The messages started over a year ago. “The title cracked me up,” my film-loving friend Matt texted me, along with a tweet announcing a new musical called Ann Lee, starring Amanda Seyfried and directed by Mona Fastvold, about an 18th-century leader of the Shaker movement. Why would such innocuous film news delight him so much? Well, because my name is Ann Lee too.
“Yes! Fame at last!” I replied. I’ve answered in a similar vein to all the messages since then from other friends eager to break the news to me that my name was getting top billing in a prestigious Hollywood film. And I was genuinely amused and excited; for most of my life Ann Lee had seemed the beigest of names. Lee, or Li as it’s also spelled, is one of the most common surnames in the world and shared by more than 100 million people in Asia. I was sure there were many many Ann Lees out there. But when you get a film title dedicated to it? Now that’s when you start to feel your name might be special after all.
The title became The Testament of Ann Lee, and it’s a musical brimming with as much verve and bold ambition as its heroine, who struck out on her own from humble beginnings in Manchester, the daughter of a blacksmith, determined to conquer America with not much more than her Christian faith, dogged belief in gender equality, and a small group of devoted followers. Fastvold co-wrote the script with her partner, The Brutalist director Brady Corbet, and there are excitable whispers that Seyfried could make the best actress Oscar shortlist.
I’ve Googled my name before to see what other Ann Lees are out there, and my search returned paltry results. The other claim to fame my name had in the past was that it was shared by a 90s singer best known for the Eurodance hits 2 Times and Voices. Now when I Google my name, I get pages and pages about The Testament of Ann Lee. It’s clear this Ann Lee will now be seen as the definitive one.
When I was invited to watch a preview screening that would be followed by a Q&A with Seyfried and Fastvold, I accepted straight away. On the night, I gave my name to the PR who was checking off the guest list. “Hang on, what did you say your name was again?” he asked. I laughed and told him how glad I was that people would finally learn how to spell my name correctly. You might think it wouldn’t be hard to mess up a name as simple as Ann Lee but you’d be wrong. I’ve lost count of the number of times people have spelled my name Anne or called me Anna or thought that Ann-Lee was my first name.
My friend Branka likes to remind me of the time we went to a press preview of an exhibition and I gave my name to the person at the reception. “Ham Lee?” she asked, confused. Clearly I need to learn to enunciate better. And being a film journalist, I’ve had many people “jokingly” ask over the years if I’m Ang Lee, the Taiwanese director who made Brokeback Mountain, a question I respond to with a forced smile and internal eye-roll. Yes, we’re both Asian with similar names. Hilarious. I certainly didn’t make a point of it when I interviewed him back in 2017.
When I finally watched The Testament of Ann Lee I was swept away by its animalistic fervour, thundering dance sequences and composer Daniel Blumberg’s rousing songs (Shaker hymns turned into genuine folk bangers). Seyfried is ferocious in her depiction of “Mother Ann”, a woman so disgusted by sex that she eschews it entirely and makes celibacy a core component of her new religious sect. Instead of sex, she and her followers indulge in ecstatic dance. They beat their chests like drums, they sway like branches in the wind, their faith pulses like a heartbeat in their bodies.
Despite some wonky Mancunian accents among the cast, I found Fastvold’s surreal approach to Lee’s story hugely compelling, although I would have liked to see some aspects of her life and religion examined in more depth. I was relieved, though, that my film, as I had started to call it, was actually good, and that my name wouldn’t for ever be associated with a turkey. For every Inside Llewyn Davis, Erin Brockovich and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, there’s a John Carter or Gigli not far behind.
During the Q&A, I couldn’t help but gaze at my name plastered across the screen behind the cast and crew in giant letters, the name I’ve been writing ever since I could hold a pen. It was hard not to get a kick out of seeing that same name now celebrated on such a large scale. Even though the film is about someone else, the name still belongs to me.
I imagine there aren’t many Donnie Darkos, Ferris Buellers or Forrest Gumps in the world but what about all the Charlie Wilsons, Michael Claytons or Sarah Marshalls out there? Were they as excited as I was to have their name featured in a film title? Or were they teased about it? Does having the name Bridget Jones mean navigating a lifetime of jokes about big knickers, your diary-writing skills, and whether you’re team Darcy or team Cleaver?
One person who shared what it was like to share their name with a film was John Wick, a businessman from Wisconsin who died last year. His grandson, screenwriter Derek Kolstad, had named the fictional dog-loving hitman played by Keanu Reeves in the John Wick film series after his grandfather. Wick told Wisconsin Life in 2024 that “it’s been a lot of fun” having a franchise named after him, but that he never watched any of the films as he was hard of hearing.
Sinners actor Michael B Jordan recently opened up to Jesse Plemons, in one of Variety’s Actors on Actors videos, about what it was like growing up with the same name as Michael Jordan, the basketball superstar. “Your name is important. It’s how you introduce yourself … and how the world responds to you,” he said. “But when there’s another guy out there who’s the guy, I think it created a healthy chip [on my shoulder]. Of wanting to be competitive … Wanting your own identity in a way … I wanted to be great at something, and I didn’t know what it was going to be … I just wanted to be great at it.”
Will sharing a name with Lee, “the first American feminist”, as Fastvold described her to the New Yorker, spur me on to greater things? Only time will tell. Lee might now be the definitive Ann Lee but there’s still time for me to forge my own path to glory – I think that’s an aspiration she would have approved of.
• The Testament of Ann Lee is out in UK cinemas on 20 February.
