Lewis is the scruffiest female musician I’ve ever seen, and certainly the scruffiest actress. After a slew of successful films, she turned her back on Hollywood to pursue music, the career that, she says, she was always meant to follow. She could meet anyone in Hollywood she wanted, but, she says: “Even if I had the career of Nicole Kidman, it would not fulfil me. It’s not what I was meant to be doing. My quest was never to be a mainstream studio movie actress.”
She has been on the road in Europe with her band, the Licks, for the past month, sharing a tour bus with seven blokes and doing the odd push-up for exercise. Life in music is proving easier than life in movies. Lewis yowls in a voice that sounds like a jazz tomcat on 20 Marlboro Red a day. “I mean, look at how we are doing the interview. I’m in my pyjamas! This is brilliant for me.”
Her band, made up of diverse male musicians — from Jason, the drummer, a pretty former Gucci shop assistant, to Paul, the bassist, a middle-aged, black-clad industry veteran — cover every genre from experimental hardcore to 1970s soul. And she leads them, make no mistake about that: “I’m the unifying influence. I’m the spearhead.”
Between the five of them, they have come up with a tight, punky rock’n’roll set, and it looks as if they are doing okay. Liam from the Prodigy likes them so much, he worked with Lewis on his new album. The crowd appeared to be pretty happy in Wrexham that night, as she growled and danced like a jerky latter-day Iggy, but she says it was quiet compared to Manchester, where the rock kids went “insane”.
Lewis comes from boho Californian stock, divorcing her parents at 14 to evade child-labour laws and start acting. Cult films — Kalifornia, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Cape Fear, The Basketball Diaries and, of course, the lunatic female lead in Natural Born Killers — followed, as did a 3-year relationship with Pitt. When they split, she went wild on cocaine. That time, she says, “was really damaging for me internally”. But she picked herself up, moved to Florida, kicked the habit and went back to Hollywood. No biggie. Now, she says: “I never get drunk. I don’t like the idea of losing control. My rock escapism days are behind me. I sometimes smoke when I write, but never more than two cigarettes a day.” American Spirit, obviously.
Back in Hollywood, Lewis sought out Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes, the patron of the independent rock female (Christina Aguilera, Pink and Courtney Love have all worked with her). They wrote two songs together and Lewis was off. She put together a band, started gigging, and here she is, a year later, in Wrexham.
Lewis admires my jacket. She has never had a stylist, a dietician, a personal trainer or an interior decorator. “That’s how I style myself,” she says, “by looking at other women.” Her stage outfit could have come from Camden market: white boots worn down to metal at the heel, black drainpipes, sweat-drenched red shirt and white tie. She crowd-surfed. “You’re f***ing awesome, Juliette,” some guy kept shouting, but she ignored him, apart from a dismissive “Really? Thanks”.
More interesting to her are the girls whom she greeted with a handshake after climbing into the audience. She has the makings of an icon for the new, anarchic generation of teenage girls who love their Fender guitars and have attitude, like Peaches Geldof. But then Lewis has been an icon of alternative womanhood since the early 1990s. The raft of difficult characters she played always showed women in something other than clichéd roles. She stood out in Hollywood because, as she says, “you never normally see a woman show emotions like rage, apathy or greed in movies”.
In that uneasy way of interviews, we continue to “talk”. She describes herself as “a California girl who likes pools and sunshine”, but she hardly conforms to the beach-girl paradigm of the silicone-tits state. She puts on a sultry, honey-soft voice to illustrate what she calls the pornification of society: “‘Let me have my hair white blaaaande, with extaaaynsions and glaaaaawssy lips.’” Then she rasps: “I could go crazy about plastic surgery. Noooo! If you put something so insane in the culture enough, you will make it normal (she affects a hypnotic voice) — ‘It’s nothing, no big deal, you are improving yourself.’ You know, I’ll wear gloss like the next girl. I don’t have to march around with hairy armpits, like I did when I was 15. Then, I was, like, under protest about man-made, bullshit sexuality. But break your nose for a cuter face? No! You have to find other priorities than your appearance.”
I say that my attitude to looks and sex changed when I turned 35. She says, at 31: “Celibacy is my new thing. I’m really into feeling everything, trying to confront my feelings that could be sexual desire or sublimation; trying to use anger in artistic ways.” Celibacy certainly fits with her lifestyle — she is touring and working nonstop. “There is no other way. Hard work is something I committed to. I was all free (of men) in the past 10 months, I was like, ‘Life’s great, I don’t like anybody.’” Work becomes your boyfriend, I venture. “Yes! I was feeling great until I started liking someone just before I went away, and now I dream of a vacation.”
Has she had therapy to get her to a better-adjusted place? “Well,” she says, slightly sarcastically. “You must know I am a scientologist?” I do. There is a big, throaty laugh, hollow and heartfelt: wry recognition of the fact that, “obviously, my public image is totally amiss”. She thinks her image as Hollywood’s biggest fruit loop is ridiculous. She seems pretty regular to me — living in LA near her family, doing her own dry-cleaning, wearing jeans and T-shirts. “Isn’t that the dumbest realisation? That I’m just a normal person.” She patiently explains: “The counselling within scientology is one-on-one talking, and it just so happens, it works. It made me more compassionate.”
Anarchic even about being anarchic, Lewis does not hold herself up as a role model. Asked if she thinks she presents a better model for fruitful female living than Jessica Simpson, she says: “Jessica Simpson could be a valid role model, in that she is really pursuing her goals, you know — valid for somebody else, anyway.” What could pass for mild sarcasm here is actually the right sort of humility and wisdom about freedom of expression. “I’m not going to slag off actresses. There’s a lot more freedom for women now to be what they want. But it would be great if young girls were to find me inspiring in some ways. I don’t mind the responsibility now.”
You’re Speaking My Language by Juliette & the Licks is out on May 16 (Hassle)
