Ethereal Beings with Bridget Gao
Interview by Michelle Grey | Introduction by Lila Daly-Hyatt | Photography by Steph Pedersen
Chinese-Australian actor, model, and musician Bridget Gao finds herself in the bridges between the everyday and the dreamlike. Gao, currently based in New York, has spent the last few years starring in Super Pumped alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Strife with Asher Keddie, while also releasing her debut EP, how was that for you. Weaving between creative industries, Gao dances the ordinary to its limits — a lover of magical realism, she sits with those moments of strangeness and whimsy that blend the creative process with the commonplace.
Bridget Gao chats with A-M Journal about the entanglements of multi-disciplinary creativity, the books, bought and borrowed, stacked on her nightstand, and the simple pleasure and possibility of an empty rehearsal room.
MICHELLE GREY: What are you working on right now?
BRIDGET GAO: Finishing 1Q84 by Murakami, paying off my second round of theatre school, and the next music release.
MG: If your life were a film, who would direct it and what genre would it be?
BG: In my dreams it's Charlie Kaufman's neurotic magical realism, directed by Craig Gillespie or Spike Jonze. There's some stop motion, or a portal that opens up in the wall of my living room or something. I spend 4 years deciding whether to go through it.
MG: What books are on your bedside table right now?
BG: The Employees, Olga Ravn. LIMBO by Dan Fox. A book about black holes my best friend gave me.
MG: What's your idea of perfect happiness, and total misery?
BG: Perfect happiness is a rehearsal room, and total misery is a photo studio with no windows.
MG: You're credited as an actor, musician, and model — how do each of these disciplines coalesce in your life and work?
BG: It feels like modelling is my job, acting is my vocation, and music is this rare and ethereal being that visits me every so often. I sit and wait for her. I'll do it til the day I die.
Photographer: Steph Pedersen
Stylist: Sophia Stamellos
Hair and Makeup: Vanessa Barney
Photo Assistants: Jayden Defreitas and Imogen Prince