This former child actress is pursuing a new dream at ASU: Becoming a writer

One of Claire Geare’s earliest memories is spitting fish sticks into a cup. But she wasn’t sitting in a high chair at her parents’ dining room table. She was on the set of a TV commercial.

In fact, a lot of Geare’s formative memories took place on sets. When she was 5 years old, Sarah Paulson shoved her. When she was 8, Owen Wilson threw her off a roof. Don’t worry, it was in the script. That last example comes from the movie “No Escape,” which also starred Pierce Brosnan.

These days, Geare isn’t running lines with former James Bond actors. She’s an Arizona State University student studying journalism, working in a cafe to make ends meet. And while acting once defined her life, lately, she’s been focused on defining herself.

Not long ago, Geare published an essay in State Press Magazine called “Forever Famous: The Life of a Former Child Actress and Current Wannabe.” When Geare thinks about the future, she doesn’t picture her face on movie posters. She pictures bylines like the one that accompanied that State Press essay.

Geare wants to be a writer. As she told The Show recently, she loved being a child star, but it wasn’t something she chose. When it comes to writing, it’s a very different story.

Full conversation

CLAIRE GEARE: Writing is like the biggest choice I've made in my life. You really have to consciously do it. I mean, you have to consciously act too, but for me it was a little unconscious. So choosing to put time into it when it wasn't a job, it wasn't something that I just did every day waking up, that was the big difference for me.

SAM DINGMAN: I mean, we're here talking because you wrote this piece that was extremely personal and really revealing about yourself and your inner life, how you think about yourself in the world. I think sharing oneself in that way is a reason that a lot of people act. But is it fair to say that you get that more from writing?

GEARE: I think so. Because when you're acting, you are like sharing a piece of yourself, but you're sharing it through some sort of character or some sort of scene. But when I write, I'm able to write just like as me from me.

DINGMAN: What do you like about that feeling of of laying it all out there?

GEARE: Oh, that's, that's a good question. Part of me is not sure. I think it's cathartic. Maybe it's even selfish because I'll write these pieces and then I'll feel at peace with myself about a certain scenario or happening in my life.

DINGMAN: I mean, that's, that's a very beautiful feeling, the sense of being at peace with yourself. But just to offer, I mean, I think something that I was very drawn to about your piece beyond the specific, you know, details is this sense that you have lived a journey that I think a lot of people view as the goal, and implied in what you wrote is this idea that that's not enough, like there has to be more.

I think that's a pretty provocative idea, just the sense that there is something more powerful to you about the experience of writing, say this essay than seeing your face on a movie poster.

GEARE: Definitely part of it doesn't feel real. Part of my acting and my being on billboards and all that stuff, the brief time where I was sort of quote unquote famous. Part of that feels sort of like a fever dream. I guess it sounds kind of bad, but it is like achievable, but what does that mean necessarily?

DINGMAN: No, that makes sense though. I mean, the idea that there's a difference between success and purpose is also rather provocative, I think. What would you say the the sense of purpose that you find through writing is?

GEARE: I mean, basically, some of the stuff I write, it feels like a diary entry and I've gotten, you know, feedback or I've had people reach out and that's just like the best feeling in the world to me is being able to feel like I was able to relate to people.

DINGMAN: Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the really compelling quotes from your piece for me was, it hurts to have a public image from as far back as that age, and sometimes I feel like it hurts to have one at this age too. Tell me a little bit more about what you mean by that.

GEARE: I have a lot of work out there. From being a child actress to now writing, I mean, I mentioned my like high school newspaper. I even have stuff out there from that which I fear is regrettable sometimes.

DINGMAN: Can you give me an example?

GEARE: I wrote, so I've always been a satirist, so I wrote a couple of satires my high school days that sort of just reeked of like disdain for my own high school. And I read it back and I was like, jeez it's like these people must have hated me like I was going at them. Or even just I you know I wrote some news stories that I just feel have like not very nuanced takes attached to them because I was so young, which I hate to have that out there.

DINGMAN: Right, yes, that makes total sense. That makes total sense. But it's interesting to me, I have to say, Claire, that I think some people have the experience of realizing how exposing it is to write something in your own voice that either you look back on and kind of cringe or maybe you get negative feedback to it, and that's enough for a lot of people to stop writing, but it has not stopped you. So tell me about that.

GEARE: Jeez, I mean, yeah, it hasn't stopped me, which is it …

DINGMAN: Nor should you.

GEARE: Thank you. I mean, I think for me it's just that feeling like I said earlier kind of of like when I write this sort of stuff, I feel some sort of peace within myself or I feel some sort of closure happening in some way, even if it's just closure on like an idea, like a satire and that feeling is just so powerful that I don't think I could ever stop writing, even though it's scary to me to put out work that I might change my mind on, you know, a year later.

DINGMAN: Do you think there is any connection between your experience as an actor and your ability to have that perspective that you just articulated?

GEARE: I think everything in my life goes back to my formative acting days. I guess it teaches you that you can be picked apart for anything and so it might as well, in my mind, be something that I, at least at one point thought or felt it might as well be on my terms.

I almost like writing and imagining someone reading and being able to imagine me like behind my computer writing it. That is kind of what I hope to achieve when I write is that someone could like feel me doing it. And so to have yourself in every bit of a piece, even when you are playing a character like in a satire, that is definitely different than when you act and you're supposed to leave no trace.

DINGMAN: In the version you're doing now, you get to act without having to disappear.

GEARE: That's, that's true. That's a very cool way to put it.