be.”
However, Kirkland said her first-hand experience with Warhol and the Factory came in handy during the making of “Factory Girl.”
“Sienna Miller [Sedgwick] wanted to learn everything about Andy and she really wanted to get Edie down,” Kirkland said. “It’s not like I was Edie’s best friend, but I did observe her.”
Kirkland went through her own “self-imposed drug hell” in the ’60s, as she told the e-magazine, the-Vu, but she has been clean since 1975, and has since devoted herself to a healthier lifestyle, including the practice of yoga.
Kirkland’s role in “Factory Girl,” scheduled for a limited release starting Dec. 29, and a larger release in early 2007, is a relatively small role, but her involvement in the project was reportedly pushed for by one of the film’s principal actors.
“It’s been rumored that Guy Pearce lobbied for me to be in the film; that is what I heard,” Kirkland said. “I met him once and told him that I saw “Memento” three times and thought he was brilliant. I think he might have remembered that. To my knowledge, I’m the only person in the film who was part of the original Factory.”
Kirkland’s career has, indeed, been a varied one, having appeared in numerous television shows and movies, working as a radio host, painter, and is also an ordained reverend.
“I’m fortunate. I’ve done lots of films and nearly one thousand hours of television,” Kirkland said. “I’ve had a lot of dreams come true.”
Kirkland has lived in Malibu since the early 1980s, and refers to it as her “salvation.” Other recent projects include a film with fellow Malibu resident Nick Nolte entitled, “Off the Black,” which opened for limited release Dec. 8.