Tara Subkoff

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Tara Subkoff
Tara Subkoff 2015.png
Subkoff interviewed by Behind the Velvet Rope TV at 2015 special screening of #Horror
Born (1972-12-10) December 10, 1972 (age 52)
Westport, Connecticut, U.S.
Occupations
  • Artist
  • fashion designer
  • actress
  • director
Years active1993–present
Spouse
​
(m. 2014⁠–⁠2016)​
[1]
Children1

Tara Lyn Subkoff (born December 10, 1972) [2] [3] [4] is an American actress, conceptual artist, director, and fashion designer.

Contents

Raised in Connecticut, Subkoff relocated to Los Angeles in 1991, enrolling at the Otis College of Art and Design before pursuing an acting career. She made her film debut in the thriller When the Bough Breaks (1994) opposite Martin Sheen, and later had supporting roles in As Good as It Gets (1997), The Last Days of Disco (1998), The Cell (2000), and The Notorious Bettie Page (2005).

In 2000, she shifted her focus from acting to co-found the conceptual art collective Imitation of Christ, a project featuring pieces hand-sewn solely from recycled vintage and thrift store clothing. In 2015, she made her feature film directorial debut with the horror film #Horror (2015), which was picked up for distribution by IFC Midnight.

Early life

Subkoff was born December 10, 1972 in Westport, Connecticut. [2] Her father was an antiques dealer who owned an antique store on 13th Street in Manhattan, and her mother was a schoolteacher in East Harlem. [5] She and her younger brother, Daniel, were raised in Westport in what she described as a "bohemian" family. [6] [7] Subkoff attended boarding school at the Williston Northampton School in Massachusetts. [8]

In 1991, Subkoff relocated to Los Angeles, where she enrolled in the Otis College of Art and Design, [6] but dropped out within a year of enrolling. [5] [9] She subsequently began taking acting classes alongside Angelina Jolie and Keanu Reeves. [5]

Career

1994–2000: Early acting work

Subkoff made her debut as an actress on television, appearing in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman in 1994, followed by her feature film debut, a lead role in the 1994 crime thriller When the Bough Breaks , opposite Martin Sheen and Ron Perlman. In 1996, she had a minor supporting part in the film Freeway , and in the horror film Black Circle Boys (1997).

This was followed with lead roles in the drama All Over Me (1997), [10] and the comedy Lover Girl (1997), co-starring Kristy Swanson. She had minor parts in As Good as It Gets (1997), Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco (1998), and an uncredited appearance in the 1999 teen sex comedy American Pie . She also appeared in a supporting role in Tarsem Singh's directorial debut The Cell (2000), a science fiction horror film in which she played a captive victim of a serial killer (Vincent D'Onofrio) pursued by two detectives (played by Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn). [6]

In 2017, Subkoff joined the group of women making the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations, saying that the producer had sexually harassed her in the 1990s when she applied for a role in one of his films, and then had her blacklisted when she resisted. "It became impossible for me to get work as an actress after this, so I then had to start a new career path and started Imitation of Christ", she said. [11]

2001–2011: Imitation of Christ

In 2000, Subkoff shifted from acting and began working on a conceptual art project called Imitation of Christ with designer Matt Damhave, enlisting Chloë Sevigny as the project's creative director. [5] The project has been described as a "DIY art collective misconstrued as a luxury fashion label." [12] It took its name from Thomas à Kempis's fifteenth-century Christian devotional text of the same name, as well as a Psychedelic Furs song. [13] Every piece of clothing in the line was sewn by hand and recycled from vintage, thrift and Goodwill shops. Subkoff created pieces of wearable art with fashion shows which garnered her a cult following. [14] Models who wore the pieces for runway shows included actress Scarlett Johansson. [14] [15] Reflecting on the line, Subkoff said: “We were talking about waste, throwing things away, and taking something that’s old and making it new again, putting the human hand back into a world that reeks of manufacturing. It felt very appropriate to do that in 2000." [12]

Subkoff and Damhave created four collections together, and the shows were described as "guerilla-style, at least as much performance art as they were about [Subkoff's] refashioned, hand-sewn vintage clothes," [5] with the project's earliest exhibitions taking place in a funeral parlor in the Manhattan's East Village. [16] In 2003, she also collaborated with Bernhard Willhelm on a fashion collection inspired and authorized by Roberto Capucci. [17]

After Subkoff and Damhave parted ways, she continued to design pieces for the line through 2006. [13] In 2007, Subkoff sold the label to Josh Sparks, the former chief executive of the Australian label Sass & Bide, for a reported $2 million. [13] The following year, in 2008, the label went out of business. That same year, Subkoff created four capsule collections for the women's fashion brand Bebe. [6] The collections were successful, selling out within days, but Subkoff later reflected that she was dissatisfied with the collection, saying: "I missed the larger ideas," she said. “I missed creating art." [6]

2012–present: Directing and other projects

Milla Jovovich in Subkoff's art installation Future/Perfect, 2013 Milla Jovovich in Tara Subkoff's Future Perfect.jpg
Milla Jovovich in Subkoff's art installation Future/Perfect, 2013

In 2012, Subkoff revived the Imitation of Christ label and began working on more pieces, shortening the brand name to simply "Imitation." [13] The same year, she created a ten-day art installation and continuous performance piece at the Carlton Festival of the Arts in São Paulo, Brazil. [12] She also conceptualized a performance piece in a group show curated by Dimitri Antonitsis in Hydra, Greece.

She exhibited a three hour-long installation at the Bortolami Gallery in New York City during the 2012 New York Fashion Week titled "This is Not a Fashion Show," which featured a girl's choir in leotards performing “Carol of the Bells” (intimated as a "slight to Yuletide consumerism") and "performers aging from 8 to 70 pruned and posing in front of antique mirrors lining the gallery walls." [12] In explaining the idea behind the show, Subkoff said: "We are a society that only sells commodities. We do not create anything unless it's to be bought and sold, so the idea of doing something where there isn't a commodity to sell, or what the commodity is to sell is very confusing, is extremely interesting to me." [18]

In 2013, she collaborated with Milla Jovovich on a filmed installation in Venice, Italy titled "Future/Perfect," which had Jovovich enclosed in a glass house, surrounded by boxes with consumer logos, artwork, and clothing. [19] Though working predominantly in art, Subkoff also had small roles in several films, including Tanner Hall (2009), How Do You Know , and the horror film Abandoned (2010), with Brittany Murphy. [20]

Subkoff made her directorial debut with the horror film #Horror (2015), which details a group of wealthy adolescent girls who experience a night of violence and terror after a social media game is tinged with cyberbullying. The film was screened out of competition at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, and was picked up for distribution by IFC Midnight and given a limited theatrical release in November 2015. [6] According to Subkoff, she conceived the film after a conversation she'd had with her friend's daughter: "[The idea] started because I asked my friend's daughter, "What is horror, to you?" This girl was cyberbullied very badly... Now, I was bullied badly as a kid, but I could always change schools. I could always go home. Now you can't…when bullying follows you home, and there's no escape and no end, to me, that's horror. And to so many girls, that's just life." [21] The film received mixed reviews from critics. [1]

In November 2019, Subkoff exhibited a multimedia art installation at the Museum of Modern Art. [1] The following year, she revived the Imitation of Christ project, holding a show at Garvanza Park in Los Angeles. [22] In the spring of 2023, she exhibited an interactive multimedia performance featuring various artists, titled "‘WHAT IS COMING AND WHAT IS GOING", in Los Angeles. [23]

Personal life

Subkoff has been formerly romantically linked to Wes Anderson, and was formerly engaged to director Tom Hooper. [5] In the fall of 2014, Subkoff married artist Urs Fischer. [24] The couple gave birth to a daughter, Grace, in 2016, before divorcing the same year. [1] Subkoff resides in Los Angeles, California, [25] where she bought a three-story house designed by architect Saul Harris Brown in the Silver Lake neighborhood for $2.25 million in 2021. [26]

In 2009, Subkoff was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, a benign brain tumor that required her to undergo a translabrynthine craniotomy in September 2009. [27] Her symptoms, which included chronic headaches, bouts of dizziness, and unilateral hearing loss, had originally been diagnosed in 2003 as stemming from TMJ. [5] [20] At the time of the tumor diagnosis, Subkoff had mainly been working as a freelance artist, and as a result, her health insurance policy through the Screen Actors Guild had lapsed. [20] In order to reinstate her health insurance policy in order to undergo the operation, she took small roles in the films Abandoned and How Do You Know . [20]

Filmography

Film

YearTitleRoleNotes
1994 When the Bough Breaks Jordan Thomas/Jennifer Lynn Eben
1995Point Dume
1996 Freeway Sharon
1997 Black Circle Boys Chloe
1997 All Over Me Ellen
1997Lover GirlJake Ferrari / "Candy"
1997 As Good as It Gets Cafe 24 Waitress
1998 The Last Days of Disco Holly
1999MascaraDaphne
1999 American Pie College girlUncredited
2000 The Cell Julia Hickson
2002 Teenage Caveman Sarah
2002Looking for Jimmy
2003 Undermind Anya
2004 Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie Mouse
2004Good Boys Short film
2005 The Notorious Bettie Page June
2009 Tanner Hall Gwen
2010 Abandoned Nurse Anna
2010 How Do You Know Subpoena Girl
2010Tyrolean RivieraBrigittaShort film
2011 For Lovers Only Yves' Wife
2013 Sugar Woman at accident
2015Cook-Off!
2015 #Horror TatianaVoice only
2021Grace and GritLinda Conger

Television

YearSeriesRoleNotes
1994 Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman JenniferEpisode: "Orphan Train"
1994 Northern Exposure Mary-MargaretEpisode: "The Letter"
1996 Kindred: The Embraced Cash's GirlEpisode: "The Original Saga"
1996 True Crime Liz McConnell Television film
2013 Kroll Show Two episodes

As director or producer

YearTitleProduction roleNotes
2010 The Killer Inside Me Associate producer
2012Magic HourDirector [28] Short film
2013Future/PerfectDirectorShort film
2015 #Horror Director, writer, producer

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 La Ferla, Ruth (November 14, 2019). "Don't Call Tara Subkoff an 'It' Girl". The New York Times . Archived from the original on November 24, 2019.
  2. 1 2 "Subkoff, Tara 1972–". Encyclopedia.com . Cengage Group. Archived from the original on February 28, 2021.
  3. ↑ Subkoff, Tara [@tarasubkoff] (December 10, 2024). "Today is my birthday. Thank you to friends and family who have been so kind and supportive through this journey..." Archived from the original on January 26, 2025 – via Instagram.
  4. ↑ "Dec. 10 celebrity birthdays". The Orange County Register . December 10, 2012. Archived from the original on January 26, 2025.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Karni, Annie (March 12, 2012). "Imitation of Christ designer Tara Subkoff can't escape life of drama". The New York Post . Archived from the original on April 18, 2023.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Hirschberg, Lynn (November 19, 2015). "The Art of Being Tara Subkoff". W . Archived from the original on January 26, 2025.
  7. ↑ Krenticl, Faran (October 10, 2013). "Tara Subkoff Tells Us Why She Doesn't Want to be James Franco When She Grows Up". Elle . Archived from the original on January 26, 2025.
  8. ↑ Swanson, Carl (January 7, 2016). "134 Minutes With... Tara Subkoff and Urs Fischer". The New Yorker . Archived from the original on September 7, 2016.
  9. ↑ "Tara Subkoff". Paper . April 2001. Archived from the original on November 17, 2015.
  10. ↑ "New Films". New York : 116. April 28, 1997 – via Google Books.
  11. ↑ Rubin, Rebecca (October 12, 2017). "Actress Tara Subkoff Says Harvey Weinstein Sexually Harassed Her". Variety . Archived from the original on January 19, 2025.
  12. 1 2 3 4 Wyma, Chloe (September 14, 2012). ""This Is Not a Fashion Show": Accidental Designer Tara Subkoff's New Performance". Blouinartinfo. Archived from the original on November 17, 2015.
  13. 1 2 3 4 "Imitation of Christ - Designer Fashion – Overview". New York . Archived from the original on July 29, 2013.
  14. 1 2 "Imitation of Christ". Elle . September 9, 2005. Archived from the original on January 16, 2025.
  15. ↑ "Imitation of Christ Runway". Elle . Archived from the original on September 5, 2015.
  16. ↑ "How Imitation of Christ Lost Its cool". New York . Archived from the original on May 10, 2021.
  17. ↑ Alford, Holly Price; Stegemeyer, Anne (2014). Who's Who in Fashion. Bloomsbury. p. 62. ISBN   978-1-609-01969-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  18. ↑ McLaughlin, Alison (September 12, 2012). "Imitation by Tara Subkoff - Fashion Week 2012". Pix11. Archived from the original on January 26, 2025 – via YouTube.
  19. ↑ Lucat, André. "MARELLA, MILLA JOVOVICH, AND TARA SUBKOFF CELEBRATE THEIR FUTURE / PERFECT INSTALLATION IN VENICE". Interview . Retrieved October 20, 2015.
  20. 1 2 3 4 Blasberg, Derek (April 17, 2010). "Tara Subkoff: 'I survived a brain tumor!'". Harper's Bazaar . Archived from the original on November 17, 2023.
  21. ↑ Krentcil, Faran (May 29, 2015). "EXCLUSIVE: A FIRST LOOK AT TARA SUBKOFF'S MILLENNIAL HORROR FLICK STARRING CHLOË SEVIGNY". Elle . Archived from the original on November 27, 2024.
  22. ↑ Berlinger, Max (September 15, 2020). "Imitation of Christ upended the fashion world in the early 2000s. Now the label rises again". Los Angeles Times . Archived from the original on September 16, 2020.
  23. ↑ Trachtenberg, Britt (March 2, 2023). "Tara Subkoff Opened Her 2023 Abstract Performance Series". The Knockturnal. Archived from the original on March 17, 2023.
  24. ↑ Symonds, Alexandria (May 21, 2015). "Tara Subkoff Does Cannes". The New York Times . Travel Diary. Archived from the original on January 26, 2025.
  25. ↑ "Tara Subkoff reveals LA inspiration behind the Chloë Sevigny short "Magic Hour"". Huck Magazine. December 2, 2014. Archived from the original on December 12, 2014.
  26. ↑ "Actress Tara Subkoff buys a towering Streamline Moderne in Silver Lake". Los Angeles Times . June 21, 2021. Archived from the original on September 21, 2024.
  27. ↑ Aleksander, Irina (April 22, 2010). "Tara Subkoff Talks to Derek Blasberg About Her Brain Surgery in Harper's Bazaar". The New York Observer . Archived from the original on November 26, 2024.
  28. ↑ Kudler, Adrian (April 23, 2013). "Watch Chloe Sevigny Act Like an Asshole NY-to-LA Transplant". Curbed . Archived from the original on December 11, 2016.
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