Director of Photography and Photographer: Séréna Lutton
with Kate Bosworth
Making Waves
She first became a Hollywood heavyweight
in Blue Crush more than 20 years ago and now Kate Bosworth is celebrating this noughties cult classic with a stylish surf collaboration. But carving out an acting career has come with its fair share of heartbreak too. Here, Bosworth talks divorce and defying misogyny with Sophie Goddard
I
FASHION: BIKINI TOP, ROXY; NECKLACES, AWATTZ DEZIGNS
Michelle Rodriguez, Sanoe Lake and Mika Boorem, it proved a pivotal moment in Bosworth’s career, and while it wasn’t her first role (at 14, her impressive equestrian skills saw her land a part in Robert Redford’s project The Horse Whisperer, supporting a baby-faced Scarlett Johansson), Blue Crush was the film that changed everything.
t’s been almost 21 years since Blue Crush unexpectedly sent Kate Bosworth, an unknown teenager at the time, stratospheric. Directed by John Stockwell, the original noughties ‘surfer girl’ movie saw the then 18-year-old Bosworth play plucky Anne Marie, a surfer who’s determined to compete in the famous Pipeline competition on Hawaii’s North Shore – and rival male surfers in the process. Starring alongside
“I always say there are different experiences in your life that feel like a vital organ that makes you,” explains Bosworth. “Blue Crush is like my heart – it was the domino that set everything else into motion. There’s few opportunities you get as an actor where your life seems to coincide intimately with the character you’re playing and something really magical happens. If you’re lucky – and the pop culture gods are in alignment – it will speak to the population in a greater way. I feel like that happened with Blue Crush.”
Even now the film’s cult appeal shows no sign of abating and, to mark its success, Bosworth has just launched a swimwear, clothing and accessories collaboration with Roxy, a sports brand with a long history of supporting female athletes and championing women’s empowerment. The campaign – a celebration of ’00s surf style – even features a number of current female surfing champions, and was shot on North Shore of Oahu – a stretch of ocean now synonymous with this iconic noughties hit.
Indeed, looking back, you realise how ahead of its time Blue Crush’s female take on the male-dominated world of surfing really was. It was only last year, for example, that female surfers were permitted to compete in the Pipeline competition. “That’s how I felt when I read the script,” agrees Bosworth. “I couldn’t identify with anything coming my way – the [roles] were pretty superficial and one-dimensional women, mostly written by men. This was a screenplay I recognised myself in, and somehow I convinced the powers that be to hire me.”
‘I always say there are different experiences in your life that feel like a vital organ that makes you. Blue Crush is
like my heart – it was the domino that set everything else into motion’
Still, it wasn’t exactly straightforward. Bosworth auditioned multiple times for the role of Anne Marie. “Brian [Grazer, the producer] and John [Stockwell] said, ‘You clearly have an affinity with this character, but we need someone who knows how to surf’ and I’d never touched a surfboard.” While the team began auditioning professional surfers, Bosworth threw herself into learning the ropes. “I found a surf instructor in Malibu and begged him to teach me to surf within a month. He was like, ‘OK, but you’re going to have to come every day for seven hours a day and it has to be full commitment’. I was totally in.”
Despite – in her words – blowing the final audition (“I was awful; I fell over and over again”), Bosworth landed the role, thanks in part to her surf instructor’s unwavering faith in her. “He told them, ‘You are not going to meet an actress more determined’,” she recalls – and that determination proved crucial: training involved being dropped into a wave called ‘Avalanche’ on Oahu’s North Shore. “The energy in the ocean in the winter is frightening – it’s like a whirling, constant, overwhelming churning. They’d drop me off in the impact zone to get ‘worked’, [which is] basically [like] living inside a washing machine over and over again to increase lung capacity. It was really, really crazy.”
‘Experiencing the breakdown of a marriage
was absolutely one of the most difficult, humbling, heartbreaking, vulnerable, raw experiences of my life. I felt like I was just living in perpetual freefall for a year’
That fearlessness – “I was so concerned with being believable and proving myself that I didn’t really give my own safety much thought,” she admits – is something Bosworth, who turned 40 earlier this year, puts largely down to youth. “I think everyone has their own Blue Crush story; that leap you take when you’re young. It’s that unbridled, innocent belief in oneself. I talk about this with Justin [Long, Bosworth’s fiance]. Over time, you become aware of bumps and bruises, but when you’re young, you’re moving purely on an inner knowing that comes from somewhere else.”
The past few years have involved a fair few metaphorical bumps and bruises (and, one could argue, a healthy dose of fearlessness), too, with Bosworth separating from her now ex-husband Michael Polish in 2021 (the pair met 10 years earlier when Polish directed her in Big Sur). “Experiencing the breakdown of a marriage was absolutely one of the most difficult, humbling, heartbreaking, vulnerable, raw experiences of my life,” she says. “I felt like I was just living in perpetual freefall for a year. I met Michael when I was 28 and we separated around 38. That’s a decade of my life that my identity was woven with his. I certainly didn’t go into that marriage like I was ever going to get a divorce. But the experience allowed me to understand the importance of change.”
‘Sometimes I get asked, ‘Did you have any #MeToo experiences?’ and I say, ‘Well, how much time do you have?’… There were only a handful of times where
I felt like the man sitting across from me was genuinely interested in my intelligence or what I had to say’
Bosworth and Polish were linked not just romantically but professionally too, with the former couple working on multiple projects and creating a production company, Make Pictures Productions, together. That partnership is something Bosworth still speaks fondly of. “It was very, very sad to me that our marriage didn’t work out. But, on the other hand, I’m so grateful for the experience that we had together and the love that we’ll continue to share for the rest of our lives. Meeting him and starting to work with him opened up a new world for me, in terms of someone validating my intellect and ability as a producer.”
The notion that somebody of Bosworth’s status – a bona fide A-lister with projects like Superman Returns, Remember the Titans, 21 and Still Alice under her belt – would need any sort of validation in Hollywood leads us onto the topic of #MeToo. “Sometimes I get asked, ‘Did you have any [#MeToo] experiences?’ and I say, ‘Well, how much time do you have?’,” she says wryly. “I never felt like I could go into a meeting with a male producer or executive and not feel like there was an ulterior motive on the table. There were only a handful of times where I felt like the man sitting across from me was genuinely interested in my intelligence or what I had to say. It was like a boys’ club frat house – you could tell they weren’t genuinely listening.
“The crazy thing about that is that, as a woman, you’re suiting up to defend yourself against this energy coming at you from all angles,” she adds. “And because you’re suited up and armoured, you’re also worried, like, ‘Wait, am I seen as someone who’s not “accessible”? Am I not warm enough?’. It’s this insane constant recalibration; this dance we all did for so long – ‘I have to be charming, but I don’t want to be provocative’. It was absolutely exhausting. We all felt like we wouldn’t get hired for things because we weren’t available – sexually, romantically, whatever. I know I lost out on many roles because I didn’t participate in that part of the industry.”
It’s a plight Bosworth doesn’t have to explain to fiance and fellow actor Long. They first went public last May and recently announced their engagement, but they’ve known each other for much longer, having grown up in the industry together and starred alongside one another in last year’s horror hit, Barbarian. “I always knew him as ‘the comedy guy’ and he thought [of me as] a ‘fashionista’. We both cringe about each other’s perception of the other,” she laughs. “I’m so glad I met him when I did – it was the perfect timing. In many ways we wish we’d been together our whole lives, but I don’t think it would have worked until now. He met me at a time when I was really coming into alignment with myself, in quite an empowered and truthful way. And I met him, I think, at a similar time in his life.”
‘We all felt like we wouldn’t get hired for things because we weren’t available – sexually, romantically, whatever. I know I lost out
on many roles because I didn’t participate
in that part of the industry’
Perhaps that’s why working with a female-centric brand was so appealing when Roxy expressed its interest in creating a collab line. “Roxy has been such a driving force in women’s surfing, and I’ve been hoping to work with them at some point for years. We envisioned a collection that would be at the crossroads between fashion and freedom of movement.”
Indeed, the ‘surfer girl’ aesthetic doesn’t get more stylish than Bosworth’s covetable designs. Think triangle bikinis, cargo pants, bucket hats and tropical prints to pair with your favourite puka-shell necklace and anklet. The collection is bold and reminiscent of the noughties surf style we all love. In short, it’s pure Bosworth – and she’s revelling in this new chapter, revealing she’s the happiest she’s ever been: “I really mean that,” she says sincerely, and I believe her.
‘I’m so glad I met [Justin Long] when I did – it was the perfect timing. In many ways we wish we’d been together our whole lives, but I don’t think it would have worked until now’
“I’ve been through some really, really tough things and I’ll talk about them one day, but I’m so grateful for those hard times because they’ve led me to a happier and a more truthful place. I know we like to pin happiness on other people, like, ‘Oh, she’s happy and in a relationship’ – and I am. I’m with someone who is quite literally the most extraordinary human on the Earth. Every day I say to him – and myself – how deeply grateful I am for the kind of love he shows me. But also for the kind of love I show to myself.”
After so much change, how does she feel about the future? Is there, for example, a five-year plan? “It’s funny, my dad asked me something similar recently and I was like, ‘Just to keep working’,” she replies. “It’s such a miracle to me that I’m able to do what I do and make a living doing it. Of course, I could tell you I want to align with directors I believe in and how I hope to be part of stories I find interesting, but the truth is I’m just so grateful to still be on this ride.”
Before we sign off, she references the sage advice veteran actor Lance Henriksen once gave her. “He said, ‘Kate, it’s all just one big, wonderful adventure’,” she recalls, smiling. “And I thought, ‘Yes, that’s an amazing way to look at it.’
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Director of Photography and Photographer: Séréna Lutton
Editor in Chief: Andrea Thompson
Shoot and Film Director: Lisa Oxenham
Writer: Sophie GoddarD
Senior Art Editor: ANa Ospina
Chief Sub-Editor: Nicola Moyne
Producer: Sofia Piza
Videographer: Katherine Goguen
Water Videographer: Henry Michaelis
Water Photographer: Beatriz Ryder
Stylist: Lindsey Higa
Make-up Artist: Nathan Hejl using Chanel Beauty
Hair Stylist: Bridget Brager using Rodan + Fields
Lighting Assistants: Henry Han, Vincent Ricafort
Digital Technician: Victor Demeester
Production: Warm Agency, Reanna Chambers, David Bamford
Make-up Assistant: Kate Broadhurst
Athletes: Maluhia Kinimaka, Izzi Gomez, Suelen Naraisa
Location: O’ahu, Hawaii
FASHION: JACKET, ZARA; TOP AND WETSUIT (TIED AT WAIST), ROXY; NECKLACES, AWATTZ DEZIGNS
FASHION: BIKINI, ROXY; NECKLACES, AWATTZ DEZIGNS
FASHION: FROM LEFT, MALUHIA KINIMAKA WEARS: WETSUIT, ROXY. KATE BOSWORTH WEARS: RASHGUARD AND BIKINI BOTTOMS, ROXY; NECKLACE, AWATTZ DEZIGNS. IZZI GOMEZ WEARS: WETSUIT, ROXY
FASHION: BIKINI TOP, ROXY; NECKLACE, AWATTZ DEZIGNS
Director of Photography and Photographer: Séréna Lutton
It’s been almost 21 years since Blue Crush unexpectedly sent Kate Bosworth, an unknown teenager at the time, stratospheric. Directed by John Stockwell, the original noughties ‘surfer girl’ movie saw the then 18-year-old Bosworth play plucky Anne Marie, a surfer who’s determined to compete in the famous Pipeline competition on Hawaii’s North Shore – and rival male surfers in the process. Starring alongside Michelle Rodriguez, Sanoe Lake and Mika Boorem, it proved a pivotal moment in Bosworth’s career, and while it wasn’t her first role (at 14, her impressive equestrian skills saw her land a part in Robert Redford’s project The Horse Whisperer, supporting a baby-faced Scarlett Johansson),
Blue Crush was the film that changed everything.
“I always say there are different experiences in your life that feel like a vital organ that makes you,” explains Bosworth. “Blue Crush is like my heart – it was the domino that set everything else into motion. There’s few opportunities you get as an actor where your life seems to coincide intimately with the character you’re playing and something really magical happens. If you’re lucky – and the pop culture gods are in alignment – it will speak to the population in a greater way. I feel like that happened with Blue Crush.”
Even now the film’s cult appeal shows no sign of abating and, to mark its success, Bosworth has just launched a swimwear, clothing and accessories collaboration with Roxy, a sports brand with a long history of supporting female athletes and championing women’s empowerment. The campaign – a celebration of ’00s surf style – even features a number of current female surfing champions, and was shot on North Shore of Oahu – a stretch of ocean now synonymous with this iconic noughties hit.
Indeed, looking back, you realise how ahead of its time Blue Crush’s female take on the male-dominated world of surfing really was. It was only last year, for example, that female surfers were permitted to compete in the Pipeline competition. “That’s how I felt when I read the script,” agrees Bosworth. “I couldn’t identify with anything coming my way – the [roles] were pretty superficial and one-dimensional women, mostly written by men. This was a screenplay I recognised myself in, and somehow I convinced the powers that be to hire me.”
Still, it wasn’t exactly straightforward. Bosworth auditioned multiple times for the role of Anne Marie. “Brian [Grazer, the producer] and John [Stockwell] said, ‘You clearly have an affinity with this character, but we need someone who knows how to surf’ and I’d never touched a surfboard.” While the team began auditioning professional surfers, Bosworth threw herself into learning the ropes. “I found a surf instructor in Malibu and begged him to teach me to surf within a month. He was like, ‘OK, but you’re going to have to come every day for seven hours a day and it has to be full commitment’. I was totally in.”
Despite – in her words – blowing the final audition (“I was awful; I fell over and over again”), Bosworth landed the role, thanks in part to her surf instructor’s unwavering faith in her. “He told them, ‘You are not going to meet an actress more determined’,” she recalls – and that determination proved crucial: training involved being dropped into a wave called ‘Avalanche’ on Oahu’s North Shore. “The energy in the ocean in the winter is frightening – it’s like a whirling, constant, overwhelming churning. They’d drop me off in the impact zone to get ‘worked’, [which is] basically [like] living inside a washing machine over and over again to increase lung capacity. It was really, really crazy.”
FASHION: JACKET, ZARA; TOP AND WETSUIT (TIED AT WAIST), ROXY; NECKLACES, AWATTZ DEZIGNS
That fearlessness – “I was so concerned with being believable and proving myself that I didn’t really give my own safety much thought,” she admits – is something Bosworth, who turned 40 earlier this year, puts largely down to youth. “I think everyone has their own Blue Crush story; that leap you take when you’re young. It’s that unbridled, innocent belief in oneself. I talk about this with Justin [Long, Bosworth’s fiance]. Over time, you become aware of bumps and bruises, but when you’re young, you’re moving purely on an inner knowing that comes from somewhere else.”
The past few years have involved a fair few metaphorical bumps and bruises (and, one could argue, a healthy dose of fearlessness), too, with Bosworth separating from her now
ex-husband Michael Polish in 2021 (the pair met 10 years earlier when Polish directed her in Big Sur). “Experiencing the breakdown of a marriage was absolutely one of the most difficult, humbling, heartbreaking, vulnerable, raw experiences of my life,” she says. “I felt like I was just living in perpetual freefall for a year. I met Michael when I was 28 and we separated around 38. That’s a decade of my life that my identity was woven with his. I certainly didn’t go into that marriage like I was ever going to get a divorce. But the experience allowed me to understand the importance of change.”
‘Experiencing the breakdown of a marriage was absolutely one of the most difficult, humbling, heartbreaking, vulnerable, raw experiences of my life. I felt like I was just living in perpetual freefall for a year’
FASHION: BIKINI, ROXY; NECKLACES, AWATTZ DEZIGNS
Bosworth and Polish were linked not just romantically but professionally too, with the former couple working on multiple projects and creating a production company, Make Pictures Productions, together. That partnership is something Bosworth still speaks fondly of. “It was very, very sad to me that our marriage didn’t work out. But, on the other hand, I’m so grateful for the experience that we had together and the love that we’ll continue to share for the rest of our lives. Meeting him and starting to work with him opened up a new world for me, in terms of someone validating my intellect and ability as a producer.”
The notion that somebody of Bosworth’s status – a bona fide A-lister with projects like Superman Returns, Remember the Titans, 21 and Still Alice under her belt – would need any sort of validation in Hollywood leads us onto the topic of #MeToo. “Sometimes I get asked, ‘Did you have any [#MeToo] experiences?’ and I say, ‘Well, how much time do you have?’,” she says wryly. “I never felt like I could go into a meeting with a male producer or executive and not feel like there was an ulterior motive on the table. There were only a handful of times where I felt like the man sitting across from me was genuinely interested in my intelligence or what I had to say. It was like a boys’ club frat house – you could tell they weren’t genuinely listening.
‘Sometimes I get asked,
‘Did you have any #MeToo experiences?’ and I say, ‘Well, how much time do you have?’… There were only a handful of times where
I felt like the man sitting across from me was genuinely interested in my intelligence or what I had to say’
FASHION: BIKINI TOP, ROXY; NECKLACES, AWATTZ DEZIGNS
“The crazy thing about that is that, as a woman, you’re suiting up to defend yourself against this energy coming at you from all angles,” she adds. “And because you’re suited up and armoured, you’re also worried, like, ‘Wait, am I seen as someone who’s not “accessible”? Am I not warm enough?’. It’s this insane constant recalibration; this dance we all did for so long – ‘I have to be charming, but I don’t want to be provocative’. It was absolutely exhausting. We all felt like we wouldn’t get hired for things because we weren’t available – sexually, romantically, whatever. I know I lost out on many roles because I didn’t participate in that part of the industry.”
It’s a plight Bosworth doesn’t have to explain to fiance and fellow actor Long. They first went public last May and recently announced their engagement, but they’ve known each other for much longer, having grown up in the industry together and starred alongside one another in last year’s horror hit, Barbarian. “I always knew him as ‘the comedy guy’ and he thought [of me as] a ‘fashionista’. We both cringe about each other’s perception of the other,” she laughs. “I’m so glad I met him when I did – it was the perfect timing. In many ways we wish we’d been together our whole lives, but I don’t think it would have worked until now. He met me at a time when I was really coming into alignment with myself, in quite an empowered and truthful way. And I met him, I think, at a similar time in his life.”
‘We all felt like we wouldn’t get hired for things because we weren’t available – sexually, romantically, whatever.
I know I lost out on many roles because I didn’t participate in that part of the industry’
FASHION: FROM LEFT, MALUHIA KINIMAKA WEARS: WETSUIT, ROXY. KATE BOSWORTH WEARS: RASHGUARD AND BIKINI BOTTOMS, ROXY; NECKLACE, AWATTZ DEZIGNS. IZZI GOMEZ WEARS: WETSUIT, ROXY
Perhaps that’s why working with a female-centric brand was so appealing when Roxy expressed its interest in creating a collab line. “Roxy has been such a driving force in women’s surfing, and I’ve been hoping to work with them at some point for years. We envisioned a collection that would be at the crossroads between fashion and freedom of movement.”
Indeed, the ‘surfer girl’ aesthetic doesn’t get more stylish than Bosworth’s covetable designs. Think triangle bikinis, cargo pants, bucket hats and tropical prints to pair with your favourite puka-shell necklace and anklet. The collection is bold and reminiscent of the noughties surf style we all love. In short, it’s pure Bosworth – and she’s revelling in this new chapter, revealing she’s the happiest she’s ever been: “I really mean that,” she says sincerely, and I believe her.
“I’ve been through some really, really tough things and I’ll talk about them one day, but I’m so grateful for those hard times because they’ve led me to a happier and a more truthful place. I know we like to pin happiness on other people, like, ‘Oh, she’s happy and in a relationship’ – and I am. I’m with someone who is quite literally the most extraordinary human on the Earth. Every day I say to him – and myself – how deeply grateful I am for the kind of love he shows me. But also for the kind of love I show to myself.”
After so much change, how does she feel about the future? Is there, for example, a five-year plan? “It’s funny, my dad asked me something similar recently and I was like, ‘Just to keep working’,” she replies. “It’s such a miracle to me that I’m able to do what I do and make a living doing it. Of course, I could tell you I want to align with directors I believe in and how I hope to be part of stories I find interesting, but the truth is I’m just so grateful to still be on this ride.”
Before we sign off, she references the sage advice veteran actor Lance Henriksen once gave her. “He said, ‘Kate, it’s all just one big, wonderful adventure’,” she recalls, smiling. “And I thought, ‘Yes, that’s an amazing way to look at it.’
‘I’m so glad I met [Justin Long] when I did – it was the perfect timing. In many ways we wish we’d been together our whole lives, but I don’t think it would have worked until now’
‘I always say there are different experiences in your life that feel like a vital organ that makes you. Blue Crush is like my heart – it was the domino that set everything else into motion’
