One Of A Kind

SARAH PAULSON DIDN’T END UP WITH THE TYPE OF CAREER SHE DREAMED OF AS A YOUNG ACTOR. SHE FOUND HERSELF A BETTER ONE

- Leigh Belz Ray

In March, Sarah Paulson lost a whole week. She was in New York to do final photography work for the just-released Ocean’s 8, and to shoot a few days on the upcoming drama The Goldfinch. In between, the former New Yorker had plans to see some high school friends and go to the theatre. Then it happened: the flu. And just like that she was out of commission.

The actor doesn’t really stop, so the experience threw her. “I couldn’t pick up a fork,” Paulson says ruefully as she stirs her mint tea at Spring & Varick, a restaurant in New York’s SoHo neighbourhood. “Being in a hotel room and watching The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is one of my great joys. And I couldn’t even do that. I didn’t want to view it through a sad haze.”

She admits it’s “sort of tragic” that it took full physical incapacitation to force her to hit the brakes. Paulson has been booked solid for the past four years, after her work on TV series American Horror Story and her performance as Marcia Clark in true crime miniseries The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story led everyone to realise the immensity of her talent. (Her turn as Clark was so affecting that she won an Emmy, a SAG Award and a Critics’ Choice Award.)

Paulson is a shape shifter—and the kind of actor who’s always the most interesting one on screen. And finally, after she’s hustled for decades, the roles are starting to come to her. But funnily enough, the concept of being offered a part gives her anxiety. “I like to sing for my supper,” she says. “I like to go into an audition room, particularly when they think I’m not right for a part, and really fight for it. There’s something exciting and challenging about proving to yourself that you can pull it off.”