Evan Rachel Wood Is Cool As Hell And Always Afraid

Evan Rachel Wood has habitually been cool.


As a teen, she was the bad girl role model for a generation in Thirteen. As soon as we were all obsessed with vampires, she was Louisiana’s Vampire Queen in True Blood. She’s a futuristic robot in the mindfuck that is Westworld. (Cool.) She’s been nominated for Golden Globes, Emmys, and SAG Awards, and has taken residence a Critics’ Choice Award. (Very cool.) She’s a champion of bisexual visibility, mental health, and surviving sexual trauma. (Even cooler.) And recently, she helped extend the deadline for survivors of domestic violence to take legal action against their abusers. (Need I mention it again? Fucking cool.)


For the record, Wood calls this assessment “disputable,” although the day she discussed with MTV News, it was all thanks to the crown jewel of evidence: She is currently, officially, a Disney queen, voicing Elsa and Anna’s mom, Queen Iduna, in Frozen 2.


Queen Iduna cuddles with Elsa and Anna in Frozen 2.


If ever there was a time to believe in fate and happily ever afters, it's right now. Like several of us, Wood grew up on Disney. As a child, she would stage productions of all her preference Disney movies in the backyard — and she loved it so much that she put on a similar performance as an adult with her musical group, Evan + Zane. “No joke, two weeks before I got called to do an audition for Frozen, I had just gotten done doing a Disney cabaret,” she says. Month along with 1/2 later, as Wood was heading out to Disneyland for the day, she got the call that would serve as her coronation. So, Wood doesn’t even hesitate to mention she feels qualified for the honor.


Still, there really is something heart-stopping about this particular moment in time. “You train your whole life for this, however it is quite a moment as soon as you walk into the sorcerer’s hat in Burbank and all artwork from all of the Disney movies that have ever been made before you are on the walls,” she says. “And then you’re up against that mic, and this is it, this is your moment.”


Nerves be damned, Wood killed it, giving sweet life to the mother of the most beloved royal sisters in Disney’s library, and with an issuing of a lullaby that hums while in the heartbeat of Frozen 2. It’s just like Jennifer Lee, writer and co-director of Frozen 2 and Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios, knew she would from the moment she auditioned. “In her voice, you can feel this nurturing, loving mother, although one who knew so much more,” Lee mentioned while in a press conference for the film. “I knew she carried so much more than she was revealing, and … we all looked at each other and were like, ‘Oh my god, she’s here.’”


Wood and bandmate Zane Carney perform "Part of Your World."


Yet perhaps those nerves — unnecessary as they seem — are the reason Wood has a hard time admitting she’s cool: She still gets jitters, and nervousness is the exact opposite of coolness. “I habitually get scared still,” she says. “I just do it anyway. I don’t know what it is. My dad says it’s habitually been there.”


That’s her version of bravery, she says, following an ethos not unlike that of John Wayne, Carrie Fisher, and probably a lot more prominent people who did Big Things, all of whom at one point preached the connection between fear and courage. “But I also,” she qualifies, “have a really hard time not being myself, and once I’ve tried not to do it, I have a very violent reaction.”


To avoid that reaction, Wood has learned to notice what people crave — what she craves — and kick that door down. Others will follow, that’s a comfort she’s sure of, “because my truth is a lot of people’s truths,” Wood says. “They just need somebody that has a spotlight on them to use it to mention, ‘Hey, you’re not alone, and I’m up here, which means you can would be up here.’” Case in point: her 2017 Golden Globes look, a tuxedo, which was a extremely newsworthy choice for a woman at the time. (Plus, she laughs, there’s an added bonus to being bold in Hollywood: “Sometimes the film world can get a little bit stuffy, and thus I attempt to ruffle their feathers a little bit bit.”)


Wood has grown her confidence bit by bit, slowly convincing herself after awhile that authenticity is a cornerstone of her path. The more she shared — about her sexuality, about her mental health, about her history with sexual assault — the easier it’s gotten to share. “People surprised me,” she says. We all walk around so afraid of each other, so afraid of our truths, that it’s become so easy to forget how much compassion we’re all capable of showing one another. Yes, Wood has felt some hate; overwhelmingly, she’s felt love.


She hopes each person can feel empowered to lean into their fears. That’s how progress moves from the micro into the macro. “It’s speaking truth to power even whenever you don’t know how that’s going to be received,” she says. “There are no guarantees, and you’re going to have to fight for that truth, especially if it’s a new truth.”


Wood speaking at the 2019 Women's March in Los Angeles.


Wood has recently taken her fight to the next level. Working with California State Assembly member Eduardo Garcia, State Senator Susan Rubio, along with a little team of fellow survivors, she saw the Phoenix Act, a bill she fostered from inception by way of the full legislative process, signed into law. Beginning in 2020, California survivors of domestic violence will have more time to take legal action against their aggressor, providing a much more scientifically and humanly suitable approach to process the trauma and build the strength to come forward than the previous three-year statute of limitations. This time, Wood wasn’t just speaking her truth; she was speaking on behalf of a lot of people’s truths. The responsibility weighed on her, and she was really, really scared. True to form, she did it anyway.


“Everything’s not brilliant. I have days where I’m fully overwhelmed and anxious and don’t know how I’m going to get out of bed,” she says. “But I do know, because of what I’ve been through, the resilience of the human spirit, and right now, no matter how hard things get, I know that it’s only temporary; that everything is temporary.”


As cool and with each other as she is, Wood is still making peace with herself. Her life hasn’t exactly gone according to plan. She thought her 2012 wedding to Jamie Bell could be the begin of her happily ever right after, giving her the life she’d dreamt of since she was a little bit girl. And it also was, for a little, up until 19 months later if they reported their separation, making Wood a solitary mom of a 1-year-old.


That forced recalibration wasn’t segment of her fantasy, though she sees right now that it was a required piece to be who she is currently, 2019 Evan Rachel Wood: Disney queen, legislative ingenue, perpetual truth-teller, cool as hell, and unabashedly afraid.