Meet Sasha Lane: 'American Honey's' Breakout Star

A few years ago Sasha Lane was on spring break in Miami Beach hanging with her friends on the beach when they noticed they were being eyed by two older women. That pair - film director Andrea Arnold and her casting director Lucy Pardee - approached the spring breakers to assure them that there was nothing nefarious in their interest, rather they were looking for actors to star in Arnold's upcoming film and Lane seemed like a natural for the film's lead. The big question was could they convince her that they were serious.

Lane reacted with skepticism. "It is in my nature to be kind-of-like that," she explained recently on a press tour to promote "American Honey," Arnold's finished film that stars Lane as its lead that's currently in theaters. But there was also something about Arnold that connected with Lane, then a freshman at a Texas college studying psychology. "She was just sweet and had a good energy about her. That helped," she continued.

Lane invited Arnold to meet her later that night at her hotel fully expecting her not to show up. When she did, she was completely surprised. "When Andrea called, and she was outside, I was like, 'OK, she's serious.' And the next day she asked me to stay longer, and it was like, 'OK. My friends had Googled it and they wouldn't have left me if they had a bad feeling.' I just kind-of-like went with it."

A breakout performance

Where it took Lane is a critically lauded, breakout performance in which she held her own with her professional co-stars Shia LeBeouf and Riley Keough. That early skepticism appears to have informed her performance - with her soulful stares and often-belligerent manner; she's a Millennial with an attitude. Life's been hard for Star, her character, and Lane channels her pain with astounding authenticity.

Her performance centers Arnold's meandering, nearly three-hour journey across the American Midwest made by a rag-tag group of teenagers as part of a "mag crew" - teens selling magazine door-to-door in a business that is at best a scam. You sense that Star knows it's a scam, but she goes along with it even so. It gets her out of her dead-end life taking care of her two younger siblings and being abused by her stepfather. Plus she gets to go on a road trip.

In many ways Lane's performance is meta-in-nature: Just as Star had to learn how to sell magazines door-to-door, so did Lane need to learn how to learn her lines and be comfortable in front of the camera. What likely helped was that Arnold structured the two-month shoot to film the story chronologically which reflects Lane's personal journey with that of her character. She credits Arnold for guiding her through the process, which followed the rag-tag troupe through Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.

"We built this trust and this connection so it allowed me to get vulnerable and to do something that would freak me out, as far as being on camera and having the attention on me. She made it so intimate. It was built on trust... I was nervous. I am a people pleaser, and you can tell that she's amazing and I constantly wanted it to be what she wanted. I didn't want to upset her and disappoint her. That was the main thing that was making me nervous, but other than that, it was such an experience I wouldn't have wanted to get into it in any other way, any other movie or any other director."

Had camera fright

Not unexpectedly, Lane wasn't entirely comfortable when she went before the camera on the first day of filming in a scene that had her and her two screen siblings dumpster dumping in search of food. "It was weird. Robbie (the cinematographer Robbie Ryan) was in the dumpster with me, so it was, like, all right cool. But me and Robbie built a connection, so he would just dissolve, and I felt comfortable that he was there. At times I thought he was just another homie in the van with us. That connection was really important because it helped me not freak out so much."

One of the more unusual aspects of the way Arnold worked was how he cast non-professional actors to play Star's co-workers. Like Lane, the dozen-or-so teens she hired were newcomers to movie making and their experience over the shoot -mostly partying in the van and the low-rent motels they stayed at - became a way for them to bond. "We just hung out. We lived in those motels, and we were like scrunched together in that van, so there was no other option.

"And I think we were all chosen for a reason," Lane continued. "To have found a family, one that I could choose, was really amazing so I wanted to be around him. And when I got off work, and they were still at the place, sometimes I wouldn't go to bed, and they were like, 'you're Star. Come on. Hang out with us.' And I was like, 'okay.' Plus a lot of the motels had bed bugs, so no one wanted to be in them, so you wanted to hang out outside and cool off for the night."

What brings Star into this world was her immediate attraction to Jake (Shia LeBeouf), the team's best salesman and the boy-toy of the group's manager, Krystal (Riley Keough.) They meet in a big box retail store with Rihanna's "I Found Love" blasting on the sound system; once they are on the road, they hook up in scenes so intimate that it would likely leave even the most professional actresses feeling vulnerable. And talking about those scenes left Lane at a loss of words. "It's weird. It is even weird to talk about because it's like a moment. It's like when you have a moment in your life. Andrea creates that little moment, yeah."

Working with Shia LaBeouf

But she had nothing but praise for LeBeouf, whose bad boy reputation precedes him. "Yeah, it was really amazing because he let me work how I work. He didn't try to tell me how to be. He was clearly there for a reason."

What makes Lane's performance so authentic is how she brought herself to what Arnold had written in the script. "I just connected with Star on so many levels," she says. "I think I am so big into how eye contact and body language and energy speak so much more than words, so I would try and channel those feelings and I would bring my own experiences in it so I can show that from my eyes."

Arnold was so taken with how Lane developed her character that she changed the film's ending. "I don't know what is was, but it is definitely different. It is a really good feeling to be like, the way that it ended and how her life can be anything now. I feel that so personally."

For a novice to filmmaking, Lane's most trying experience proved to be seeing herself on the screen for the first time, which happened in a big way when the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this past May. (The film went on to win Arnold the Festival's Jury Award.)

"It was such a personal experience to have it on the screen in front of so many people; I felt very exposed. My soul being handed out and shared. I felt very vulnerable... Seeing it come together and having all these thoughts. I kept remembering how I felt that day and who I was. It was just a mix of so many different emotions. And everyone felt it so hard. And there was so much love. It was making me emotional."

A road trip through the American heartland

The film's most telling moment happens when Star has hitched a ride with a truck driver who is listening to Bruce Springsteen's "Dream Baby Dream." He asks her what her life dreams are, to which she answers no one has ever asked her that question before. Not yet an adult, Star is old beyond her years - a cynical observer of the America that Donald Trump is exploiting in his run for the Presidency. While Lane grew up in Texas and wasn't familiar with the locales where the film takes her, she feels she knew it even before she took the role.

"I hadn't been there to those places, but it was still so familiar to me. All those people. All the poverty, every little thing about that I know so well. That's why it is such a passionate thing, and I wanted to share this because I know this part of America. I am that kid who gets discarded and pushed off to the side. I am the one who doesn't think she has opportunities or dreams she can't even think about because no one bothers to care or give you a chance. I very much know that without ever been to Kansas."

She also thinks that it is important that Arnold should bring this world to the movie audiences that likely don't know it first-hand. "That there is a lot that people don't know and that people refuse to see. They're part of that world that should be looked at; that deserves to be looked at. And people need to be aware and emphatic and understanding and take a peek at something else besides of what they are constantly looking at."

As for her future, Lane has a couple of projects in the works, including a role in the upcoming film comedy "Shoplifters of the World" that follows what happens when a group of Smith fans takes over a Denver radio station days after the band breaks up. (It is based on a true story.) Her attitude, though, is less career-driven than free-spirited. "The way I see it about stuff like that, is that it is there, but who knows how I will feel tomorrow and who knows what will happen tomorrow and how things might change or grow? Yeah, so it's really open."

Asked about her seeming instant stardom, she was also a bit conflicted. "It's like, wow. And also I have closed my mind to it. I don't know how to deal with things being about me, but when someone gets it about the film, it's really cool. But to see all that stuff is very bizarre to me and very unreal. I can't take compliments well."

"American Honey" is in theaters.

Watch the trailer to "American Honey:"