Hey folks Sam Jones here.

Welcome to another edition of Off-camera, the show where I get to talk to iconic,

creative, curious artists, and find out how they got that way and in this episode I sit down with actress and director

Olivia Wild. It's been four years since Olivia Wild last visited off camera and a lot has changed.

She's had another child, taken a step back from acting, and embarked on a completely different career

path as a director.

As she says, I almost feel like someone who's come out of the closet. There's this

feeling of honesty about what I really want to do and it's a level of comfort that comes

from being true to yourself that I haven't felt in a long time.

Book Smart, her first feature film, offers a unique perspective on friendship and identity

during one of the most tumultuous times in life, the high school years. Being an actress for so long allowed Olivia

to see behind the curtain into the directing process. Whether it was Martin Scorsese

on the set of vinyl, Ron Howard on the set of Rush, or Reed Marano on Meadoland, but learning what

not to do from her less positive experiences was equally important.

As she tells it, knowing that my actors were walking onto a set that was the exact environment

that I would have wanted for myself felt really great.

I used all my bad experiences for something good.

A perfect example of that was shooting a sex scene on a truly

closed set on Book Smart. At times acting in television and film was an isolating

experience for Olivia who would often be brought in to shoot a scene and then promptly whisked away to her trailer.

She fell more like a cage circus animal than a creative human being, and she longed for a more collaborative environment.

Olivia joins off camera to talk about the importance of zooming out on your life every once in a while.

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