15 Heather Graham Stories as Told By Heather Graham

Heather Graham is one of our favorite actresses — a performer and creator who moves easily from indie classics to blockbuster comedies to her own semi-autobiographical stories.

She spoke last year at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival about her long career, in which she's worked with everyone from Robert Downey Jr. to Johnny Depp to Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy to Burt Reynolds. She also talked about a role that should have been hers, but she couldn't take because of her strict household.

Here are 15 Heather Graham stories, as told by Heather Graham.

License to Drive (1988)

Born in Milwaukee to an FBI agent father and children's-book author mother, she moved around a lot before going to Agoura High School, west of Los Angeles. She had a high IQ but wasn’t popular, she said, and expressed herself by starring in school plays.

"In school, I was not thought of as pretty. I had crushes on boys. They didn't usually like me back," she told told moderator Chris Gardner of The Hollywood Reporter. "I didn't really dress that well. I had kind of frizzy hair."

Her first lead film role, in License to Drive, teamed her with two of the hottest teen stars of the '80s, Corey Feldman and Corey Haim. She played Mercedes, the dream girl of Haim's character.

"I had watched Corey Feldman in Stand By Me and Corey Haim in Lucas and Lost Boys, so that just felt like such an exciting moment — I got to hang out with these people that I idol worshiped. And I had a crush on Corey Haim," she told Gardner.

She was also struck by the drugs on set: "I was super sheltered, and hanging around with kids my age that were doing lots of drugs — that was new for me, because I wasn't very wild like that," she said.

She joked that getting cast in Licensed to Drive won her new attention from her Agoura Hills classmates, who wondered, "should we have been paying more attention to her?"

Heathers (1988)

One role she was offered — but couldn't take — was Heathers.

“I got offered it, but that’s when I was living at home with my family… and my parents read the script and told me I couldn’t be in it,” she said. “I was very sad and later regretted that, but they would’ve kicked me out of the house if I was in the movie.”

Her household was so restrictive that she had to sneak R-rated movies during babysitting gigs, including Fast Times at Ridgemont High, she recalled.

Drugstore Cowboy (1989)

Soon she moved out of her parents' house and signed on to Gus Van Sant's indie classic Drugstore Cowboy, in which she played one of four young addicts who rob pharmacies. Van Sant wasn't yet well-known.

"I was really sheltered. I had no friends that were doing those kind of drugs. I auditioned for it, and he'd never done any movies. Well, he did do like a $20,000 movie — Mala Noche. I auditioned, I got the role, and at this point, I wasn't living with my family anymore, so I had total freedom to take whatever jobs I wanted. It was really amazing. I started supporting myself when I was 17, from License to Drive."

She was "very grateful" for Drugstore Cowboy, which arrived at the start of a "wave of independent filmmaking... an exciting time," she noted. She was also impressed by her castmates' taste — "I remember James Le Gros reading Bukowski, listening to Tom Waits — nobody in my high school was listening to this kind of music or reading these kind of books."

She was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Drugstore Cowboy, which led to more roles for which she didn't have to audition.

"As an actor, you're driving around in your car, going on all these auditions, and you bring these different outfits, and you're changing, and you're trying to get people to hire you — and I started to get offers. So that was pretty great." she told Gardner.

Swingers (1996)

Graham met Swingers writer and star Jon Favreau when they worked on another project. "He said, 'I have this movie. I want you to be in it," she recalled.

To prepare for the role, the two would go swing-dancing at L.A. '90s hotspot The Derby: "We practiced the dancing, and he had a convertible and we'd drive home after and be, like, really sweaty, and I got really sick actually, because we were rehearsing and then driving home in the cold," she recalled. "I felt really grateful that I was in that movie. And also when I got to learn how to swing dance."

The movie's budget was so low that they shot at a bar filled with regular patrons, not extras. "We were very incognito the whole production," she recalled. At one point someone at the bar starting hit on her and she had to explain that she was there shooting a movie.

Two Girls and a Guy (1997)

"I like independent films," Graham told Gardner.

Among the '90s indies she signed up for was Two Girls and a Guy, in which she and Natasha Gregson Wagner play women who are both dating Robert Downey Jr.'s two-timing character.

It came at an interesting point in Downey's career.

"That was right around the time that he just had been doing a lot of drugs, and I think he was being tested like almost every day," Graham told Gardner. "This was before he became the massive success he is today. He was famous, and everybody knew who he was, but he was going through like, a rocky period. But he's a super charismatic person. He's such an interesting, cool, charismatic guy.

Boogie Nights (1997)

Graham became perhaps best known for her role as Roller Girl, an optimistic, open-hearted teenager pulled into the world of adult films in Boogie Nights.

"I had the script, and I think they were out to like a bigger name, waiting to hear back," Graham recalled. "But big people were in it — Julianne Moore and Burt Reynolds had been cast. And I just remember thinking this group brilliant.

"At that time, the subject matter was pretty taboo," she recalled.

She thinks the famous actress who had been offered the part was spooked by the "controversial subject matter," and so she scored the part.

More on Boogie Nights

Graham wasn't intimidated by the sexuality of the role.

"I just thought, you know, this is great writing, and it's about these people that try to form this dysfunctional family within this world. And I just wanted to be in something good. I just like watching stuff like that. I don't judge it. It's kind of separating myself from my kind of religious, judgmental family, and just deciding, like, I thought it was okay. I thought it was good. I wanted to do it.," she told Gardner.

She said writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson was very energetic and encouraging.

"He's really passionate," she said. "I mean, he was very young at that time. He was maybe 26 I was 26 too. He was like, 'You're gonna be so brilliant!"

Thouugh she remembers Burt Reynolds occasionally clashing with the director, she looked up to Julianne Moore: "I have been around a lot of actors who seem kind of unstable, and she is very she keeps it together. She really seems like she's got a really good head on her shoulders."

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

After Boogie Nights made her a star, "suddenly people wanted to be on magazine covers and things like that," she said.

"I was getting offered a movie with Like Mike Myers that I didn't have to audition for at all. I was getting more money."

She was "definitely excited" about playing Felicity Shagwell in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, she recalled. Myers, she said, was "very hard working" and would constantly make the crew laugh. "He loved making people laugh," she said.

She also loved working with director Jay Roach: "He's one of the nicest people I've ever met in Hollywood. He's just very cool. He's sweet. He's been married to Susannah Hoffs for like, 30-plus years. He's not egotistical. He's a very good person."

Bowfinger (1999)

Her next comedic role was Frank Oz's Bowfinger, with comedy icons Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy.

"I grew up also having a crush on Steve Martin. He's obviously brilliant," she said. "And I watched Saturday Night Live, and of course his films. It was just exciting to work with him, and Eddie Murphy, of course, and Frank Oz, who, you know, was part of the Muppet Show, which was one of my favorite shows as a kid. And it was just a really funny script. And I got to be so silly."

One of her favorite parts of the role was playing a manipulative actress who adopts a fake accent:

"It's just this horrible accent," Graham laughed. "And I just thought it's funny to put on this fake accent to try to seem sexy or interesting."

From Hell (2001)

One of Graham's most underrated films is Albert and Allen Hughes' From Hell, in which she plays a London sex worker on the run from Jack the Ripper.

Gardner asked her about a curious habit of her co-star, Johnny Depp: wearing an earpiece while he shot his scenes.

"I guess he maybe he got this from Marlon Brando, because I guess Marlon Brando had trouble remembering his lines, so he had an earpiece wired into his ear, and people would feed him his lines. So I think Johnny Depp worked with him, and he decided to get an earpiece, and he had to have the whole set wired for him to have this earpiece, right?" Graham laughed.

But Depp didn't need the earpiece to remember lines: "He was just playing music while he was acting in a scene," she said, adding that she remembered it being jazz.

Asked if she has any weird actor quirks of her own, she said no: "I mean, I like to do yoga in my trailer."

From Hell is on our list of the Best Serial Killer Movies of All Time.

Sex in the City (2002)

Graham was a superfan of Sex and the City when she was asked to cameo in its fifth season as... herself, Heather Graham.

"I've probably watched it seven times. Every episode," she told Gardner. "I'm obsessed with all of them, so to get to be on the set was incredible."

When Graham's friend Nadia Dajani appeared on the show, Graham delighted at the chance to appear alongside her.

"Sarah Jessica Parker was very cool," Graham recalled. "I asked her about wearing heels, and how do you do it? Because I find them very painful. And so then she gave me this gift to get a foot massage afterwards. Really sweet. Like a wrap gift for a cameo."

She added, "that show meant a lot to me, because at that time, women weren't really having shows [about] single women in their 30s and 40s having a fabulous time, not needing to get married to feel good about yourself."

The Hangover (2009)

Graham looked back with surprise at how Ed Helms was the best-known member of the core Hangover cast when the movie was made. It would also make stars of Zack Galifianakis and Bradley Cooper.

She took the role in part because she liked The Hangover director Todd Phillips' comedy Old School, and is thrilled to be part of a comedy franchise that remains popular today.

"it's really fun to be part of a movie that pretty much everyone goes to see," she said. "And I feel really grateful to be part of these movies that really people are still watching, however many years later,

Half Magic

Graham began writing and directing her own films with Half Magic, about three women who meet at a “Divine Feminine" workshop and commit to improving their love lives by dating “good guys only.”

"I just felt like it's fun to watch, for me, women's stories and female storytelling," she told Gardner. "I was missing that as an audience goer and as an actor, and I just wanted to create an opportunity to be part of a story that I felt was something I wanted to be in."

Critic Amy Nicholson noted in a review for Variety that "Graham’s dialogue is a master class in macho mind-warping where creeps use the language of female empowerment to get what they want."

Chosen Family

Graham's latest film, Chosen Family, was released last year and stars Graham as a iyoga instructor who forms a close-knit inner circle.

“I wanted to tell a story about how people can grow up in a dysfunctional family and how sometimes you can get attracted back into those dynamics that you hate, and why are we drawn to sometimes the things that we don’t want to be drawn to? And just this idea that sometimes your friends can be your family. I feel like my life has been like that," she told Gardner.

More on Chosen Family

She also gave the San Luis Obispo audience a quick primer on getting funding for female-fronted projects:

“As I got into being a producer, writer and director, I did understand more about the financial stuff,” she said. “And I really understood that when you get the money for a movie, they go, ‘Well, this is what this person’s worth.’ And they won’t make the movie unless somebody is worth this much. And basically, men are worth more than women. They’re telling you: You can’t make a movie unless there’s a male name.

She said that by casting herself and Julia Stiles in Chosen Family, she got they money she needed to make the film — “but we didn’t get as much money as if we would had gotten a very famous man.”

Liked These Heather Graham Stories as Told by Heather Graham?

You might also like our other coverage of her talk at the 2024 San Luis Obispo International Film Festival, where she received the fest's King Vidor Award, or this list of Rad '80s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember, featuring, of course, License to Drive.

And while Heather Graham. didn't talk much about her role on Twin Peaks (above) in SLO, you might enjoy these words of wisdom from the show's co-creator, David Lynch.

Main image: Heather Graham in Bowfinger.