Cheeks
Did you notice my fat cheeks in the photo
section? They've always caused me a lot of
grief, I must say. I once had a boyfriend
with similarly proportioned facial features,
and everyone called us Chip 'n' Dale. Once,
I'd been cast for a children's musical, and
the director had never seen any of us, he'd
cast us from our photos. At the first
rehearsal he called "Anna
Southerington", I said "here",
and watched his eyes pop out of his skull. He
had cast me as the fat Lucinda who never
stopped eating pastries, and in front of him
stood a 105 lb slip of a girl who just
happened to have fat cheeks. The costume
department suddenly got very busy rounding up
pillows and hip rolls to stuff my dress with.
TV shows
I adore Ally McBeal! Ally herself is some
sort of weird conglomerate of myself and my
oldest friend, Helene - clone us into one
person á la The Fly and we're Ally. The
whole show is filled with these quirky,
wonderful people who make no excuses for
being themselves. Then there's Star Trek -
all of them except Deep Space 9. Star Trek
really appeals to my sense of curiosity about
life and the universe and my belief in the
resilience of the human spirit, to my
adventurelust and urge for exploration. The
X-files? Absolutely, for many of the same
reasons. The unknown and the unexplained
fascinate me. The West Wing, The Practice,
The District and British comedy series
Goodness Gracious Me are some other
favorites. Soaps? No way! Badly written,
badly directed, badly acted, and based on
every stupid cliché known to mankind.
Fiction
Fantasy! I love mythology in all its guises,
whether it be actual ancient mythology
recorded by our long dead ancestors, or the
mythological worlds created today by modern
fantasy authors. I'm especially fond of
Arthurian lore, both medieval and
contemporary.
Comedy
And now for something completely different,
nudge nudge, say no more! How did the world
survive before Monty Python? And Blackadder
and Fawlty Towers. There's also an
"old" British show called
"Beyond the fringe" (with Peter
Cook, among others) that contained some
absolutely hysterical material - if you can
find it, check it out! Humor that is absurd,
unpredictable, or contains uncommonly sharp
wit or repartee appeals enormously to me!
Movies
Yes, constantly. I have a 24-hour video store
a few blocks from my house, which also
happens to have really good prices (thank
God), and I'm one of their best customers.
I'm in there all the time, at all hours of
the day or night. Some favorites in the past
few years have been: The Diary of Bridget
Jones, The Mummy Returns (and The Mummy), The
Man Who Cried, The Cell, The Sixth Sense, The
Matrix, Elizabeth, Shakespeare in Love, An
Ideal Husband, City of Angels, Les
Misèrables... And I can't wait for The Lords
of the Ring! I also collect the animated
Disneys on video - I adore them!
Food and drink
Red hot! Medium- and fullbodied red wines
from South Africa, South America, Spain or
Italy. Hot and spicy Indian, Thai, Spanish or
Italian food, preferrably with lots of
garlic. Yum!
The spiritual side of
life
Conventional organized religion, no. There
are a lot of truths and good things in the
Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Ghita etc, and
I've studied and will always honor all of
them. However, they all leave me personally
with the sense that that's not all there is
to it, that there is more to know and
understand, that there is no one religion
that conveys or even can convey it all, that
dogma and doctrine spring out of a distortion
of the original intent and message of the
spiritual teachings in question, that one's
relationship with the spiritual source
doesn't require middle men such as priests,
ministers, imams, yogis etc. One book sums up
all of my own beliefs and truths - Neale
Donald Walsch's Conversations with God.
Everything I've come to view as my own
spiritual truths over many years of study of
hundreds of different sources, and over many
years of reflection and meditation, is there,
in a nutshell. Imagine my surprise when I
found all of my own beliefs and truths in one
single book - I was both stunned and
overjoyed. So now, Sanna Carlsson and I run
the CWG Center of Stockholm, complete with
web community and webzine. Have
a look if you want to know
more!
Friends
Helene Carenborn, Micke Wiberg, RoseMarie
Andersson, Gunnar Michaeli and Mia Hertler,
Anders Tengner and Agneta Ivarsson, Mats
Tengner, Lena Brandt, Magnus Michaeli, Karin
Olsson, Karin Winkler, Camilla Waltin, Lydia
Duprat, Glenn Omans, Beth Briggs, Lisa Carr
Hogarth, Sanna Carlsson, Calle Rehbinder and
Jennie, all my CWG friends... what can I say?
Not one of you is even remotely sane, and I
love you for it!
Family
Mom: Helene Wikström (bank employee)
Dad and stepmom: Frank and Terry
Southerington (college professors, directors,
actors)
Siblings: Tom (attorney), Paul (computer
genius), Jennifer (anime artist) and Margaret
(gymnast and budding actress) Southerington
Grandparents: Rune and Kerstin Wikström,
Frank and Muriel Southerington
Aunts and uncles: Katrin Stern, Örjan
Wikström, Peter and Margaret Andrews
Cousins: Julian Andrews, Pauline Warner,
Kristian and Fredrik Stern