Evan Rachel Wood: No longer ‘thirteen’

‘I was always performing and singing’
Wood’s father runs a theater in North Carolina and her mother is a stage actress, so going into show business seemed inevitable.

“I was at the theater more than my house. It’s all I knew, so it was just normal for me being at the theater all the time. On stage, off stage, it was kind of all the same to me,” Wood said. “I was always performing and singing. Never on demand, though. I would have to do it on my own. If somebody asked me to sing, I would run and hide.”

Wood has found a musical partner in her private life in boyfriend Marilyn Manson. She clams up a bit when asked about him and his interest in the film.

“He’s a big Julie Taymor fan, so he’s just excited about the whole thing,” Wood said. “He’s been very supportive.”

At the time, Manson had not seen “Across the Universe,” but Wood seemed unconcerned over how he would react to her musical chops.

It was a different story for Wood and her cast mates as they shot the film and contemplated that eventually, their performances would come under scrutiny of surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with Yoko Ono, John Lennon’s wife, and the family of George Harrison.

Wood and co-star Sturgess finally sat through a screening in the company of Starr.

“That was our dream, watching it with a Beatle, because at the end of the day, that’s who we cared about the most,” Wood said. “Hardcore fans of the Beatles can say what they want, but if we had the Beatles’ approval, we kind of felt safe. And Ringo loved it, and Yoko’s seen it, and she supports it.

“But the final one was Paul. He was the one we were waiting on, and there was a kind of hesitancy about the whole thing. But he saw the movie with Julie. Julie asked him at the end if there was anything he didn’t like, and he said, ‘What’s not to like?’ The clouds parted and the angels sang. That’s what we needed. That’s what meant the most to us.”

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