Hailey Matthews/late 1989 interview

This interview was filmed after Matthews and her family moved to Los Angeles.

Transcript

 * INTERVIEWER: Tell me about your acting business got started.
 * HAILEY MATTHEWS: Well, my parents were stars at the time. My father is an actor, working as a filmmaker, and he works with his own production company in New York called Johnson Studios which was now closed and later moved stuff to the new production company in Los Angeles, named George Johnson Entertainment. and my mother is an England actress. And I followed in my mother's footsteps.
 * INTERVIEWER: What year when you started acting?
 * HAILEY MATTHEWS: I started acting in the spring of 1976 when I was nine, I told my parents that I wanted to be an actress.
 * INTERVIEWER: What is your first film credit that your in?
 * HAILEY MATTHEWS: Audrey Rose from 1977. Including my mother in this film.
 * INTERVIEWER: What do you do when you spare time?
 * HAILEY MATTHEWS: I like watching TV, listening to music, playing on my computer, all that stuff.
 * INTERVIEWER: What state when you're born?
 * HAILEY MATTHEWS: I was born in the busy city of Brooklyn. Loud and busy city. I was in my bedroom, I hear cars honking, music playing, all that.
 * INTERVIEWER: I heard that you played a role as Female Gang Fighter from My Lucky Stars in 1985.
 * HAILEY MATTHEWS: Yes, that's right.
 * INTERVIEWER: How did you get a part of a role?
 * HAILEY MATTHEWS: Well, you see, After finishing my study about puffed sleeves which was my favorite part of the dresses, My Apple II computer which I had for three or two years, just stopped working, I don't have my money for the repair that computer so I said to myself, "I need a new computer." I came down the stairs and I told my parents that my computer it stopped working. One of my parents was my mom, She said to me, "Hailey, there's a new computer that I think would be a perfect replacement for that computer." And she showed me a new computer that I saw was an Apple Macintosh 512k. And I said, "Oh, cool, that's what I wanted, I wanted a cool computer like this one." And then the phone rang, my mother pick up the phone, and who answers the phone? it was my agent. My mother give me the phone to me, and I said, yes? My agent said to me, "How do you like to do an action movie?", And I said, ok. I said, "I haven't done action movies since my acting career got started." I said, "What action movie was gonna be filmed? Staten Island?" He said, no. He said to me, "It's gonna be shot in a soundstage at the movie studio in Queens, New York, it was 10 days' work, it will pay you 500 dollars a day." I said, "Well OK, that will be interesting." And I said, "I just looked down on the Apple Macintosh 512k, it cost about $2,795, while my money in my wallet was about $100. Perfect timing for that. And then he said to me, "Well since the original actress who played Female Gang Fighter, Patricia Gonzalez, was fired from the role since the role was played by a 22-year actress, you have to play a villain for Female Gang Fighter role." And I said, "oh no. I don't play a villain role like that." It's bad enough to know that I was cast in the role of Karen Packer for a local New York sketch show, The Funny Yorker, which I did for two or three years. I said, "No." If somebody told me to play a villain role, no thanks. I said to my agent, "Please send me a script." They give me a reworked version of the script, and I read the whole thing except the clothes ripping part, and I said, "That terrible rewritten script!" And I said, "Nobody likes this stuff. It ruins the original plan of the movie, it ruins the original writing of the movie's script, so you know what? I'm not gonna do it." And my mother was like, "Ok, I'll leave the script on the kitchen table if you changed your mind." So I go back to my bedroom thinking about what if I did not get a part of the role. and a few hours later, I changed my mind, I told my parents that I will play the role, and she gives me a phone and I called my agent, and I said, "Since I need a new computer, I'll do it." and that's what I got a part.