The Glee alum grows up and gets the girl in the indie drama Bare.
By Brandon Voss
Dianna Agron is a long way from McKinley High.
In her new film, Bare, in theaters October 30, the 29-year-old actress stars as Sarah, a young woman in a Nevada desert town who, bored with her boyfriend, becomes romantically entangled with Pepper (Paz de la Huerta), a female drifter, and sucked into a seedy world of stripping and drugs. Is Agron distancing herself from Quinn Fabray, the Glee cheerleader who made her famous? “I’m choosing extremely different roles because I want to challenge myself,” she says. “It has nothing to do with the fact that I was on a TV show.”
When queer director Natalia Leite’s Bare premiered in April at the Tribeca Film Festival, folks were quick to label the characters as lesbians, sensationalizing Sarah and Pepper’s love scene. “Sex is beautiful, experimentation is beautiful,” Agron says. “Due to the experiences I’ve had in life, I’ve concluded that love can come to you in many different ways, not necessarily based on your typical sexual preference. I feel proud that we’re becoming more understanding and supportive of more than just social norms.”
A budding activist, Agron has helped to further that conversation, working with LGBT organizations like The Trevor Project and GLAAD. “I feel an immense responsibility because it pains me, physically, to think of voices not being heard, not being spoken for,” she says. “If the things I’m doing are helping even one person, then that’s good enough for me.”
Next, October 2015.