Lassez, Sarah

views updated

Lassez, Sarah

PERSONAL:

Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada; immigrated to Australia, then to the United States; daughter of Jean-Louis (a computer scientist) and Catherine (a computer scientist) Lassez. Education: New York University, B.F.A.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Dan Strone, Trident Media Group, 41 Madison Ave., 36th Fl., New York, NY 10010. E-mail—sarah@sarahlassez.com.

CAREER:

Actress. Has appeared in movies, including The Still Point, Colosimo Film Productions, 1985, Roosters, IRS Releasing, 1993, The Foot Shooting Party (short), Buena Vista, 1994, Malicious, Republic Pictures Home Video, 1995, Nowhere, Fine Line, 1997, The Blackout, Trimark Pictures, 1997, Alexandria Hotel, 1998, The Clown at Midnight, Fried Film Group/Hallmark Entertainment, 1998, Sleeping Beauties, 1999, The Gold Cup, Full Circle Studios, 2000, The Sleepy Time Gal, Antarctic Pictures, 2001, In Pursuit, 2001, Rien, voila l'ordre, Wallworks, 2003, Until the Night, Pathfinder Pictures, 2004, Brothel, Mount Parnassus Pictures, 2006, Mad Cowgirl, Cinema Epoch, 2006, Fade, Klondike 5 Productions, 2006, and LO, 2008; appearances on television include the movies Midnight Runaround, 1994, The Shaggy Dog, American Broadcasting Companies (ABC), 1994, The Ultimate Lie, National Broadcasting Company (NBC), 1996, and The Outfitters, Sundance Channel, 1999, an episode of Party of Five, Fox, 1994, the ABC Afterschool Special "Educating Mom," ABC, 1996, the pilot Hollywood Confidential, United Paramount Network (UPN), 1997.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Best Actress, Annual "B" Awards, 2007, and Best Performance Award, Silverlake Film Festival, both for Mad Cowgirl.

WRITINGS:

(With Gian Sardar) Psychic Junkie: A Memoir, Simon Spotlight Entertainment (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sarah Lassez has been a working actress since the 1980s, and is best known for her role as the title character in the indie cult film Mad Cowgirl, for which she has won several awards. Born in Canada to French parents, she spent much of her childhood in Australia, where she obtained a regional accent. Moving to the United States when she was fourteen, she settled in New York, New York, where she attended the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. After graduation, she decided to move to Hollywood, where she landed her first big part in the 1993 film Roosters, winning some critical attention for her role.

After her initial success, Lassez's career stalled, however, and her autobiography, Psychic Junkie: A Memoir, relates how she turned to a number of psychics to comfort her about the future of her professional and personal lives. Lassez talks about how a promising start in show business quickly turned sour. Once described in a newspaper as one of the promising actresses to watch, it was not long before she found herself, at thirty years of age, unemployed and struggling to pay the bills. Lassez tells about how she located a psychic named Aurelia and became addicted to the optimistic predictions she received. Aurelia kept telling the young actress that she would meet the man of her dreams. When these visions did not come true, Lassez began calling phone psychics who charge five dollars per minute for their unreliable services. Lassez, who describes herself in the book as an obsessive-compulsive, eventually realized that the psychics were not helping her at all. She consulted a licensed psychiatrist, who prescribed the medication Zoloft, which seemed to do Lassez some good.

In the opinion of a Kirkus Reviews contributor, much of the text seems one-dimensional, but the actress "manages never to take herself too seriously" and provides some "hilarious" episodes. While Entertainment Weekly critic Mandi Bierly felt that it may be hard for some readers to get invested in the book because "the stakes never feel high enough," she nevertheless found that moments in the memoir were "engrossing." A Publishers Weekly reviewer found Lassez's obsessions over getting a boyfriend to be "tedious," but noted that parts of the book form a "lively, tongue-in-cheek ‘addiction’ memoir."