Hi Maria, how are you? Busy day?

Yes, it’s been crazy busy, but with all the Brits I talk to, the only thing I wanna talk about is Brexit. So let’s not talk about me, let’s talk about you and the state of your economy.

OK. What was your first impression when you heard the news?

Well, I thought it was insanity! Just like I think Donald Trump running for president is insanity. Most British people I speak to here don’t seem to think it’s a good thing. How about you?

Well, we’re trying to look for a positive side.

Is there a positive side?

We need you to tell us that there’s a positive side.

I don’t know. I wish I could tell you. That’s what we’re trying to do with Donald Trump, but there will never be anything positive that comes out of that gentleman’s mind, mouth, anything. If he became president, I was gonna move to the UK, but now I’m not sure.

You must have some European family connections?

My father’s family are from Italy, and my mom’s is from Poland, so maybe I can scoot over to Rome or Warsaw? Let’s focus on something like horror films and cheer ourselves up!

I don’t scare easily, but Lights Out [1] had me constantly feeling that something was going to leap out at me from somewhere.

I like to explain the movie as: you’re walking through the woods on a bright, sunny day. A twig snaps behind you. You look around. You see no one there. And suddenly twigs start breaking all around you and you don’t know where it’s coming from. And for an hour and a half you’re running through the woods in the dark. That’s what it feels like to me.

You have done quite a few horror films in your career. Are you a fan? Did you read your son [2] The Human Centipede rather than The Hungry Caterpillar at bedtime?

My thing with this genre – I’m not really into it. I think the last horror film I saw was The Exorcist, as a kid. I don’t like bloody, gory things. But if it’s a good character, then for me it doesn’t matter what genre it is.

Your character in Lights Out could be haunted, or she could just be mentally ill.

If you take away the horror aspect of this movie, I really believe it could play as a family drama. I play this mother who’s in the midst of depression, off her meds, on the verge of a psychotic breakdown and it affects her children. For me, that was pulled from real-life experience: not being able to get out of bed for three months at a time and not being able to see reality as it is.

How did you deal with it in real life?

I’m not sure if you read my book that came out last year [3]?

Forgive me.

Now you’re just going to have to run out and get my book! In it, I talk about the gift of bipolar disorder I had to struggle with when I was younger. And that really informed how I played this character. I feel fortunate in that I was able to put something on the screen in a real way that came from my gut, and my own experience. It’s something we don’t really talk about. I’ve never liked issue films. This is a horror film, but you do see the struggle a family goes through with mental illness.

Your son in the movie [4] looks genuinely terrified at times. How do you do that? William Friedkin used to fire off guns to scare Linda Blair while making The Exorcist [5]. I guess that is frowned upon these days?

He wasn’t like a regular kid. He’s not a child, he’s like a little man. He’s not scared of anything! And I’ll tell you this: to be on set, it doesn’t matter if it’s a horror film or a romantic comedy, you’re always looking up and seeing 50 people standing around, chugging Coke, showing pictures on their iPhones, eating peanuts, moving lights around. So it’s never as scary as you see it, or as romantic, or as funny.

Do you believe in the supernatural?

Since I was little girl, I’ve been asking ghosts to come and visit me, and I still haven’t seen a damn ghost! There’s this hotel in Bakersfield, California [6] that I was staying in, and these two little girls are supposed to haunt the halls. Even the people who work there say they’ve seen them. So I sat up for almost two nights and put my alarm on for every hour, just so I could wake up and see the kids. And I was, like, praying: “Please come out! I’m not afraid.” Nothing. So if you know anything supernatural, please send it my way.

OK, what are you scared of?

I used to be terrified of snakes when I was a kid. I had a nightmare about a snake. It came out of my wall in the bathroom. After that, if I saw a snake, even if someone was holding one on the street, I would get down on my back and start screaming bloody murder and go into shock. So when I was 28, I was going off to Africa alone for the first time, I did snake therapy. For two months, I had to carry around a rubber snake in my bag. And I had to go to the zoo and every time I had to walk a foot closer to the cages of the snakes. So I finally go to Africa; I don’t see one goddamn snake!

So you don’t know if the therapy worked or not?

The fear has gone away, but if one appeared right now I would have a heart attack. If I know one’s there, then I’m OK with it.

Does it have to look exactly like the rubber snake?

Yeah, my rubby-bubby snake. I carry him everywhere I go.

You’re fearless in other ways, though. Like admitting that you recently “drank a bottle of red wine, smoked a million cigarettes and watched an entire season of Outlander in one night”. Outlander?

It’s so good! It’s like a fantasy soap opera that goes back in time - between Scotland in the 1700s and the 1940s.

Was it like you were drunkenly channel-surfing one night and it just came on?

No! My mother told me to start watching it. I love TV and I go on binges. I’m really into BBC shows. Happy Valley is one of my favourite shows ever – binged on that – and Last Tango in Halifax - Sarah Lancashire is amazing. Now I’m watching a British show called Utopia [7]. Have you seen it? It’s so good. Episode four is not on YouTube though, so we have to order the whole series.

Even braver, you wrote a very honest letter in the New York Times a few years ago [8] talking about your relationship with a woman, and how your son’s father [9] was still part of your family setup.

The truth is, I wrote that out of a place of celebrating my modern family. It had nothing to do with having sex with a man or a woman. It was about creating family and questioning the idea of “partnership” and “family” and what those meant. And the letters I received afterwards weren’t particularly about sexuality, they were about modern families. People saying: “My ex-husband lives in the back house, and my best friend lives in the bedroom next door, and we all take care of my children.” You have many partners in life, not always just the person you’re having sex with. Fifty percent of the world is single. Does that mean they don’t have partners?

The subtitle of your book … the one I haven’t read … is: “Questioning the labels we give ourselves”.

That came from my son. With this new generation, labels don’t really seem to fit. I asked him, do people his age come out as gay, straight, bi? He’s like: “Whatever mom. Nobody cares.” And I like that idea that nobody cares. Nobody cares what religion, what colour you are, who you’re sleeping with. There’s so much going on in the world right now because of labels.

You also wondered in your article how your announcement would affect your career. Any answers yet?

The funny thing is, I’ve been working more than ever. Hollywood is much more open, I think. My book seemed to come out at a tipping point, when a lot of young people were saying they were fluid in every way as as well. I can’t say my career has changed much, except that it’s getting better and better.

FOOTNOTES

[1] You can only see the monster when it is dark. As soon as you turn the lights on, it has gone. Turn them off again and it’s come a little closer. Turn them on, it’s gone. Turn them off, it’s RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU!

[2] Jackson, aged 15.

[3] Whatever … Love Is Love, published 2015.

[4] Gabriel Bateman, aged 11.

[5] Friedkin only used blanks, not real bullets. He claimed he got the idea from George Stevens, who did it on the set of The Diary of Anne Frank.

[6] The Padre Hotel. Said to be haunted by the ghosts of guests who died in a fire and committed suicide. Poltergeist activity has been reported there, and there’s a handprint on a wall that doesn’t wash off.

[7] Channel 4’s “channel-defining, strikingly original” sci-fi thriller. David Fincher was planning a US remake but the project was cancelled.

[8] Entitled ‘Coming Out As A Modern Family’. Bello announced she was in a relationship with media executive and old friend Claire Munn. They are no longer together.

[9] Producer Dan McDermott.