Self Esteem explains move to acting: “I felt a bit dead”
Rebecca Lucy Taylor, also known as her musical alias Self Esteem, has explained that she has moved into the world of acting because the music industry was making her feel “dead”.
Taylor, who is set to star in a West End revival of the 1975 play by David Hare, Teeth ‘n’ Smiles, opened up about her move away from music in a new interview with The Independent.
In the play, Taylor will play Maggie Frisby, a self-destructive rock star whose outlandish behaviour soon becomes a problem for her band.
The themes in the play are familiar to Self Esteem, who released her third studio album, A Complicated Woman, last year.
The artist, who said the industry made her feel “knackered” and “fed up”, explained, “When things went well for me finally, I just got distracted from the actual goal of what music is.”
This disillusionment soon took over her life. She explained, “I can’t understand being alive. It’s so mental to me. I want to understand it. I want to feel it.”
Taylor is aware of the optics of the situation, and thus the pressure on her shoulders as “a pop star trying to have an acting pivot – it’s very hairy territory”.
The star explained that she ultimately took on the role as she felt “a bit, you know, dead for a while.”
She elaborated, “Sometimes I’ve been rock-bottom depressed because of music. And I’m like, it’s just songs, though? You’ve got a f***ing roof over your head.”
In a glowing four-and-a-half star review of her latest project, Far Out observed, “A Complicated Woman presents a version of femininity that is triumphant but also flawed; the warts-and-all approach that’s often yearned for in music but never quite fulfilled. […] It’s equal parts raw, unfiltered, theatrical, ugly, beautiful, yet seductive – but simply brilliant.
Teeth ‘n’ Smiles opens at Duke of York’s Theatre in London on March 13th and will run until June 6th.
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