Alana Haim Talks 'Licorice Pizza' & Reflects on Her 'Deeply Intense' First Love

Alana Haim is getting candid about her career and personal life.

The 30-year-old Licorice Pizza star covered the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar, where she discussed what it was like working with director Paul Thomas Anderson and shared what she’s looking for in a partner.

Click inside to read what Alana shared…

On how she never thought about acting, even when Anderson suggested it, and reading the script for Licorice Pizza for the first time: “I remember him looking at me and being like, ‘I’m going to put you in a movie one day.’ And I was like, ‘Okay!’” her voice signaling she did not think he was really going to put her in a movie. While she was in London in 2019, he sent her a Word doc containing a screenplay. It was the first script she’d ever read. “It was an untitled script and the first name on the script was Alana. And I was like, ‘That’s crazy, Paul’s going to use my name in a movie.’ I read the script I think three times that night. It had so much of the Valley in it and so much of the things I grew up with. A lot of stories that I had told Paul were in the script already. I was just obsessed with it.”

On her first foray into acting and working with Paul Thomas Anderson who is a big supporter of her: “[Acting] was so out of my depth that every day, it just felt like an adventure, in a good way… Paul weirdly does make you feel invincible. Even working with him with Haim [the band], he was really the first person to be like a true cheerleader; he always believed in us. And it’s so nice to have someone to be like, ‘You can do it.’ ’Cause there’s not a lot of people that, when you actually think about it, do that other than your parents.”

On where she is in life right now: “I’ve never been more happy in my whole f–king life.”

On what she is looking for in a potential partner and currently focusing on her career: “I’m looking for my Albert Brooks, and I’ve been saying that forever… If you’re like Albert Brooks, I am here for you. That’s all I care about.” He also has to be good at long distance: “If he’s okay with me constantly being on the road, constantly touring. That’s the hardest thing. I mean, I’m always gone.”

On her first love, around a decade ago, that she’s grateful for the experience but ended because of ‘timing’: “I feel like that first love is just so deeply intense. The first cut is the deepest. All the songs are true, and you never have a love like that ever again. I think that’s a thing that’s kind of sad about it. Once you have that first love that cuts you so deeply, you never will feel that deeply ever again.” After that, she says, you build up walls.

On differences between her band and the sisters’ ’70s heroes (Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles) and their rock-star lifestyle: “People ask us what’s the most rock-star thing we’ve done. Maybe they watch too many ’80s documentaries about bands from the ’80s. They’re like, ‘Do you throw TVs out the window?’ And I’m like, ‘No. I don’t even know why anyone did that in the first place.’” She adds that playing shows is physically exhausting and they sweat nonstop. “I am so jealous of people that can go out. Maybe it’s because I’m Jewish. I’m, like, too scared to get sick. So I never go out after shows. We’ve never been those kinds of girls. We’re like, ‘No, we have our fun onstage. That’s all we need.’”

On growing up with protective parents and how it wasn’t until Este, the eldest sister, got her license that the Haim girls could even escape from the Valley at all: “My whole childhood was my dad not letting me walk anywhere or do anything. I had no freedom… When Este got her license, it was like the world: We finally had a passport to Los Angeles. Because other than going to Canter’s or the once-in-a- blue-moon trip to see the ocean, which took forever because you’re in crazy traffic—my parents were always working, so if they weren’t home, we couldn’t go anywhere. We didn’t have Uber, and we were never going to take a cab.”

Paul Thomas Anderson on Alana’s performance in the movie: “As the director of the film, there isn’t a scene I don’t think she’s anything short of a miracle in. She’s crazy great.”

For more Alana, check out HarpersBazaar.com.