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.
I just wanted to honor who Emily was. She's just a strong woman. Through my journey of playing her, I found a lot of strength, and I think that I've changed, as a female, in the way that I carry myself. To go through something traumatic, like getting your face scarred, it made me analyze vanity a lot. When you have a little pimple and you're like, "Oh, my god, there's an alien on my face!," you feel like it's magnified.
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.
There's so much going on, with child abuse, not having the right relationships and being in abusive relationships, that play into her, and that energy was constantly in my body for a month. I was the lead character and it was very, very intense.
It was a very, very intense film for me. I almost lost my mind because there are scenes where I have to kill people, and that energy is absolutely overwhelming. At the same time, as an actor, you never play a character with judgment. It's not my place to judge the fact that she kills people. It's for me to look at her psychology to see what makes her do that.
There was one female role, which was Emily. When I did the audition, I flubbed up. It was my first audition back from Christmas break, and I flubbed up and was devastated. In the audition room, they were like, "Oh, you did great!," but you never really know. So, I left the audition in tears.
Even though she's dealing with a scar, Emily just carries on with life. It's not a big deal. While we were shooting the scene, I tried it different ways. I tried it where I was hiding my face, and Chris [Weitz] was like, "Let's try it where she doesn't care," and that's who she is. She doesn't care what anybody else thinks.
I didn't want to be around anybody because it was just too much for my brain. But, as an actress, you hope you get those meaty roles that push you into the extremities of that psychology. I like doing independent films because there's more room for you to be creative, and the director allowed me to just go wherever I needed to go. It was emotional. I had to cry a lot.
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 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.
Everyone was like, "You're life is going to change so much," but I don't think anybody recognizes me. Sometimes my friends will say, "Oh, that person recognized you," but I don't notice it. I don't even look at people when I walk because it weirds me out, if they're looking at me.
Most of Emily's backstory is written out between New Moon and Eclipse. I'm reading them as we're shooting the films. I haven't read Breaking Dawn yet. It's just too crazy. There's too much going on that you need a map. I just try to focus on one movie at a time. When we were doing New Moon press, people were already asking about Eclipse. I didn't read it until I was ready to go, so that it was fresh and I wasn't jumbled with all this other stuff.
I was sitting on top of people and it was just really uncomfortable. There was no place to move. And, I don't like auditioning, anyways. With auditions, you can get so nervous, or other things get into your head and throw you off, and it doesn't really reflect what you can do, as an actor. The whole thing was just really nerve-wracking, but I ended up getting it.
A lot of people think that, as actors, we have an endless supply of money, and you don't. It comes in waves, and then you're riding a certain amount of money for awhile. When you're at that point where you're like, "Do I feed myself or do I do music?," it's a juggling act.
It's a juggling act. Every time I get going on the album stuff or being musical, acting kicks in and I book a job. It comes down to a money thing.
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 knew everything about her backstory. I skimmed through all the books and read through everything that happened between Sam (Chaske Spencer), Emily and Leah (Julia Jones), so by the time we started filming, I knew everything that had to do with my storyline.
Because I have the scar, people are like, "Who did you play in the film?," and I tell them, "The girl with the scar," and then they're like, "Oh, yeah!" I think most people expect me to have the scar.
It's bluesy, rocky jazz. I call it soul music, but it's not James Brown soul music. It comes from my soul. It comes from a deeper place. Duffy has that similar old school soul sound to herself. If I opened for Duffy, that would make sense to me, in my head.
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.
With acting, I'm taking somebody else's work and interpreting it. Whereas with music, it's organic. It's completely myself. Nobody else is really involved with the beginning stages of it. Art is something that I haven't really put out to the public. There's a couple pictures on MySpace, but I haven't done a gallery opening or anything like that. Art is very personal to me. I haven't really shared it with too many people.