Jack Haven

Their career has been defined by a commitment to embracing vulnerability and courage, choosing roles that challenge both themself and their audience. But beyond the screen, Jack finds strength in the same ideals that their characters often embody: dreaming, staying true to oneself, and facing the challenges that come with being unapologetically real. In a world where politics and societal pressures often feel divisive, Jack’s dedication to authenticity and emotional honesty provides a refreshing counterpoint.

As an artist, Jack’s perspective on dreams goes beyond the literal. They speak of how our dreams shape us, not only as a way of escaping but as a mirror to our desires and inner truths. The ability to be true to oneself, despite the pressures of work and the volatile state of the world around us, is something Jack holds in their heart. Their journey through the world of film and television is a testament to their belief in the power of staying grounded in one’s personal vision, embracing vulnerability, and always moving forward.

Jack’s career serves as a reminder of how powerful it can be to create spaces — whether in dreams or in life — that nourish us, that allow us to grow and learn, and ultimately, to find the courage to be exactly who we are.

The day was lovely. I woke up very early, wrote down my dreams, and then did some meditation and yoga before going for a run. After that, I went to a studio to work on a script and to memorise lines for a movie I’m doing in May. It was a very constructive day.

I’ve recently started following a very strict morning routine. So, yeah, I like mornings. I feel like there’s a lot of peace in the morning.

I’m pretty good at following a schedule, I think, because I don’t have a consistent work schedule set by someone else. I’ve always had to create a schedule for myself, and I really enjoy discipline. Usually, I’m pretty good at sticking to what I tell myself to do. Especially lately, it’s been nice to do the same things every day. So, I wake up at seven, get right into it, and start by writing down my dream, which is a really exciting thing to do first thing in the morning. You have to listen deeply to what the story was, and then you get to tell yourself the story again. It’s always so wild what happens in your subconscious. Last night, I was at a gym, and I was talking to a girl. She took a photo of me with her hand. She had just had a camera installed in her hand, but she said she had to change it every week. I thought, that doesn’t seem very practical. Her hand was really flaky from all the repetitive surgeries she had to go through to keep the camera in her hand.

Yeah, usually. Sometimes it’s too deep, and it’s so frustrating when you try to remember it, but it’s gone. Your mind just keeps talking and talking, and all you want is for it to be silent so the dream can come back to you. But sometimes, it’s just gone.

That’s so funny. Did you tell the secret?

I have dreams that are more about having a lot of stuff to do. I’m talking to people, and I’m often working on some mission in my dreams, but I learn from them. I feel like I’m in some dimension going through training of some sort. My mind is teaching me what I need to know. I don’t have nightmares. I actually wish I did, because I’d love to be scared a little more. I used to have more nightmares where I had killed someone and was dealing with the guilt of it. That was a recurring theme. Then, when I was a little kid, I had nightmares about being an ant, having to build an enormous structure, and it being really overwhelming. I think that was probably just me knowing that I was going to have to live life as a kid. Now, I’m just living that dream in reality, but as an adult.

I’ve done some reading. I’ve read a bit of Freud’s books on dream analysis and a bit of Jung, and I’ve Googled, what does this mean? But I find that sometimes it’s so abstract. You just have to let the impression seep into your body and understand what you understand from it. I think often, prescribing what archetypes have meant throughout history, for example, can be a little too vague. You just have to figure it out for yourself.

I’d like to fly more in my dreams. I really enjoy the feeling of flying. I’ve done it a few times, but yeah, I’d love to fly and explore other dimensions. I’d also like to be able to control where I am in my dreams more, but I think I’m still in a place where I’m learning how to listen to my body. So, I’m not yet able to be completely free in the astral plane because I’m still clinging to my physical body. I think I’m really learning that lately. I fasted for the first time last week, and it was after an Italian wedding, so I really needed it. But I planned to do it because it was the new moon. I realised I’d never given my body a break. It was my first time fasting. I’d never given my body a day off, it was like a factory that had been working nonstop for thirty years. I realised, okay, well, this is like I’ve been compulsively responding and using this creature without really respecting it. That’s part of what I’m trying to learn. Then, maybe I’ll be able to fly in my dreams.

That’s so sweet. I feel like that says a lot about your relationship with your parents’ home, the fact that you’ve had a home created that feels so comfortable. For me, the house I grew up in feels like a ship. I always feel like I’m below deck on this crazy oceanic voyage when I’m at my dad’s house. I’ve always felt that way. I always go outside first thing in the morning when I’m at my dad’s because I’m cold all night. I’m cozy, but I’m chilly. I wake up and go outside into the morning air. My dad lives in California, so I’ll go outside, thinking, I might as well just be fully cold and outside rather than in my house. My bedroom when I was a child was in the basement, and I slept on a mouldy mattress. I had my parents redo the basement by dragging a mouldy mattress into the dirt room and saying, I’m living here. This is my room now. They were like, “Okay, fine.” They redid the walls and put up cement and everything. It was a cement room. I was sleeping on the floor. There were rats. I don’t have a totally romantic relationship with my childhood. But because of that, I can sleep comfortably anywhere. I travelled with my friend Peter, who’s in his seventies. We went to stay with his brother in Boston a couple of years ago. I was sleeping on a couch that had been there for fifty years.

I love to camp. I just went camping with my partner, Luca. We camped at a place in California called Sugarloaf Ridge. It was off-season, so we were some of the only people there. Yeah, it was so cozy. I camped a lot when I was growing up because my mum loved camping. She would go with her family; they’re a big fishing family. I went camping with a bunch of friends a few summers ago, and it rained. I ended up just staying in the tent in the rain. My body was wet, but I didn’t care. I just like being outside. I don’t really mind being uncomfortable like that. I find it really fun.

Is there a lot of camping in Spain?

That sounds horrible. Camping at a music festival sounds awful to me because you’re probably on drugs, surrounded by a bunch of sweaty, coked-out people, I imagine. It’s just a bunch of people camping. I’d want to go to a hotel or go home after a music festival. I like camping when you’re really committed to it, you go to bed when the sun goes down. Fran Leibowitz was on the cover of Camping magazine, in the 80s. She obviously would never camp in her life, but she was on the cover of the magazine because she would never say no to publicity. They took her out to camp, and she said it was six in the evening, and she was like, “Well, should we go see a movie?” They said, “No, we’re camping. You have to stay here.”

I prefer sitting on the ground in the dirt. I always have.

I just grew up like that. I grew up very much in the dirt. I feel really comfortable on the ground.

I’ve never actually had to put that to the test, so I’d probably be really upset if I couldn’t take a shower for more than a couple of days. But I’ve always imagined that if there were some kind of apocalypse, I’d definitely be a survivor, and I’d take care of my friends and family. I’d be down to go out and hunt in the city for stuff, like rats.

Yeah. So, my parents are both actors, and they were actors when I was growing up. They put me in their plays. I was in their plays even as a little baby. It was just always something I did. It was something I was always doing, a play as a kid in elementary school. The first time I did a play by myself, not with my parents, was in kindergarten. We did “Rumpelstiltskin”, and I played the title role, Rumpelstiltskin. It felt huge. It was a huge deal for me. I really loved that character. I did the wicked dance around the fire. Then I did a bunch of plays with my parents in elementary school that they were directing at the local children’s theatre. I did “Twelfth Night” with my mum, and I played Feste, the clown, which was so much fun. But I also would come home, and my mum would be there with the director of the play, and she’d tell me I had to practice my lines at home. I think that’s where my sense of discipline comes from, always being expected to do it. It was play for me, but mostly it was work from a very young age.

It was fun. I honestly had such a good time doing theatre as a kid. But I mean, Rumpelstiltskin, he’s a terrible creature. He is a wicked, wicked character. But he’s an archetype that I’m obsessed with. I mean, he’s conniving, but he’s intentional in that he wants her firstborn. He wants a life for himself. He wants a fresh start. I really like that type of wicked character.

Yeah, right, I romanticise him. I could romanticise any character. I don’t think there’s a character whose perspective I couldn’t find. Rumpelstiltskin wants the thing that’s most precious because he doesn’t have a relationship with his own source of joy. He’s like a sycophant. He wants to leech onto this new life, and he gets so much pleasure from it. It’s like the god Pan or these wicked archetypes that are dancing around the fire, celebrating that they’ve tricked the beautiful maiden because she gets her way all the time. It’s so boring.

I think so. When I’m romanticising characters, I’m not looking for them in reality. I have a very different relationship with people. Most of my friends and real relationships are with deeply kind people. They’re not archetypes. But I can romanticise characters because I know that there actually is no right or wrong way to be a human being, and that we’re guided to the choices we make by circumstance and by this very complex web of existence. I like thinking about how people got to where they are, how characters got to where they are.

I think that’s a very complex idea because, whatever the guidance of a moral code of good, the opposite will always be evil. But I think that’s up to the individual. Of course, there are heinous acts that are very human, very animalistic, and that we understand as evil because they don’t make sense to us. But deep within all of us, we have this very nuanced and ugly stew of good and evil that we’re constantly fighting against and using our shame about to define what evil is in the physical world or in our human relationships.

I feel annoyed that it’s so loud and so distracting because I think it’s just a very low vibrational, deeply unevolved, and psychically rotten parade. It’s frustrating that we’re expected to sit and listen and respond to this because it’s a waste of everyone’s time. We just won’t move anywhere. We won’t understand ourselves as a species, as it says in “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”, as the reflection of the moon on water, this projection of reality that we experience. We won’t understand what that is if we continue to allow ourselves to be distracted by addiction. If we have an addiction to this, I mean, some would call it evil, but I think it’s more an addiction to terror. It feels like a leash on us. It fuels the media machine, which has got so good at robbing us of our attention in the form of our time and our data. 

We have to figure out a way, and each individual has to do this work themselves. Obviously, some people are at an advantage, are less hounded, and are less in a constant state of danger than others, but we need to take time to create a healthy sense of perspective with reality. I’m feeling exhausted, but not really, because I feel energised, because there is a greater sense of honesty within the sphere of conversation now, at least, than there was when Biden was sitting there croaking out some bullshit. We’re watching this continued slaughter of Palestinians, and we’re expected to just swallow it because he’s a Democrat. What does that mean?

Oh, of course. We have so much time. We have so much time. We come from so long ago, and we have so long to go. We are always, always in a state of change. That’s the only thing that we can understand about ourselves.

It’s always important for me to be around friends and family. My friends and my family are everything to me. I’m really lucky to be surrounded by love and to love people so deeply. That’s everything to me, always.

I think the film industry can’t be separated from the capitalist machine, which will always try to position itself for its own betterment. Of course, there are breakthrough moments in cinema where we feel that there is untarnished truth that we’re able to experience. It depends on how quickly it gets corrupted. But personally, I don’t look to the film industry for guidance, spiritually or politically, and I never will. I appreciate film as art, just as I appreciate music, painting, and other forms of navigating and trying to express the spark of life. 

I think everything is a political statement. Politics is just the web of power that all of us exist in. No one is excluded from the political web of power. So, when you make a film, especially with a lot of money, because money is power, the more money involved, the more power it holds, and that makes it more political. Marvel films are extremely political in that they are socialist propaganda because they romanticise war and the white supremacist American hero. Yes, all of my work as an actor is political simply because I’m a body in a politicised sphere. Even when it’s funny and goofy. But that’s what makes it so fun: there actually is a stake in the work we make. That’s what drives people to continue doing it because we understand that it does matter, that it is shaping this global consciousness.

It just felt like it was time. Honestly, I often post from my desktop on Instagram compulsively because I don’t really let myself have the App since I’m too addicted. But I was like, you know what? I had just told my mum, who had come to visit, that I wanted to go by Jack from now on. But I had already gone by Jack for several years. There were times when I thought. Actually, my name is Bridget, and I feel like I need to claim that. But Jack Haven and Bridget have really cycled around me for a long time. I just felt it was time, and I wanted to be able to use that professionally. It was all very easy.

I would advise them to allow themselves the peace of knowing that even if it feels like a major statement and a big change, you can always change again. Also, remember that everyone is figuring out who they are in different ways. So, you can feel at ease expressing your truth and the changes that come with it. For a while, I was so caught up in the fear that once I made a change, it would mean the death of an old self or something. But the reality is that we are all so many different pieces of being inside of one body, and we can really allow ourselves to be much more fluid than we often do.

I don’t even think it’s about tolerance. I think the industry and the way we consume media and represent stories is always evolving. We’re at a time where we’re constantly engaged with self-presentation, which is very close to fictional storytelling — the story of the self. We’re blurring the lines between how we witness someone as a character and as an individual, and who they are when they’re not acting versus when they are. All these concepts are really fluid right now. The film industry is expanding to become more personal because anyone can really do it, we all do. We have no choice but to realise that we can’t just say that only Brad Pitt and Hilary Swank exist anymore because now, in a way, we all get to be the star. I think it’s becoming much more open.

I think woke was coined by two Black friends in college, talking about a guy. They were saying he had to stay attentive or something. It was such a personal, colloquial term, particularly in AAVE. Then, as often happens with Black culture, it was stolen, used on a mass scale, corrupted, and then criticised. I don’t even know if it holds any meaning anymore. Now what we’re experiencing is that all the things we’re not allowed to do are considered woke, which I guess implies that woke just means any expression of the truth of our reality. It’s interesting, especially with so many government websites banning terms like women, LGBTQI+, POC, and other descriptive terms we’ve used to identify the marginalised. It’s a complicated issue because part of the splintering of language to accommodate the other brings its own violence. But it’s a necessary splintering, as it’s a form of occupying space, a sanctioned taking up of space. But it raises the question: can we actually care for each other through bureaucracy? Because we have very limited tools to care for each other otherwise.

I don’t know how to answer that. I think most people comfort themselves or create a narrative for themselves that makes sense. I mean, there are so many different metaphors for this. It’s like breaking out of the matrix. In “TV Glow”, it’s burying yourself alive. But it’s like coming to the realisation that when we hurt, we hurt together. We hurt as one physical being that has imagined itself into existence, convincing itself that each individual particle is independent of the whole.

Well, I loved “Spongebob” when I was in elementary school. I loved “Hannah Montana”, “Pretty Little Liars”, and “The O.C”.

I love “The O.C.” I’m so inspired by Seth Cohen, obviously, and Summer.

I mean, that was the worst thing that had ever happened to me at that point. I mean, I was devastated when Marisa died.

I kept watching the show, but it was never the same, of course. 

Well, I only watched it to prepare for “TV Glow”, so I can’t say I’m a huge fan. I haven’t seen enough of it — I’ve only watched it once. But I did really like Willow. I’m really excited to rewatch it. Once I get a little distance from “TV Glow”, I plan to rewatch it.

I was introduced to Jane [Schoenbrun] by Luca Intili. We had been friends for a while, and they met Jane at Sundance, and thought we would get along. Jane and I met, and we connected right away. They sent me the script for “TV Glow”, and, of course, I was blown away by it. We both just said, “Alright, well, that’s it. You’re going to do it.” Then, a year or maybe a year and a half later, we actually shot it. I think they really had to convince A24 that we could pull it off.

I guess I’ve already talked about this in so many interviews, but for me, I had a perspective based on what Jane told me going into it, but also on what I needed to stay true to in order to portray the character. For me, I don’t think it’s metaphorical — at least, my experience of playing the character wasn’t. But Maddy really does bury herself alive and dig herself up in the series six premiere of “The Pink Opaque”. I think it’s incredibly difficult for her to come back and try to convince Owen. But I think Isabel, I should say Maddy, actually, knows she has to. I think, in the end, Isabelle is actually able to return to the show.

Yes, I met Emma Stone when I was, I think, 20. I did three days on a Woody Allen movie called “Irrational Man”. I really liked that movie. Emma Stone was in it, and we met then. We had lunch with her and Parker Posey, and they talked about being on “SNL”. Then, all these years later, I saw Emma again for the first time after the Independent Spirit Awards. She’s just the most darling, sweetest person. She’s been behind a lot of the great films of the last year.

I’m not a huge TV watcher, to be completely honest. I did watch “Hacks”, I know I’m a little late to it, and it’s pretty mainstream, but I loved it. I watched it while I was filming, and I just had it on for hours. But yeah, I want to watch “The White Lotus” because I want to see Parker Posey. She’s one of my all-time favourites.

Well, I’m making a movie with Ted Schaefer, who produced “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair”, Jane’s first film. I’ve been watching all these New Wave films that are his references. And last night, I watched “The Cremator”. It’s from the 60s and about a Czech cremator. The film is almost entirely a monologue, though he’s speaking to the characters around him in this very monotone voice. He’s obsessed with death, with “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”, and the idea of reincarnation. He gets indoctrinated into Nazi ideology and then finds out his wife is half-Jewish, so his children are too. And in this very mannered way, he kills his family. It was absolutely horrifying. It’s done in this super stylised way: quick cuts, constant montages, while his hypnotic droning voice talks about death in Czech. It was bone-chilling. I watched that last night.

That’s what I’m saying. I’m like, I want to have nightmares. I still haven’t seen “Two Girls, One Cup”, and I’m scared to watch that.

There’s a great book. My friend gave it to me. It’s “House of Psychotic Women” by Kier-La Janisse. She’s a Canadian film critic. She writes about her relationship to horror movies. She was obsessed with horror her whole life, and it helped her understand her mother’s psychosis, her psychosis, her relationship to her own femininity. It’s so great. It’s the most poignant social commentary.

Freddie, for sure, because he’s in your dreams.

No, but I could not erase my dream. I would not want to erase my dream.

What’s scariest to me is the feeling of being sleep-paralysed. I’ve never experienced it, but that would be the scariest thing for me, not being able to wake up.

Right. 

I’m so grateful for “Atypical” on many, many levels. I was really growing up while doing that show. I started it when I was twenty-two and finished when I was twenty-seven. It felt like grad school, in a way, it was such an education for me. I was especially grateful to work with the rest of the cast, with Jennifer Jason Leigh, who’s an idol, she’s one of the greats. And of course, Keir [Gilchrist], Nick [Dodani], they were such good friends to work with. There was a real sense of camaraderie on set. I got to experience what it’s like to do something consistently over time, to keep returning to a character and growing with them.

I learned so much about autism. I really did. I knew very little going in. My mum is a special needs teacher, she works with children who are deaf, but she’s also worked with kids with a variety of different abilities. Still, it was all very new to me in many ways. One of the biggest things I came to understand is that autism, in many cases, feels more like an ability than a disability. It often comes with an incredible honesty, a deep vulnerability, and a heightened sensitivity, to the environment and to the emotional states of others. People with autism are often very tuned in, just not in the same way neurotypical people might be. While we might focus on keeping things socially smooth or comfortable, someone with autism might be picking up on the actual reality or truth of a situation, sometimes even at a vibrational level that’s beyond what we perceive. What really struck me was how loyal, empathetic, and kind the autism community is, parents, teachers, aides, and of course, people with autism themselves. I felt really lucky to be exposed to that world.

I agree, we learn something from everything. That’s why we love stories so much, because they help us learn about ourselves.

Exactly.

I think my perfect day on Earth would be just sitting on the forest floor. It would be a temperate day, comfortable. There’d be bugs to watch, especially banana slugs. It would be in the redwoods. I’d just sit still all day, with some water and a few dates.

I’d be with everyone I love. They might not be physically there, but we’d all be together.