“I’m a Valley Girl through and through, all day every day,” says Alana Haim. So are her sisters, Este and Danielle—who, with Alana, went from writing music on their family’s unair-conditioned living room floor to signing a record deal after high school and being nominated for Grammys as the band Haim. Along the way, the Haims met Oscar-nominated Valley Boy Paul Thomas Anderson, who would become a collaborator and close friend (along with his wife, Maya Rudolph). Then one day an untitled script arrived in Alana’s mailbox—just hers. It was from Anderson. Two years later, Anderson’s mysterious Licorice Pizza arrives in theaters. Over Zoom (username: BabyHaim), the 29-year-old talks acting debuts and only-in-the-Valley connections.
AS THE YOUNGEST HAIM, “I was always their doll—and nothing has changed.”
BELIEVE IT OR NOT, Alana’s mother was also Anderson’s grade school art teacher. When the Haims told the director that, “he went into his son’s room and brought out a painting of the mountain from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He had painted it with my mother and then kept it all these years. And he was like, “I loved your mom. I can’t believe you’re Miss Rose’s daughters.”
ACTING WAS NERVE-RACKING: “Everything was so big, and I was so tiny.” But Anderson was her cheerleader. “Every time I ever felt like I couldn’t do anything, he was like, ‘You got this. Trust me, you got this.’ ”
THE HIGHLY SECRETIVE film is about “an unlikely couple that change each other’s lives in crazy ways. It’s really fun.” Alana’s costar is Cooper Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is also making his acting debut. The pair first met four years ago, when Anderson asked Alana to babysit a then 14-year-old Hoffman during a trip he made to L.A.
HER PRIZED POSSESSION is a Sisters of the Moon necklace, a gift from Stevie Nicks. “When I had to take it off for the movie, I was so sad. ‘But this is my power! Everything is in this necklace!’ ”
NEXT YEAR, Haim will go on tour again, but she ideally wants to do another film role. “I hope someone wants me to act again, but if not, if this is it, this was the biggest gift of my life.”
HAIR, MARA ROSZAK; MAKEUP, LOFTJET; MANICURE, STEPHANIE STONE. PRODUCED ON LOCATION BY LOLA PRODUCTION. FOR DETAILS, GO TO VF.COM/CREDITS.
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