There’s a moment in Patti Smith’s Just Kids, a favorite book of actress Taylor Russell, when the punk poet laureate watches her friend Robert Mapplethorpe head out from the Chelsea Hotel for a night of hustling. Smith protests through tears, writing, “Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?”
Russell, 25, has read the book about 10 times, and has Smith’s lightning bolt tattoo replicated on the inside of her left wrist. “She’s one of my heroes,” says the Canadian actress. We’re sitting about a mile south of Chelsea’s storied hotel, at the West Village restaurant Buvette, discussing Russell’s breakout performance in Waves, the masterful new drama by director Trey Edward Schults. The film follows a Florida family navigating a series of fluctuating pressures thrust upon them: the unyielding demands of excellence placed on black teenagers, the strains of relationships, and grief. “What I love about Waves is the message of healing, and that nobody’s perfect,” says Russell, who plays the unassuming younger sister, Emily, who watches her brother (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) barrel toward self-destruction. “We are so ungraceful as human beings. At my most unlovable and ungraceful, I’ve felt so much shame,” Russell reflects. “What would be so great in those times is to have someone embrace you. That’s when you need it the most.”
In Waves’ second half, Emily quietly emerges, transcendent, as the film’s central figure among a standout cast, including Emmy winner Sterling K. Brown and Tony winner Renée Elise Goldsberry, as her onscreen parents, and Oscar nominee Lucas Hedges, who plays her beau. (The two were dating off-camera this past spring, but she prefers not to discuss their current status.) “We just clicked immediately; we spoke the same language,” she says of meeting Hedges. “He was like a tribe member.”
Born in Vancouver, Russell spent her childhood on the move, uprooting 16 times to follow her father’s career as an actor. “I didn’t grow up in a wealthy family,” she says. “My parents struggled; we were on welfare. Things changed a lot, so there was always an opportunity for reinvention, to create something new.” After high school, the longtime ballet dancer was allowed to try her hand at her dad’s craft. Following a series of supporting roles, she landed a part on Netflix’s 2018 reboot of Lost in Space, whose second season premieres in December—and then Waves, which will likely propel her into the awards season conversation. On her first read of an early scene, she thought, “I know her, I know this girl,” she says. “From that point, I fought really hard to get it—I wanted it so badly.”
Russell mentions that in a few hours she’ll see her hero Patti Smith live, in a performance pegged to her new memoir, Year of the Monkey. The icon’s tattoo (and thus Russell’s) was inspired by the Sioux chief Crazy Horse, who used the lightning bolt as a visual reminder on the battlefield to not take others’ belongings. For Russell, accolades are coming—but they will be hers for the taking, hard fought and well deserved.
This article appears in the December 2019 issue of ELLE.
![fyc red carpet event for showtime's fellow travelers](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/allison-williams-attends-the-fyc-red-carpet-event-for-news-photo-1723408573.jpg?crop=0.787xw:0.577xh;0.144xw,0.0505xh&resize=360:* "FYC Red Carpet Event For Showtime's "Fellow Travelers"")
