The Captivating Sarah Paulson
Why one of Hollywood’s most elusive actors is also one of its most spellbinding
She waits 20.15 seconds before she speaks. From the moment she first appears on screen, she begins building the dynamic between her character Amanda and Mark Duplass’s Jim. They are two high-school sweethearts who split ways several decades ago, and she is debating whether to approach him in a grocery store. Her mouth opens and closes around the infinite variations of words she could string together at this moment. She sighs, exhaling their history. At last, we see her decide on a simple, “Jim?”
Her roles often find her casually chain-smoking, instead of chewing her words as she does in the above scene from Blue Jay (2016). Her thoughts swirl around in her mouth, then are released in a ghostly fog. Unlike the gossamer veil of smoke that hangs around her, the words she delivers have a density to them; they’re suffused with meaning. When her scene partner is looking to elicit a reaction, this actress gives them five. You learn, when trying to read her character, to focus on whatever is happening from the nose down. Smoking, sighing, swallowing, humming, closing, opening. She wrestles with her lines. It’s easy to take for granted, but she manages something wonderful with those movements of her mouth—to capture the inarticulateness of everyday life.
Sarah Paulson’s early career in Hollywood was defined by her attempt to model herself after the greatest female box-office star of the 1990s. “There was a time when I believed if I was going to be successful, it was going to look like a particular thing,” she has said. “And that particular thing was Julia Roberts. I was young and wanted to be an actress, and success meant being an enormous mega-movie star.”
Fresh out of a performing arts high school, she began working her way through the industry in 1994. While she did theater work, she was also landing small roles on Law & Order, American Gothic, and Hallmark movies. In 2004, she had her first larger break when she scored an extremely coveted role in Down With Love, a period comedy where she co-starred with Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor. But the movie tanked at the box office and Paulson returned to landing small roles in made-for-TV movies and short-lived pilots.
After a few poorly received Broadway and off-Broadway plays, Paulson was granted another opportunity at her Julia Roberts dream when, in 2006, she was cast in Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip opposite Matthew Perry. The show ran for one season, and although it earned her a Golden Globe nomination, she still had not managed to catch the attention of mainstream audiences.
Paulson often reflects on her early career in more recent interviews, and notes how she was always asked to dye her hair blonde. Many of these roles, such as her characters in Studio 60 and the ABC pilot Cupid, featured Paulson as a successful but humble woman whose confidence is challenged by men who are “edgy” in their opinions and beliefs. While Paulson played that type of role convincingly, there was something missing from those performances. These women always knew the right thing to do. And on the rare occasion they were wrong there was always a man there to tell them so.
Paulson seemed so caught up in trying to be universally likable—a desire tied into her Julia Roberts fantasy —that she had yet to discover the depth she could bring to truly complex roles, women characterized by ambivalence. Then in 2011, Jessica Lange—her friend and co-star in a production of The Glass Menagerie—asked director and writer Ryan Murphy to give Paulson a small part in the horror anthology he was creating for the FX network.
She is often referred to as “American Horror Story’s Sarah Paulson.” While the show initially began with Lange as the face of the series, Murphy quickly brought Paulson back to play the lead role in the second season, Asylum. Paulson’s Lana Winters, a dogged reporter and closeted lesbian who is forcibly checked into an asylum in the mid-1960s, inspired battalions of young pop culture consumers to storm Tumblr and Twitter. Fans watched in collective uneasiness as she endured episode after episode of torture; aversion/conversion therapy and a self-performed abortion via a coat hanger were a few of the more tasteful examples from Asylum. It became clear, by the show’s fourth reincarnation, that people loved to watch her suffer. Now that the show is in its eighth season, and with Lange making an exit after the fourth, Sarah Paulson and her dry scream have become synonymous with AHS.
The impressive range she demonstrated on AHS opened doors for more high-profile roles — the most celebrated being her portrayal of the real-life prosecutor Marcia Clark in another Ryan Murphy production, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story. Paulson disappeared under the permed wig and earth-toned skirt suits to inject a vital dose of pathos to the role, and to the larger O.J. Simpson drama. Her performance prompted national self-reflection on the unfair treatment of Clark, as well as an Emmy, Golden Globe, SAG, and Critics’ Choice award. Most recently, she was in the summer blockbuster Ocean’s 8 and co-starred with Hollywood staples Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett. While the newfound fame may be unfamiliar, Paulson is no stranger to working on big projects with big names attached. Many associate the actress with her work in AHS and ACS, but they also know Sarah Paulson from what they forgot they knew her from: Game Change (2012), 12 Years a Slave (2013), and Carol (2015).
For anyone who had their eye on Paulson, she seemed to be at the peak of her career. During interviews for films like Carol and 12 Years A Slave, almost every journalist would ask her how the role came to her. Paulson would always squint her eyes, as if she couldn’t comprehend the question, and give a breathy laugh, “It’s so funny when people ask me that. It’s like if I was Julia Roberts and I’m just sifting through so many things that I just can’t figure out what to do next.”
Sarah Paulson the interviewee on shows like The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon is someone who is hard to forget. She is silly, clever, glamorous, and immensely charming all at once. Yet beyond Marcia Clark and the various characters she’s played on AHS — which are consistently mentioned by talk show hosts— people struggle to remember the range of her work in award-winning films. There seems to be a hard divide between Sarah Paulson, the memorable personality seen rapping Salt-N-Pepa and making impressive dolphin noises on late-night talk shows, and Sarah Paulson the forgettable actress. Tellingly, it is this version of herself—the version of her when she is not in character—that would weave its way in and out of the performances early on in her career: her dolphin noises were actually featured on both Studio 60 and Cupid. Only when Paulson came to the conclusion that she could offer something, artistically, that went beyond her Julia Roberts fantasy—that she didn’t need to bring her immensely charming self to her characters—did she find her place as an actress.
“When I’m watching something, the thing I’m always struck by is when I can see that that vanity and that need or desire to be liked has not got in front of telling the truth as a character, and also somebody who’s there to serve the story.” It’s all about the truth for Paulson. And that truth is in the mouth.
In AHS: Coven, Cordelia’s mouth hangs slightly agape at all times. We see, in that mouth, how she wants to help save the dying coven of young witches, but is hesitant to speak her mind in fear of making a fool of herself—a complex developed from being raised by a verbally abusive mother. Her Marcia Clark pushes her tongue up against her cheek in instances of blistering frustration as well as defensive sassiness. Every swallow is a vain attempt to shove back words that have already been spoken on a public platform.
Paulson actively demonstrates what public scrutiny can do to a person’s mind and attitude. The most rigid mouth action of all comes from Mrs. Epps in 12 Years A Slave. Her mouth is a taut line that barely gives even when she is speaking. Her words come out at a low volume in case her husband should hear her, but they still maintain their razor-sharp thorns with every intention to break the skin. Her characters may come from all different walks of life, but they all have one element in common: they think loudly.
Paulson often leaves her audience in a state of artistic amnesia. Upon first glance, you may look at a character and be aware of the fact that she is Sarah Paulson. But you will never look at Sarah Paulson during an interview and see all of her characters. To be the mainstream movie star that Paulson once yearned to be, an actor must carefully reveal parts of themselves in each blockbuster role; they must cultivate their aura as a star even as they portray their character. Paulson is no longer interested in cultivating her stardom; now she has invested in thinking and processing emotions as her character would.
The ephemeralness of her success is a testament to her striking talent. Paulson has found the humanity and truthfulness in a profession where you are paid to pretend. Her characters are so fully realized that they live full, thought-out lives outside of the confines of the film’s run-time. Her characters slip carefully into the back of your mind to join the thousands of real people you could meet and not consciously think about until they slowly fade into view again. The aspiring actor is always searching for that unforgettable performance, but maybe Sarah Paulson is onto something. Maybe the true marker of excellence is allowing oneself to be forgotten.
