Moore They Live Mere Blocks Apart in Man- Inspired a Successful Off-Broadway Hattan, and Each Is the Mother of Musical
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More on M 9 !"#$ %&'#(, creative director at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia )*$+",,# -&&.#, actor, interior designer, and children’s book author 5 !" BOSTONIA Summer 2012 442-45_BostoniaSummer12_03.indd2-45_BostoniaSummer12_03.indd 4242 55/30/12/30/12 44:29:29 PMPM Moore They live mere blocks apart in Man- inspired a successful off-Broadway hattan, and each is the mother of musical. two children. They both attended After working as design direc- BU’s College of Fine Arts, and they tor for House & Garden magazine, share interests in storytelling, inte- Towey joined Martha Stewart Living rior design, and healthy cooking. in 1990 as its founding art director. ACTOR JULIANNE When Julianne Moore (CFA’83), She designed the magazine’s inau- an Academy Award–nominated gural issue, establishing its iconic MOORE TALKS actor, and Gael Towey (CFA’75), and award-winning visual style, the longtime chief creative direc- and then moved into progressively WITH FELLOW CFA tor at Martha Stewart Living Omni- larger roles at MSLO, directing the media (MSLO), first met at a CFA design of products from magazines ALUM GAEL TOWEY alumni dinner, it was clear they had and books to home furnishings and much in common—not least, their merchandise. This year she became ABOUT THE ARTS, status as highly accomplished and chief integration and creative multitalented women. director, overseeing the creation STORYTELLING, Moore, known for her intel- of digital magazines and mobile ligence, versatility, and distinctive applications for the multimillion- AND WHERE THEY red hair, has appeared in more than dollar Martha Stewart brand. 50 films, ranging from the 1998 cult The College of Fine Arts recently FIND INSPIRATION favorite The Big Lebowski to 2010’s brought Moore and Towey together critically acclaimed The Kids Are again. Moore took a break from a All Right. She has earned a Daytime busy schedule promoting the HBO Emmy, six Golden Globe nomina- movie Game Change, in which she tions, and four Oscar nominations. portrays former Alaska governor In addition, Moore’s interior and GOP vice presidential candi- design talents have been featured date Sarah Palin, to talk with Towey in The World of Interiors magazine, about arts education, raising chil- and her popular Freckleface Straw- dren to be creative, and living a life berry children’s book series has in the arts. Edited by Corinne Steinbrenner TOWEY: You were an acting student at Boston University in the 1980s. Are there things you learned at BU that are still important in your everyday life as an actress? MOORE: Absolutely. I had a variety of sources to draw from while I was there. Different techniques and methods were taught each year, and the one thing that I came away with is that there is no one method to acting, to performing. You have to find it yourself. You spend four years with some teachers you really respond to, and then there are other teachers whose methods you don’t respond to. At the end of the four years, you realize what you like and what works for you. So, absolutely, there are things that became fundamental to my acting. TOWEY: I was thinking about how, especially having children in college myself, so much of a person’s education depends on what you bring to it as a student. I don’t know if all students realize the responsibility they carry when they go to university and how important it is for them to make choices and open themselves up to possibilities. MOORE: I don’t think they do. I was at BU not long ago and spoke to some acting students. I talked about what was expected of them when they got out of school, but I think they should require those same things of themselves PHOTOGRAPH!BY!MATTHEW!HRANEK Summer 2012 BOSTONIA !" 442-45_BostoniaSummer12_03.indd2-45_BostoniaSummer12_03.indd 4343 55/30/12/30/12 44:29:29 PMPM GAEL TOWEY Gael Towey’s career has spanned the publishing spectrum: she got her start as a paste-up artist for Studio Books, her creative direction brought Martha Stewart Living Omnime- dia (MSLO) numerous magazine design awards (including the prestigious Towey drove the 2010 launch of “Boundless In 2010, Towey took As MSLO’s chief American Society of Beauty,” a special iPad edition of Martha Stewart part in the rebranding creative director, Magazine Editors Award Living, which won the Society of Publication of health and lifestyle Towey helped to Designers inaugural Tablet App of the Year magazine Body+Soul spearhead the launch for Design), and she now Award. MSLO has since introduced a series as Whole Living. of several magazine leads MSLO’s digital pub- of mobile apps and iPad versions of Living titles, including the lishing initiatives. and Everyday Food. sumptuous Martha Stewart Weddings. while they’re in school. I try to say it military, you were brought up all over TOWEY: The house that your character, to my children even now. When my the world. You were in a new school Charley, lived in was so 1960s, soph- daughter says, “I don’t want to do this almost every single year. Obviously, that isticated. homework,” I tell her, “Then don’t do had a big impact on how you approach MOORE: The style was very Hollywood it. Don’t do it and go in tomorrow and life. I can imagine you felt as though you Regency, yes. And George, played by tell your teacher that you didn’t want had to test those inner resources every Colin Firth, lived in a really modern, to do it and didn’t finish it.” Of course time you walked into a new school and tiny Lautner house that’s actually in that makes her very upset, but I’m just tried to make new friends. Pasadena. It’s always great to be on a set trying to ask her to take responsibility. MOORE: I did, and the thing I learned where someone has taken a lot of care By the time you’re in college, you need is that behavior is not character. in the storytelling and put real thought to say, “I’m going to take responsibility Behavior is mutable. I think that into who your character is and what for what I want to do and how I’m going when you stay in the same place, you they would have around them and what to accomplish it.” believe that behavior is a static thing, would be meaningful to them. That’s TOWEY: I think that’s true of visual that it’s part of who you are. It’s not. just fun. It fills in your story. artists, too. You have to open yourself It changes from place to place. What’s TOWEY: I want to segue to the subject up to take risks. Being willing to fail is universal is a different sort of thing—it’s of raising kids. Giving my children the important. deeper. Universal truth—something ability to learn how to be creative is a MOORE: And you have to be brave about that everybody shares regardless of huge part of my life, and it’s made my it. I talked to my daughter about this language, culture, behavior—I’m always life with my children and my husband the other day, too, because she and her looking for that within a narrative. so fulfilling. My husband is a designer, friends were all trying out for parts in TOWEY: Storytelling is such an and we share a lot. You and your hus- a play. And one little girl said, “Well, important part of our lives. In the band are both in the film business, and you can’t get your hopes up because magazine business, that’s what we you obviously have a lot in common. you might be disappointed.” And I do, and that’s obviously what you’re What do you do to make sure that your said, “No, you can get your hopes up. doing, too. children have that creative life? You should get your hopes up. You just MOORE: And you’re doing it visually. MOORE: I feel that exposure is every- have to be brave, because you might That’s something that I tell acting thing. I made both of my kids take piano not get the part, and that’s going to be students: look at the frame; don’t just when they were five. My son took piano really disappointing, and it’s going to hear the words. If someone has chosen for a year, and then he wanted to take feel terrible. But you have to be brave to frame something a certain way guitar. I said, “You can’t quit piano yet. enough to do it again, to try again.” I and placed actors within it, there’s a At the end of the year, you can decide.” think that’s what it’s about in the arts in narrative there. Or, there’s a narrative Well, he decided guitar, and he stuck general, because it’s never a sure thing. within a collection of objects in a room with it. And now he’s a teen, and he’s As a musician, as a visual artist, as an and the way they’re placed. been playing guitar all these years. My actor—you have to be able to know TOWEY: You’re a very visual person, so I daughter struggled through piano, you’re going to fail, and fail a lot. wanted to ask you about the movie sets struggled through guitar; that’s not her TOWEY: And it’s hard to find that inner you’ve worked on.