Andrea Mann

Andrea Mann is a British screenwriter

You’re Not Too Old, And It’s Not Too Late

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Not writing screenplays until my 40s, I thought I was a late bloomer. Then my 88-year-old mum published her first novel.

They’re not an obvious pairing, but bear with me: what do my 88-year-old mum from Leeds and 53-year-old Mexican actor Carlos Diehz, star of hit movie Conclave, have in common?

Apart from both having great taste in necklaces, the answer is: they’re both late bloomers.

Carlos Diehz – who plays the crucial role of Cardinal Benítez in the BAFTA-winning, Oscar-nominated film – was an architect for 30 years (still is, in fact), and didn’t start taking acting lessons until the Covid pandemic hit. Conclave is his very first feature film. 

My mum, Annette Mann, was a primary school teacher her whole working life – then in her retirement wrote a novel: an imagined sequel to Jane Austen’s Persuasion. This year, 250 years since Austen’s birth – and 88 years since Mum’s – we finally put Pride and Persuasion out in the world:

My mum isn’t the only person I know of smashing it out of the park at this point in her life, either.

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A Permission Slip From Me (And David Lynch)

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Even the young Mr Lynch felt he needed permission to be an artist. This is yours.

David Lynch had so much wisdom and empathy to share about creativity and life that it’s no surprise his recent passing led to an outpouring of admiration and love not just for his body of work but also for him as an artist and as a human being.

Whether he was talking about creative ideas being like fish (“We don’t really create an idea. We just catch them, like fish. No chef ever takes credit for making the fish”) or debunking the myth of the tortured artist (“You don’t have to suffer to show suffering”), the filmmaker and artist constantly exuded wonder and joy at both the world around him and the thrill of living “the art life”.

Of all the inspiring and fascinating video clips, stories and anecdotes that were being shared about Lynch following his death, one clip in particular, from a 2019 interview he did with Artforum, hit me. Because in it, Lynch describes the exact moment, aged around 14-15, that he realised he was allowed to be an artist:

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Who The Hell Put This Glass Ceiling Here?

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Grandpa Joe: You mean we’re going…
Willy Wonka: Up and out!
Grandpa Joe: But this roof is made of glass! It’ll shatter into a thousand pieces. We’ll be cut to ribbons!
Willy Wonka: Probably.

I was invited to give my first guest lecture last week: to final year students at the University of Leeds, talking about skills to help them navigate a career in the creative industries. I absolutely loved it, and not just because the exterior of the School of Fine Arts had a New York High School of Performing Arts vibe. I loved talking to the students, I loved being in their orbit, I loved being on campus… in a ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely to spend more time here and do more lecturing!’ kind of way, not a Never Been Kissed/17 Again bodyswap/time travel kind of way, I hasten to add.

One of the ideas I spoke to the students about was that of moving through our comfort zones and smashing our personal glass ceilings. And although I didn’t go into the following with them, being back in a university environment reminded me once more of my own glass ceilings, my deep-rooted childhood (and who am I kidding, adulthood) dream of following in the tap-dancing footsteps of The Kids From Fame, and the two incidents which quashed that dream.

Or rather: the two incidents I would for a long time blame for quashing that dream. Because it wasn’t until many years later that I realised I had, in my response to these events, well and truly quashed them myself.

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