[Annika Marks](https://www.instagram.com/annika_marks/?hl=en) is an established actress, producer, and writer in the entertainment industry… and she continues to take on ground-breaking roles. You may notice her face and name from her lead roles in independent movies _Grace_ and _Anguish,_ or maybe her role as Monte Porter in Freeform’s _The Fosters_. Regardless, Marks takes her job very seriously, and that comes with decades of experience.
Annika describes herself as “a multi-hyphenate storyteller.” She explains, “Took me a long time to describe myself that way. I would’ve just said I'm an actor for a very, very long time but at this point, I feel confident saying I'm also a writer and a producer. Beyond that, I'm also a new mom. I’m married. I come from a big family. At the core of who I am, I'm a storyteller.”
Now, Annika steps into her newest role in indie film _Killing Eleanor_, which chronicles a slew of diverse, dynamic, flawed, and relatable female characters. Celebrating their premiere at the 2020 Savannah Film Festival, which awarded the movie Best Narrative, _Killing Eleanor_ featured strong female representation behind the scenes also, with 60% of their department heads being female and all the vocalists on the soundtrack being female as well.
Beyond her work endeavors, Annika is a proud mother to an 8-month-old, describing the opportunity to bring her family to her parents’ house in Seattle as the “key to holding everything together.”
Flaunt caught up with Annika via Zoom, who normally resides in Los Angeles. Read below as we discuss her biggest influences, first big break, career challenges, being a mother, new film _Killing Eleanor_, working with her partner who directed the film, being an advocate for equality, and more!
**You reside in Los Angeles, right?**
We were in Laurel Canyon forever, where we go from here I'm not sure. The pandemic has changed everything. We moved a lot when I was a kid, so this nomadic thing is very familiar to me. \[laughs\] We were in LA for a really, really long time, so it definitely still feels like home. We’ll see.
**Who were your biggest influences coming up?**
It’s interesting, now I find myself really inspired by multi-hyphenates. That’s who I really look to, the Phoebe Waller-Bridge's and Sharon Horgan’s and Michaela Cole’s, people who are out there creating their own content. I always admire people like that. I admire their work, but also, when I start to feel like I'm hitting a wall, they're the women out there who are demonstrating you can do it all. Those are the people that keep me going.
**Do you remember your first big break?**
You know, most people would describe that as _The Sessions_. That definitely changed my career as an actor. It was a little movie that became a big movie. When that happened, people started to see me differently. But I don’t really feel like I ever had a big break. I've been one of those artists that’s put one foot in front of the other, and it's been a very long road. If there's a ladder that we've been climbing as artists, I've touched every rung. \[laughs\] It's been a whole bunch of baby steps that have led to a career, and I hope to keep climbing. I’ve also taken a lot of steps backwards to take a step forward.
**What’s the biggest challenge?**
Right now, it's balance. Being a mom, everybody says it and it's true, it's hard. Women, we've all been raised to think we can have it all. The truth is you can, but you can’t have it all in balance. You're always feeling like you're failing at something or something’s being sacrificed. I really love what I do. I want to do it not only for myself now, but for my son. I want him to grow up with a mom who’s present for him but also for her career. To me that's the biggest challenge now: I want more hours in every day.
**That's beautiful. How’s motherhood?**
Oh, it's fantastic. I’m an old mom, it took me a really long time to decide to do it. My husband, Rich and I didn't meet until we’re a bit older. We were really happy. We weren't sure we needed to have kids. He's a director. He directed _Killing Eleanor_, the movie we just made. We're so supportive of each other's careers. We thought that was enough, I think it would’ve been enough if we never decided to have kids. But it's incredible. It's the only thing I’ve ever done in my life that was an instant shift in perspective. Once you see the world in this new way, it colors everything. For me, that's been a really beautiful experience. I know that’s not always true.
**How does it feel to be balancing the acting career and motherhood?**
You know, it's complicated, I'm really fortunate I started writing. I'd been writing really seriously for a few years before getting pregnant, and I’m very lucky that it’s been my primary work as a Mom. It's something I can do from home. Rich got a gig when Skyler was 4 weeks old, so we packed up and quarantined together in Vancouver, and then flew to Winnipeg for a couple months. Then it was Willmington, Victoria, he's been working nonstop. We’re very, very lucky for that. But we knew we needed to stay together, and that meant I needed to figure out how to work whenever I could grab a minute. Breastfeeding in the middle of the night, typing with one hand. All the things they say about women being incredible multitaskers, I've been put to the test. I’ve also been more inspired than ever, more motivated than ever.
**Talk about your new film, _Killing Eleanor_. What are you most excited for?**
It's the first feature that I've made as a writer and producer, I'm also in it. And like I said, Rich directed it. I’m incredibly proud of the film and what we’re able to make together. For me, personally, selfishly, I opened the door with it that I won’t ever go back through. It feels like almost a coming out party for me as a writer and as a producer, this shift in my own identity. I feel solidly like a multi-hyphenate now.
What I’m most excited for about it being out into the world, it's a conversation starter. It's about the right to die and dying with dignity, which I think is incredibly important. It's about humanizing an addict. They’re things I really care about, and we were able to explore them with a lot of honesty and integrity without glorifying them. We were also able to find the levity, because it's all based in truth. When you base things in truth, you find the humor in things because that's what life is. \[laughs\] I hope it’s a movie people can relate to, and that it opens up conversations that people might shy away from otherwise.
**A topic as heavy as addiction, how was it playing that character? How did you prepare for the role?**
I have addiction in my family, so it was a very personal subject. Getting into it, I was writing about very personal stuff. Addiction as a family disease is how I wish it was portrayed more, because at least in my experience, that’s been at the center of it. I had to have some really honest conversations with loved ones. Beyond that, I went to a whole bunch of open meetings and did a lot of observing and listening. I tried to get in touch with a part of myself that’s the part that I wish people never saw. We all have really ugly things that we try to hide. I had to expose them. I also smoked a whole bunch of cigarettes, and I don't smoke. It made me feel gross in a way that I needed. It was a scary place to go, but I’m proud of having gone there.
**What were the highlights from shooting?**
Ah, so many. It was such an incredible experience. It was such a family experience, and that started with Rich and me making it together. My parents drove to Chicago to do craft service. It was a really connected, loving family environment. To make something that was about heavy stuff with that kind of energy behind it was incredible. We helped ourselves by hiring a huge amount of women in leadership positions.
I've been on a lot of sets as an actor, watching, right? I knew I wanted to be a writer for a long time, but I was an actor, and I did a lot of observation. I learned a lot about what I’d want to do if I ever got the chance to write my own stories and hire my own crew, and a lot about what I wouldn’t want to do. It was a chance to try to build an environment I always wanted to work in: one where people felt invited to the table, felt respected and heard. I hope we did that. We really tried to, and I hope we were successful.
**There's multiple themes in the film, which one stands out the most to you?**
Connectivity. We need people. To me, that's at the heart of what the film’s about. It's about two people who need people, and have found themselves alone. For different reasons and with different challenges. But it's a movie about connection. In order to really, truly be alive, we do need other people. That's what I was left with afterwards. You need people to make a movie too. It took a whole giant village. That's what the whole process has felt like to me: this exercise in connection.
**What do you feel when you act?**
I wanted to be a dancer as a kid. I was a very serious ballerina, but that dream went away because I was too busty. That was really a heartbreaking thing when I had to let that dream go. I turned to acting because I realized what I really loved about dance was performance. With acting, I could keep being a performer, but your flaws are what make you interesting as an actor. What's unique about us, that's all you have as an actor.
So much of dance, at least at the level I was at, it's about blending in, which I didn’t. To find a lane I could be in as a performer where standing out is your strength, I never stopped being grateful for that. There are a lot nerve-racking things that come with being an actor, like auditioning. But I try to always try to remember that the only thing you have is the thing that nobody else has, which is what is unique and often uniquely flawed about you. I tried to bring that to everything I do and be brave about it. It’s an exercise in trust, always, being an actor.
**What about when you're not acting? What do you like to do for fun?**
I'm a big traveler. I grew up in a very outdoorsy family, we're big backpackers and spend a lot of time \[outside\]. My husband and I took our honeymoon to climb Machu Picchu. Now we’re trying to figure out how to do that with a kid, which is exciting. I love to cook, I love to be around people. Covid’s been hard that way, learning how to live in a bubble has been an interesting challenge for such an extrovert. This time more than anything else has reminded me of how much family means. We found ourselves up in Seattle to be closer to family and that feels good. It's a choice I wouldn't have made without this moment in time.
**Talk about being an advocate for equality. What does that mean to you?**
I've still got a lot to learn. I'm sure I have a lot of blind spots, but to me, it's the quality I'm most concerned with instilling in my son. I'm raising a white man in this world and I’m very aware of the privilege that he's going to be growing up with, and the privilege that I’ve had. I say I'm aware of it, but I'm still trying to learn about it. I guess it’s the idea that we have more in common than we have that separates us, but that our differences make us beautiful.
The things that we value the most, we share. The things that we don't share, that are different, are things we should be curious about and want to learn about. We need to be able to talk about them. It's stuff we're all still building language around. I feel like we give this stuff a lot of lip service, but we don't seem to be able to hold it as a value. So I want to use whatever platform I have to help advocate for it.
**What are you most excited for next?**
I'm writing a ton. I’ve got a couple of TV shows in development and my husband and I have a couple more films we're trying to get off the ground. I'm excited about all of it. Working with my partner has been shockingly incredible. Getting to know each other at that level has been amazing, and now having a kid and thinking about building projects where we can all stay together, travel together, and create content together. Not that we're going to drag him into this business at all, but my fear about becoming a parent was having to sacrifice something. Realizing that there's a version of this where we get to have it all because we do it together, that's been really exciting. The stuff I'm most excited about moving forward is the stuff that keeps us together as a family.
**I was going to ask creatively, how it is working with your partner.**
It's so cool, you get to know this whole other side of this person that you love and that frustrates you. We're so lucky we both love what we do, and that we met somebody else that loves what they do so much. To know each other in this way has allowed us to appreciate each other on a level that we’d never be able to appreciate if we were just catching up on our jobs at the end of the day. Even when we're not working together now, we've developed a shorthand that for us has been a really healthy thing. I love him that much more, knowing how he works and his strange obsessive habits. But really, it’s that I get him so much more. It's exciting. He’s an incredible director and he makes me better as a writer.
**What’s your ideal date night?**
It's funny. We used to have to work really hard to not talk about work all the time, because we love our work. Now we have a kid, so we have to work really hard not to talk about parenting. We have 3 steps now to get to a conversation that’s not about work or our kid. Whenever we do that, we remember that that’s also really important. Covid date nights are different than date nights before. We used to do so much, going out to eat and for drinks. We saw so much live theater. So much of that we are not doing right now. My ideal date night is one where we find ourselves lost in a conversation that has nothing to do with our very full plates.
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