Treats! Magazine Issue Eight | Page 49

“ what is normal?” asks Lydia Hearst as the LA sun glares down on the nips and tucks and power breakfasters sprinkled through The Beverly Hills Hotel, haunt of Hollywood’ s bold and beautiful for nearly a century. We’ re ensconced in the pink and green hues of a booth in the Polo Lounge, and Hearst, actress, model, heiress, blogger and now Treats! cover star is pondering our first question:“ Would you say you had a normal childhood?”

She takes a a sip of her cappuccino. Coffee is one of her few vices.“ I think it was pretty normal,” she says.“ I grew up in Connecticut, my sister and I went to the local public school, played in the back yard, all the usual stuff.”

So, nothing out of the ordinary?“ Well, I guess I was on the set of a lot of John Waters films – because my mom was always doing those movies, so meeting Johnny Depp when I was 4 years old or having Ricki Lake babysit me was also part of my childhood. But my parents sheltered me from the spotlight so certainly, everything felt normal.”

Normality may be considered a goal in itself when you’ re born into one of America’ s richest and most storied families. Lydia’ s great grandfather – William Randolph Hearst – was of course the principal inspiration for Citizen Kane. But Hearst, arguably the Rupert Murdoch of his day, believed Orson Welles’ cinematic masterpiece was a thinly-disguised and unflattering portrayal of him and tried to have it banned. Fortunately, his great granddaughter is a little more kindly disposed towards it.

“ I think Citizen Kane is a really beautiful film,” she smiles.“ It’ s virtually unparalleled even today. Thematically, it’ s stunning. It’ s a great story. I mean, for me, looking at it subjectively, I think it’ s very loosely based on my great grandfather. I didn’ t know him as a person but from my family, I know of him and he was very friendly, very jolly, very happy. He was respected and loved by the people who worked with him which is how he was able to accomplish all that he did in his lifetime.”

To have one movie made about your family may be unfortunate. To have two surely feels uncomfortable. The less heralded, but still notorious Patty Hearst was a film about Lydia’ s mother, who was at the center of one of the most surreal episodes of the seventies. At the age of 19, Patty Hearst was kidnapped by a leftwing revolutionary organisation, the Symbionese Liberation Army, before appearing to join the group and commit illegal activities with them, including robbing a bank at gunpoint. She was sentenced to imprisonment though many believed her a victim of Stockholm Syndrome( the psychological phenomenon where kidnap victims become sympathetic towards their captors). In 2001 she received a pardon from President Clinton.

As a child, Lydia was only dimly aware of the furores of the past –“ I lived in a small town. It was a different media age, where there wasn’ t that instant gratification with the press and the paparazzi and the internet” – but as she grew older, she learned more, sometimes inadvertently.

“ I remember at university, I believe it was my psychology course where, when I compared notes with my roommate – who was studying the same course but in a different class – I realized they’ d removed the whole analysis of Stockholm Syndrome from the classes I attended which was … well, I do appreciate the sensitivity of that but I’ m also a big believer that when it comes to life, either everything’ s okay or nothing’ s okay and it’ s really important to not shelter people. Discussion is important. Nothing gets accomplished without that.” treatsmagazine. com 49