After working with Paul Thomas Anderson and Kelly Reichardt, the youngest sibling of indie group Haim is charming audiences with her acting chops. Now set to star in The Drama, Kristoffer Borgli’s edgy A24 romcom, the musician and actor talks to Kitty Grady about her cinematic memories growing up in the Valley, comedy heroines, and why her ultimate dream is to play with Joni Mitchell.
Alana Haim vividly remembers the first time she did a tour of Universal Studios in Los Angeles. It was her seventh birthday and, from the vantage point of the tourist tram, she saw the clocktower from Back to the Future (1985), a Wild West street where cowboys appeared, and the gabled house where Alfred Hitchcock shot Psycho (1959). But most of all, she remembers the tour guide. “They’d be like, what’s over there?… It’s Jaws!” says Haim, animated. “That was my ultimate dream job—I thought all the movie stars lived there in the backlots.”
While still most famous as the youngest sibling in Haim, the eponymous rock band that she has been in with her sisters, Danielle and Este, since 2007, the 34-year-old is inching closer to this dream. First as the lead in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2021 Licorice Pizza and with a smaller part in his Academy Award-winning One Battle After Another (2025), Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind (2025), and now in Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama (2026), Haim has arrived in the world of cinema.
“I love it,” she interrupts, when I ask about this career shift. “A new chapter!” In a “rare occurrence”, Haim—who was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley and still lives in Los Angeles—is speaking to me on video call from New York City, sitting in a bijou hotel room during what has been the bleakest of winters. Earlier that week it hit minus numbers in New York. “For a Valley Girl, anything below 60 degrees is like: I might as well be in Antarctica,” she says. I mention the continuous rain in London. “But there’s that beautiful moment in London when the sun comes out and it feels like a musical,” she responds.
Alana Haim, 2026. Photography by Maddy Rotman.
With a habit for swearing, silly accents, and superlatives, Haim, whose long brown hair extends way beyond the frame, has an infectiously sunny disposition. The role of entertainer has always been one she’s identified with. “I’ve spent my life trying to make people laugh. That was my job as the baby sister of the family. I was the jester,” she says. While Danielle is the band’s key singer and bassist Este is known for her Jagger-esque gesticulations and expressions, the multi-instrumentalist youngest sister’s signature is keeping the crowd entertained with “tight 5” stand-up routines. “I’m like, finally I have people to listen to me,” she says.
Paying particular attention to these routines was Paul Thomas Anderson, a longtime friend of the band who also grew up in the San Fernando Valley. “He was, from the second my sisters met him, our biggest cheerleader,” says Haim. After watching their Coachella gig in 2018, Anderson, by this point the sisters’ go-to music video director, turned to Haim with a proposition. “He said, ‘I’m going to put you in a movie some day’,” she says. “I guess I made him laugh.”
Anderson emailed Haim the script for Licorice Pizza (then titled Soggy Bottom), a screwball comedy set in the 1970s San Fernando Valley. Haim plays Alana Kane, a 25-year-old photographer’s assistant who meets a cocksure 15-year-old actor called Gary Valentine. Haim was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role—which sees her running boundlessly through the California sunshine and executing stunty set pieces (Haim learned to drive a truck for a scene alongside Bradley Cooper). “I think Paul saw that I had no fear,” says Haim. “I mean, I have so much fear, but saying yes is part of my DNA. I’m down for the rollercoaster.”
As her on-screen character rubs against the world of Hollywood through Valentine, Haim was confronting her own star potential. “I’ll never forget, I had a conversation with Paul after we finished. He asked me, ‘If you never [acted] again how would you feel?’,” says Haim. “If it was only Licorice Pizza, then I would be proud of that. It was the greatest experience of my life. But I said I would feel like half my body didn’t exist—I don’t think I could ever not do this again.”
Fortunately more roles came. For her second on-screen performance, she starred as Terri Mooney, the wife of an art criminal played by Josh O’Connor in indie American auteur Reichardt’s latest film The Mastermind. It is also set in the 1970s. “It’s the hair and the snaggle teeth,” she jokes, when I ask about her casting. “But that era in general has always called to me. The 1970s was such a fruitful time for the valleys. If anyone wants me to be in their 1970s movie, I’m down.”
While Haim describes Anderson in Pygmalion terms (“He made me out of clay”), she recognises other directors have a lot to teach her. “With Paul, everything’s fast, running, action, driving backwards, getting shot,” says Haim. “Kelly just taught me to enjoy myself, and take my time, and be intentional with my movements. She’s so comforting.” This didn’t stop her returning to work with Anderson as a bewigged member of the French 75, a radical political group in the 1970s-set drama One Battle After Another. “I got tapped for round two,” says Haim. “The only thing that was sad was in Licorice Pizza Sean Penn was my lover, and in One Battle he was my killer.”
The Drama is set to propel Alana into the present moment. Directed by Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli (Sick of Myself (2022)) and produced by Ari Aster (Midsommar (2019), Eddington (2025)), the A24 film promises to be a subversive take on the romcom. Starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as an engaged couple, the titular drama begins when, at a dinner party with another couple (played by Haim and Mamoudou Athie), they play a game revealing the worst thing they’ve ever done. I speak to Haim before a screening of the spoiler-driven film is possible, but Zendaya’s answer—redacted from the trailer—has already provoked wild fan theories. “I’m such a fucking bigmouth, whenever someone brings it up I’m like, ‘Don’t ask me the question! Don’t ask me what Zendaya says’,” says Haim. Her character appears to be an antagonist type, more spiteful and commandeering than her previous roles, seen shouting at Zendaya in the trailer. (“Watching her work is like watching a ballet,” says Haim of the actress. “We’d laugh after every take.”) Haim was attracted to this anger. “My sisters never bullied me, but I was like the glorified assistant. I was reading this script a couple of years ago. It was 30 years of bottling this up, this idea that I can’t fight back—I finally got to unleash all this emotion. It was so fun.”
It was an act of individuality that led her to the part in the first place. “It’s no secret I never go anywhere without my siblings,” says Haim. “But I’d heard about this movie called Dream Scenario (2023) [directed by Borgli]. It was a rare night when my sisters were too tired to go out but I really wanted to see this movie.” She went along to the premiere at the Westwood theatre: “It was very LA—I followed the energy and went by myself.” The same energy led her to the after-party where she met Borgli. “It’s one of those rare meetings, where you meet someone and feel a connection,” says Haim. “I rarely make new friends in LA, but I felt like we went to high school together, we had the same humour and jokes.” He quickly told her about his movie The Drama and it was a done deal. “Not to put a bow on it, but it really was a dream scenario.”
Alana Haim, 2026. Photography by Maddy Rotman.
Growing up in the San Fernando Valley is to grow up with film history. As the world of Anderson’s Licorice Pizza demonstrates, it is a land of hotshots, wannabes and producers round every corner. Haim, however, grew up a step removed from capital-H Hollywood, her father a former professional soccer player and mother an art teacher, who encouraged their daughters to play music and listen to 1970s Americana. Although, in a strange twist of fate, the sisters’ mother taught Anderson. “It’s a very LA tale. The universe was destined to bring me and Paul together,” says Haim.
A cinematic DNA can also be traced. Friday nights were spent driving over to the Cheesecake Factory in Sherman Oaks where her sister worked. “That’s where our movie theatre was,” she says. “My sister would give me bread and soup, and I would go to the movies.” While citing an affinity for Albert Brooks (“my ultimate celebrity crush”) and Toy Story (1995-2019) (“I’m the same age as Andy”), her favourite female performer was Ali MacGraw: “I thought we looked alike—well, in my dreams. She has kind of messed-up teeth like me, too.”
Haim’s key inspirations, however, were female comedians. She cites the influence of SNL stars such as Molly Shannon, Cheri Oteri, Maya Rudolph as well as Parker Posey and the late Catherine O’Hara. “When you go to middle school, it can go one of two ways: you can be naturally gorgeous and all the boys want to make out with you, or you go the funny-girl route where you think making people laugh will make boys want to make out with you,” says Haim, referencing her early performances as a “doo-wap” girl in Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and the Wicked Witch of the West.“I think we can figure out which route I went.”
Not to be LA about it, I think because I’m a fucking Sagittarius—and we’re very outward, but inside we’re oo-ey gooey… the gift of being able to take on somebody that is so unlike myself for months at a time, it’s a very addictive feeling.
Alana Haim
Alana Haim, 2026. Photography by Maddy Rotman.
In an era when popstars—such as Charli xcx, whom Haim has collaborated with—are more frequently turning to acting, I wonder if it provides a liberation that isn’t found in music. “I mean definitely. Not to be LA about it, I think because I’m a fucking Sagittarius— and we’re very outward, but inside we’re oo-ey gooey and we need to be held and want to cry—the gift of being able to take on somebody that is so unlike myself for months at a time, it’s a very addictive feeling.”
Haim is adamant that music isn’t going anywhere, however. She assures me the title of the band’s latest studio album I Quit is a reference to eschewing inner thoughts of negativity, rather than a career change: “I’ve been playing music since I was four years old, it’s my whole body. My siblings and I will make music until the day we die. I mean, we make music when we wash the dishes.” Proving the point, she describes a recent encounter at an awards ceremony where she met Joni Mitchell, a musician the sisters had listened to repeatedly growing up. “I just told her, ‘Joni, if you ever need three girls from the Valley to be your backup band, I will drop everything I’m doing. I don’t care where I am in the world’,” she says.
In acting, Haim describes a dream list of collaborators such as Celine Song and Steven Spielberg, whilst at the time of writing it has been announced she may star in a biopic of Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss, although rules out directing herself. “I’d be the director who trips and hits the red button and is like, ‘Are we filming?’” she laughs. Acting, however, is its own love affair, which she hopes will never end. “The most heartbreak that I’ve gone through during this process is playing this role and falling in love with this person and the other actors,” she notes. “When I leave a set on the last day, I feel like a part of me has gone. I’m waiting for the next role to fill that half of my heart up again.”
Credits
Creative Director: Fatima Khan
Photographer: Maddy Rotman
Production Director: Anna Pierce
DP: Mynxii White
Video Editor: Alex Stenhouse
Film production: Luke Georgiades
Production Designer: Alice Jacobs
1st Assistant: Alonso Ayala
2nd Assistant: Reveka Pasternak
Stylist: Alexander Roth at Talome Agency
Stylist Assistant: Felipe Xavier Diaz
Stylist Assistant: Carter Bright
Stylist Assistant: Ismail Jallaq
Hair Artist: Laurie Zanoletti
Makeup Artist: Olivia Barad
Studio: Jane Ives Studio NY
Production Assistant: Kelli Mcguire
Creative Assistant: Kitty Spicer
Cover Title Treatment & Art Direction: Broad Peak Studio
Post Production: Alena Zolotnikova
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