Tinsel Korey (born March 25, 1980) is a Canadian actress, best known for portraying the Makah Emily Young in the Twilight Saga films New Moon and Eclipse.
When you're actually feeling a character and you're going through the real emotions, and you're not fake acting, that energy stays with you and sometimes you can't get it off for days. It just resonates in your body, unless you have some sort of release, whatever it is.
After the make-up process, I was like, "I never want to do a sci-fi movie where I'm in make-up for seven months. " It's interesting. It was my first time ever getting prosthetics. They put this goopy stuff all over your head and they tell you it's like a facial, but it's actually very claustrophobic. All they have are these places where your nostrils are and I kept thinking that they were closing up, but they were like, "No, we're looking at it. " So, they made a mold of my face.
My little sister told me about the Twilight books and what a big fan she was. She said, "It's like Harry Potter in love," which it's not. So, when the audition came up, I wanted to get the film for her. It was great because I got to take her to the premiere. She got all dolled up and was treated like a princess for the day.
I was in the car driving back, after having done a scene where I kill somebody, and I just said to the driver, "I can't talk right now. I'm too emotional. " The whole car ride back, I was just crying.
I just read that one scene for Emily in New Moon, and it was pretty simple and straightforward. They liked that I did it really natural. They were like, "That was great!," even with what little I had. Sometimes just having those little scenes are a lot tougher than if you have five pages because you have to go from 0 to 100 in a snap.
Eventually, if your career goes higher and higher, that's just how it is, but it's a little frightening. When I was younger and I thought about being an actor, I thought of the old Hollywood style of glamour, and that was so beautiful and appealing to me. Now, if you want to be an actor, it's not the same.
Stained is about a lonely bookshop keeper, and her past comes back to haunt her. I play a femme fatale, schizophrenic serial killer. They offered me the part and I was like, "I'm just curious why you thought I would be perfect for this role," and the director (Karen Lam) said, "You have this look that, when you're smiling, you're really sweet, but when you're not smiling, you look like you could kill somebody. "
It was a realization for me when Oprah was talking about New Moon. I was like, "Oh, my god, she's watched a movie that I've been in!" People were like, "It just kicked in for you?," but it's just work for me. The idea that somebody that I've admired for so long had seen something that I'd done was when I understood the magnitude of it.
I also went to the Makah Nation 'cause that's where Emily is originally from and spent time with them too. Seeing the whole spectrum of who she is as a being was cool. And, I miss it. It's beautiful. I miss the kids a lot. I miss everything about that whole entire adventure.
I've developed a way to separate myself from me being me, to me being the character. I can separate watching me, Tinsel Korey, from watching Emily
They're a handful, but Emily deals with that all the time and, as an actor, I deal with that all the time, so you just ignore it. When Julia [Jones] first came on set, she was like, "How do you deal with it?," and I told her, "You just tune it out after awhile. " They were competing with each other, doing push-ups and just being ridiculous, so you just have to zone out.
I'm a goofball, so I think comedy is one of my stronger points, as an actor. I just never get to do it. But, I'm taking classes at Groundlings, where Will Ferrell and Lisa Kudrow studied, and it's all improv comedy. It feels good to be able to do that and be funny.
There are certain aspects of me that can be bad-ass sometimes, but being able to push it to the extreme is something I'd love to play. You don't get those roles, as a female, and especially as an indigenous female. There aren't those roles out there, so I want that. I want women to see a strong, sexy female without showing her body too much.
No matter what happens to you in life, you just roll with it. And then, when we went back to shoot Eclipse, I went to Quileute and taught some acting to the kids, and just got to spend some time in the community, which was great because it gave me an idea of where Emily came from.
I met this girl who had a huge scar on her leg from a car accident. She was talking about how, after it first happened, she would always wear long pants and cover it up. But, as she started to grow into it, she decided that that's just her now. It's just a part of who she is. She wears skirts and she shows it off now.
Chris was involved in that casting process. It was a different feel because New Moon was the first time that the Wolf Pack got together. With Eclipse, we were already established, so I didn't have that same bond or connection with David. It was very technical. He had a vision and an idea of what he wanted to do.
hat made me feel uncomfortable. People would be like, "Woah, that's crazy!," or they'd look at me really funny, but it also helped because that's how people look at Emily. I was like, "Come on, be sensitive! I have a scar on my face. It's not nice to just stare at somebody. " That was really interesting.
Whereas, if you have a longer scene, then you have momentum to build it up. I thought I sucked, but Chris Weitz is an actor, so he understands that process and that you can get nervous in it, and he can look beyond that. Or, it was just me and I was over-thinking the entire thing.
Yes, there was a massive difference between their styles. David is a very technical director and Chris is an actor's director, in the sense of emotion. With David, he's done horror films, so Eclipse is much darker, whereas I found New Moon really light and poetic. I didn't have as much interaction with David because the casting process was already done.
I also love doing comedy. I just moved to L. A. last July. Before that, Vancouver is all about sci-fi, so I didn't get any comedy, whatsoever. But in L. A. , people are like, "You don't look quirky enough," and I'm like, "I'm quirky. I'm the definition of quirky. How do you want me to look quirky. " They have these little boxes that they put everyone in, so now I have to try to break the mold and get them to see me as being quirky.