An Artful Expedition of Life and Culture with Finola Hughes

Everybody uses everybody, don't they? This is one of my personal favorite lines from the movie Staying Alive with John Travolta and Finola Hughes, as it does tend to ring true in Hollywood. But I have always believed that Hollywood is also filled with kind and true artists, and Finola fits the bill. In this inspirational new podcast episode, I chat with Finola Hughes: acclaimed British actress, dancer, director, and executive producer.  Finola takes us back to her childhood and shares how her love for ballet eventually led her to some iconic roles in the London version of Cats and the movie Staying Alive. We get a sneak peek into her creative process and her undying love for storytelling. We also delve into the profound connection between performing and understanding the human condition, a subject that Finola holds close to her heart and teaches at USC.

We candidly discuss the pressures women face in Hollywood and the burgeoning potential of the current generation to challenge these norms. In a fascinating turn, we contrast the cultural differences between Europe and America and draw parallels with the Barbie movie and its underlying message of happiness. This episode is a thoughtful exploration of art, culture, and the human condition - a must listen for all!


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Transcript

Alexia Melocchi: 0:04

Welcome to the Heart of Show Business. I am your host, Alexia Melocchi. I believe in great storytelling, and that every successful artist has a deep desire to express something from the heart, to create a ripple effect in our society. Emotion and entertainment are closely tied together. My guests and I want to give you insider access to how the film, television, and music industry works. We will cover dreams come true, the road less traveled, journey beginnings, and a lot of insight and inspiration in between. I am a successful film and television entrepreneur who came to America as a teenager to pursue my show business dreams. Are you ready for some unfiltered real talk with entertainment visionaries from all over the world? Then let's roll sound and action. I can't even believe how many amazing guests I'm having on season five of my podcast. This is a special one because it just kind of shows you how life becomes full circle. So this amazing lady, British actress, dancer, director, executive producer, we have a little weird connection that we almost met in the past because we used to work out in the same gym, think Jane Fonda kind of workout. We're talking back in the 90s. And I think it was right before or right after she did one of my favorite movies that has one of my favorite lines ever in Hollywood, which is Staying Alive, which is the sequel to Saturday Night Fever. And lo and behold, I get to meet her through this client of mine and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, life is so beautiful because some people that you're meant to meet, somehow, maybe it's not the right timing, but then you meet them over again. And so, without much ado, I have here with me, the wonderful and amazing Finola Hughes, who is an incredible British actress, dancer, and producer, she's very well known because of her soap opera career, obviously General Hospital, but you know what, she was also one of the cats in the London version of cats by the actual Andrew Lloyd Webber, and she's also directed her own movies, which I can't wait to hear about. She's been, of course, in a ton of films, including Staying Alive with John Travolta. She's a professional dancer. And we're going to talk about being women in Hollywood, the strike, God knows what's going to come out of my mouth. So, grab a cup of coffee or tea because it's English tea time, and welcome to my show, Finola.

Finola Hughes: 2:58

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much. I have my cup of tea right here.

Alexia Melocchi: 3:04

All we're missing is a scone!

Finola Hughes: 3:07

I would love some!

Alexia Melocchi: 3:09

I miss Fortnum and Mason's, don't get me going. So Finola, you started your dancing and acting experience and acting studies in London. Did you just wake up one day and say, I have to dance, I have to act, or was it something that just grew since you were a child?

Finola Hughes: 3:39

I was there as a child. I remember the moment. I think I had a lot of energy and was running around the apartment. My mother took me to look at a ballet class. It was the Sadler's Wells, which is the Ballet Ronbeir. It was just around the corner from us in Bayswater and she took me, she opened this door, basically, to this sort of below-the-street level studio. I remember this moment so clearly, and she had me look down and there were all these professional dancers there because the Ballet Ronbeir is a professional company in England, in London. I remember I was so young, I couldn't have been more than four. I remember this moment, and I said to her, I want to do that. I want to do that. Then she started to take me to see ballets and I think I started these little Saturday morning dance classes. I mean, I don't know what the performance bug is in people. Because I teach at USC now and it came up today in class. One of my students got up in front of the cameras because I teach a camera class, a performance on camera, and she did a really wonderful job with Ophelia. We're doing Shakespeare right now. And she stood up and she walked away and she said, just put me in front of some lights. I thought about that for a second. I said, Yeah, why are we here? I sort of said it to the class. Is it a trauma response that we have to perform? What is it that we need to perform? I left it hanging there because nobody could have an answer for that. And it is an extraordinary thing, where you want to perform, and I analyze it, and I'm sure that I probably shouldn't. But it's all about the human condition and how you interpret it, and how you spend your life in it. I think dancing and acting for me has been the way I want to spend my time on Earth, doing those kinds of things. And here, I am still doing it 100 years later. But there's other things along the way that make you happy. That's my bag, performing and having something to do with performance, be that directing, or teaching, or whatever it is. It's all in that sort of encapsulated world that I live in.

Alexia Melocchi: 6:33

I love that because if you're a performer you want to be a performer of all things. And I know sometimes you hear in the stories, it wasn't 42nd Street, or it was the song Everything Looks Beautiful at the Ballet.

Finola Hughes: 6:51

That's chorus line.

Alexia Melocchi: 6:52

Oh, thank you! Were you thinking about how every little girl dreams of being in a tutu and getting on stage? You chose to start with dance but you chose not to be a ballerina, although you use that later on in your career. So you transitioned into acting. Was it because you felt you could do more with that than just the dance?

Finola Hughes: 7:23

Yeah, I felt that I would have more longevity, which is true, because the life of an athlete is short, though you can still dance but not to the ability that you can when you're 25 and 30. I also felt that as a dancer, there were parts of me that I wanted to express that I would get in trouble with. For example, when I was doing Giselle as one of the Corps, the Corps de Ballet, the master of ballet, he sort of mentioned to me, You're doing too much at the back, and I was overacting because I've imagined myself as one of the willies. I was in this sort of area of the dead, these women that have been left at the altar, ostensibly, is the story. I was taking that to heart and I was like, how would I feel if I was left at the altar? I came up with all these ideas in my head and it was way too much because there was an actual lead in the ballet and I was not it. I think it stemmed from a conversation that I had with Trevor Nunn, who was the head of the RSC, the Royal Shakespeare Company in London at the time that we started to do Cats, and he directed Cats. And he gave me three words that were to be my character. He said these are the three words. I don't remember them to this day, unfortunately, but it was part of the character of Victoria, the white cat. And something clicked in me, I just thought, Oh, that's so beautiful to be able to create something out of words. And that's when my love of text and my love of just the spoken word, and everything dawned on me that perhaps there's something else to this performing that maybe I need to explore. And so I did.

Alexia Melocchi: 9:31

Now it totally makes sense why you were cast in Staying Alive. I love dance movies. I've seen The Turning Point probably 25 times, and, of course, Staying Alive, and believe it or not, I didn't see it so much because it was a sequel to Saturday Night Fever but because it was a dance film. That was my main drive and I was like, oh look at this actress. She's a great dancer. Did she have to train for it? Which, obviously, you didn't have to. I mean, you had to train but it came effortlessly to you. As I told you on our last Zoom, when we spoke, that line, how you delivered it, everybody uses it, don't they? It's done so brilliantly that I still use it as a mantra because we live in Hollywood and that's what happens.

Finola Hughes: 10:24

That is so funny, when I was doing that scene, I didn't think about the line at all. I just said it because it was in the script. And that everybody kind of hones in on that line, it's very strange. It's very interesting and it's kind of true because it does happen. I didn't know what I was doing in Staying Alive. I'm not even sure I know what I'm doing now, but there's definitely many, many decades between who I was then and now. I think that I put in my 10,000 hours. So I feel like I know what I'm doing when I approach things. Maybe the results are not to everyone's taste, but I feel like I enjoy what I do when I interpret whatever script is put in front of me. That also stems out to directing because you do pull the script apart. You do try to understand what your protagonist is going through as you're directing them. It's a similar yet different position in a similar yet different area or arena of the genre of filmmaking. I find it a very natural segue. Dance to acting was a natural segue, acting to directing is very natural for me.

Alexia Melocchi: 12:15

Not many people know, and I had this discussion with one of my best friends, Maeve Quinlan, whose been in The Bold and the Beautiful forever, we're making films together, and she was saying to me, it's so freaking hard to be in soap because you have to memorize pages and pages of dialogue. So people are underestimating many soap actors, although many of today's Hollywood stars started in soap, and that goes also with directing. If you are an actress or an actor, you're going to know how to direct. I am a producer, but if I were to give the directing to somebody on a movie, even if it was an a newbie director, like not super famous, I would choose an actress or an actor 100 times over because I know they know what they're doing and they're gonna get performances. It feels like all your steps were very fluid because you went from dancing to the soap to acting to directing. Do you see yourself as ultimately being solely and only a director? Or are you seeing more facets of yourself as you expand your consciousness and personal growth?

Finola Hughes: 13:29

I do feel that I would enjoy just directing from here on out because it uses so much of your brain and you have to come up with answers constantly. I think that I'm built that way, I like to have an answer. I also like to delegate. I'm a big collaborator. I really enjoy saying, Well, I think, maybe this way, but if you come up with something better, please bring it to me because I want to see what's ultimately the best. And because I'm an actor, I have so much faith in my actors. I never over-direct them. Once they're there and once we've got comfortable and we've gone through scenes, or whatever our preparation is, I leave an actor alone because I think as soon as that actor feels confident they come up with even more stuff. If you keep picking away at their performance, then they start to doubt themselves. It has just been my experience that yes, I might tweak a performance, I might say in this take, do you want to maybe do this, but it'll be so minimal. Normally I get that idea through something that they actually do themselves. Once you've given them the confidence that they can trust their own instincts and trust the fact that you're confident in them, I think you get really lovely performances out of actors when you leave them alone because the biggest part of being a director is casting, that's 99% of your job is to cast.

Alexia Melocchi: 15:24

Yeah, you're right. I always see producers as the orchestra conductors, because they sort of have to make sure that everything is in harmony and that there's beautiful music being created and the choice of the musicians and what kind of music are we going to perform, and I feel that the director is a bit of an architect, and it's a little sad to me. Now thank God, we have Greta Gerwig who broke old box office records to show that a woman can direct almost even better than a man in some ways. I don't want to have a Ken and Barbie moment here, but it's because we are natural nurturers. I think when there is a female director at the helm, you are able to ask the actors how they're feeling, you're able to listen to their imposter syndrome, and they can feel comfortable enough to share it with you where maybe they wouldn't share it with a male director. So do you think that it is harder for women in general, in Hollywood, to be seen in a different way than versus just the beautiful on-screen performer? Or the producer who's just a great networker, but let's leave her to do just a PR part of things. Do you think there is a lot of that still happening? Do you think it's gotten better?

Finola Hughes: 16:54

I feel like it's there. I feel that there are straight paths that men walk, and they just go. Women really navigate so many things. My daughter goes to an all-girls school, and the reason being is I never wanted her to change the way she spoke. I never wanted her to suddenly speak sweeter so that she didn't appear to be a threat. That can sometimes happen. I noticed it happening around my peers when I was at school. I realized they were doing it so that the boys in the class who were coming into their own masculinity didn't feel threatened. So then the girls became fun and that's one navigation period. The next navigation sort of area is am I safe on the street? Am I safe getting in my car at night? Am I safe walking into this room? Am I safe period? So that's another curveball. Am I safe going to college? How are you reading me? Am I coming across too aggressive? Do I have to put an exclamation mark after a sentence in an email because I'm coming on too strong? Men don't ask themselves these questions ever. They just don't. And that's okay because I'm not male-bashing at all. It's just laid out differently. It is a sort of reality. We do have to be careful. Men have to be careful also but it's just different. That's just navigating the world before we've even got into the business world, before we've even got into anything. Then there's the"good girl syndrome," and then there's the "nice girl syndrome." It's the speech that was in Barbie, am I good enough? Am I this, am I that? I can't be too much this and I can't be too much that. It's a lot to navigate and that's an actual thing that happens. Nothing was exaggerated. And it's okay because men have to walk the earth also, and maybe both of us, male and female and non-binary are all, hopefully, trying to move out of these roles that are ascribed to us. So we can sort of move out of these roles that are assigned to us by who? Who is it that assigned us these roles? Let's question those roles. I really enjoy this generation that is coming up that is questioning why do I have to be binary, why

Alexia Melocchi: 21:27

I completely 1,000% agree with you. But I struggle with that and I'm curious if you did as well because you're European as I am. So as European women, I don't do I have to fit into this mold, why do I have to be male or want to pigeonhole us or make us different, but we are more at female, why can I not be just who I am? They've done the heavy ease with our femininity. It's never been ingrained in us that in order to succeed in a certain area, in business, you have to lifting for us. I look at these young people that are moving be bitchy, and you have to be all male energy because otherwise, you're not going to be respected in a room. You can forward in the world, and I'm very grateful for the fact that go in your room, you can wear all your jewelry and not think that you're giving a message that you're either a ditz or they've cracked open this code that we are all trying to fit you're just a rich lady trying to make herself more important into. I kind of really like it. I really am enjoying these or that you're trying to find a husband. I never questioned that. I didn't even know anything about racism when I was questions that are brought forward. in Europe or religion. I didn't even think about asking people where their political views were or what they chose to believe in. It's not even a point of conversation where you judge someone based on that. I wasn't raised this way. When I came to America as a teenager, those were some shocking transitions that I had to have, even in business. I think that's what I love about the Barbie message. You said that before we pushed record, something about happiness and what got you thinking about this Barbie movie. I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Finola Hughes: 23:07

It was the acquisition portion of the Barbie movie, the Barbie house and the pink and the car and the things. That's not necessarily so much of the message, but for me, the acquisition portion of what it takes to be a woman, or what it means to be successful, I was watching that and it was taking my breath away a little bit. Then Ken now has the house because of the acquisition quota of the male-female relationship or the person-to-person relationship. It was kind of taking my breath away a little bit. I was having this discussion with my son earlier today, my oldest son, and he's just starting his first job. He's left college, and he's going into his first job next month. He came out and he was holding a shirt that he bought, and he has to wear collared shirts, not all the time, but sometimes. And he said, You know, when I start earning money, you want to dress like this, etc. And I said you can buy a $4 shirt. You can just get a $4 shirt, because you're going to need a lot of them so why don't you just buy that. He sort of looked at me and I was like because it doesn't make you the person that you're supposed to be. It's just what you're going to wear that day and you're still going to be the person you're going to be, whether you're wearing that shirt, or whether you're wearing a $4 shirt, your innate strengths are beyond what you're wearing. That being said, I'm a big fashionista and I love fashion. But what I like about fashion is the street art and the kind of rebelliousness of it. I like wearing something that says I am this. This is what I believe, and this is what I think. It's like a shorthand. So we had this discussion, and he was like, I really liked the way Brad Pitt dresses because he's a little rumpled but he's also cool. And I was like, that's really an interesting model. So I don't have an answer for any of this but I was sort of trying to move my kid away from the acquisition portion or quota of what it takes to be happy. It's a mindset, it truly is. It's a decision. I was trying to give him other ways to go into the workforce without having that be part of the measurement of what makes him a good person in the workforce.

Alexia Melocchi: 26:37

I feel that people have to ask themselves, what am I here for, what truly makes me happy, and how do I go about accomplishing that? Even when you ask yourself what makes me happy is the first answer really the truth about what makes you happy? Because sometimes, as you said, it makes me happy if I have lots of money to buy great designer clothes so that I can show power, but what does that symbolize? It's probably feeling confident. So would it be maybe the other thing beyond that, which is it will make you happy to feel confident, because if you are, you can wear street art, and you can go and be a rebel, and you can do all those things? I know you love that whole Ken in Venice situation in Barbie, one of my favorite quotes in the movie beyond, of course, the"what it takes to be a woman" was when Barbie says I want to be the imagination, not just the idea. To me, that is such a great idea. She wants to be beyond that. She does not want to be the product, she wants to be what created the product. And I think all artists, especially, like you, t we are thinking about the roles, we're imagining them, and then we're creating that and I think that's why we're all addicted. I feel that's my little psychology, self-assessment moment, we're all addicted to what we do because that's what makes us get up in the morning.

Finola Hughes: 28:22

It's the self-actualization of the imagination, creating the thing that you see for yourself. Maybe not even that you see for yourself sometimes. It's like having children. When I'm raising my kids, I ask a lot of questions. I have a really interesting middle son who is very pushy and pushes against all boundaries and questions everything. The way I can best support him is by finding areas for him to use his imagination and that often is art. I get sad when art, dance, and theater get taken away from school. It really is tragic, and it's a real shame. It's a real shame because I feel like so much of our lives as human beings can be lived in our imagination. It can be lived in imagining a better future for everyone or a better future for something or imagining a fate that you're going to throw for charity. You can imagine something really great that people are going to want to come to, they're going to spend their money, and then you can give that money to whatever your cause is. There are so many ways that imagination can be used. Producers of films see something that they want to bring to the theaters, and then they find their army to make that happen. Creative producers are just the most incredible people to have in your pocket. I just worked with some really creative producers on this last short that I did, and they supported me constantly. I'm a big talker like yourself and I think when we come from Europe, we come from a lot of talking. We do a lot of sitting around and talking. In England and London, you go to pubs, you sit and talk. We spend a lot of time with each other. I do get sad that sometimes that gets lost. We don't have town squares in America, we don't have that sort of area where you go and sit and just shoot the breeze and at the end of the day I think a lot of things get created there. Anyway, I did feel so supported by these producers. They kept communicating with me in text and email like we have this view and what about this, etc, and so there was this constant, open channel of communication. That was good imagination on their parts because they imagined what it was that I wanted to feel like, and that was supported. They came through for me.

Alexia Melocchi: 32:02

I don't know if you had that in Europe where people go, we don't even need therapy because we have each other because as you said, we can sit in a coffee shop for three hours, having tea, or whatever, and talk about life and talk about what's going on in marriage and this and that. We don't need therapy, we don't need to pay someone to listen to us, we have one another. I think that's one of the things where there's this great big disconnect. So I love the whole thing about what you said about the town feeling and the creative producers. It is so important. The same thing with artists who step out of their ego and their name brand to go and create something. This goes into the obvious and last question that I have for you, but what makes Finola feel like she's living a purpose-filled life? I know, it's a deep one.

Finola Hughes: 33:02

My kids give me purpose, for sure. Watching them succeed and fail, and watching how they deal with both of those things, that makes me feel as if I am contributing to their lives. You do want to feel as if you make a difference, as if your expertise or your take on the world has value. And my children don't always take my advice. Don't get me wrong, they really don't. But sometimes I come through with something. The other thing that gives me purpose for sure is teaching. Again, right now I'm at USC, and I'm teaching performance for camera, and even today it was a two-hour class and it flies by, it goes so fast. But watching the penny drop for actors, watching just some suggestions from me, seeing them feel it, and seeing it come home for them is just so fulfilling. It really is. And then I would say the next portion of it is when I did The Bet, there was a moment when we showed it. It was in Santa Barbara, which is where it was shot. And we had a full theater, all people from Santa Barbara. The film was for people from Santa Barbara because we shot it in Santa Barbara. And there was a moment when it was over and the film had ended and everybody started clapping. They were like really clapping what they'd seen. And I remember looking down and thinking to myself, this is it. I helped create something that has helped other people feel happy, that has helped them enjoy something. That was the feeling, that was the moment where I went, that's it right there, what I feel right now was why I did it all. I didn't know that that was going to happen, but that was the moment where I went okay, this makes sense because I helped people feel happy.

Alexia Melocchi: 35:40

That is a true definition of an artist, Finola. I think that's really what they do. They want to give a sense of being relatable to people who are going through things, or making them forget for a second about their life and being transported to another world. I so look forward to seeing your work as a filmmaker and I want to thank you for coming on the show. I'm going to end it with you giving me three words by which you like to define yourself. I know we could give ourselves 100 because we are multi-hyphenated, especially women, like in the Barbie speech. But what would be your top three words? If somebody would say who's Finola?

Finola Hughes: 36:22

I'm a good listener. I'm a collaborator. Those things I'm definitely putting out into the world, like listening is including other people, collaborating is being part of the whole. I think I'm candid.

Alexia Melocchi: 37:08

Yes, you are. If I have to add a fourth word in my own definition, as I see you and the little interaction that I had, I will say class act.

Finola Hughes: 37:21

That's very nice. Thank you.

Alexia Melocchi: 37:26

Thank you so much for coming on my show Finola, and to everybody who has been listening, you want to be an actor, you want to be a filmmaker, you want to be an entrepreneur, doesn't matter what it is you want to be, you can always learn from the Hollywood peeps. They're not just people who are just about ego. They're there to make the world a better place. Maybe if you hear what they have to say, maybe just maybe, you will have purpose or you will have a reignited purpose to go out into the world and create something beautiful because God knows we all need it. So this is Alexia, The Heart of Showbusiness, over and out. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'll catch you on the next one. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Heart of Showbusiness. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can also subscribe, rate, and review the show on your favorite podcast player. If you have any questions or comments or feedback for us, you can reach me directly at the heartofshowbusiness.com