By SP

Alexandra Hedison appeared in the third season of The L Word as Dylan Moreland, a straight young and struggling filmmaker who had an affair with Helena Peabody and broke her heart in the process…and her own.

Hedison hasn’t been in a lot of show business lately. According to her biography on Alexandra Hedison Online Website, she returned to acting “ after five years of devoting her time to the fine arts, photography, and filmmaking … Although she enjoys acting, photography is her biggest passion. Alexandra’s landscape photography has been shown at Rose Gallery in L.A.’s Bergamot Station and her portraits work have been published in Time, USA Today, NY Times, People, and Newsweek.”

Hedison grew up in Hollywood and it’s important to her that people around her would understand her world. In the interview to fanofalex (Alexandra Hedison fan website – November 2005) she explained, “ My parents are in the business.  A lot of my friends are in Hollywood, but they aren’t famous. I have friends who are writers, producers, actors and friends who aren’t in the business at all.”

In a recent Art Works Magazine article (2006) that can be also found on Hedison’s official website we read, “Alex grew up in a creative Hollywood household. Her father, David Hedison, was a 1960’s soap opera star with long running parts in Another World and The Young and the Restless, among other roles … Interestingly, her father was a pretty good amateur photographer years ago, but Alex didn’t know it until quite recently when he gave her his old camera. It’s now one of her most prized possessions.”

Hedison herself began photographing about ten years ago and she was “working behind the camera for the last five years as a professional photographer,” as we learn in her latest interview with Laurie Schenden to the Curve magazine (September 2006).

This transition from and actress to a photographer wasn’t easy and Hedison began her new life, so to speak, with a revealing self-photograph. This is how it is described in the Art Works Magazine article.

“She shot into a mirror and produced two photos that she printed on one piece of contact paper. It shows her face and the bottom half of her body. The result is an unsettling self-portrait. A part of her missing, but as disjointed as she may have felt that day, she never really looked back.”

Since that day, Alexandra Hedison finished two series of photographs that she called “Elements” and “(Re)building”, and she also has another photography show in the planning stages.

In a way, both series of photographs represent two different stages in Hedison’s life. As we read in the Art Works Magazine article, “It took four years to finish her ‘Elements’ series and open her first solo show in July of 2004 … It came together at a stable and happy time in Alex’s life. She was in a long-term relationship with comedienne Ellen DeGeneres and basically life was good … ‘Elements’ is a study in natural layers and obstacles. Shot through screens and water, it offers a filtered view of the beauty beyond. Maybe it was foreshadowing. Hedison’s art has always paralleled her life. ‘Elements’ may have been the calm before the storm - because the proverbial shit was about to hit the fan.”

After her break-up with DeGeneres in December 2004, Alexandra Hedison literally threw herself into making the new photograph series, which she called “(Re)building”. As she said in the Art Works Magazine article, “The landscape of construction. I just couldn’t get enough of it. Every Sunday I would go find a construction site. I’d get down deep into the foundations. I could see the roots of the earth and felt like ‘Oh my God I can breathe.’”

In the fanofalex website interview, Hedison also explained the idea behind “(Re)building”. “The whole show is literally about being stripped down to the roots and building yourself from the ground up.  The picture with the blue door – it represents a house that was once lavishly done, but then you open it up and all you see is demolition. In the exhibit, you see a lot of construction sites, foundations – the foundation is where the value of your house is.”

From the Art Works Magazine article we also find out the meaning behind some of the titles of the “(Re)building” series photographs. Some of them have names but some she titled with dates, “… not the date she took the photograph, but rather dates that were significant to her. Take February 14th (just a couple months after the break-up) for instance – the image is shot through a forest of rebar. ‘Lines and lines of rebar, all lined up like soldiers and there in the middle of it is this little red ball, this orb – kind of like a heart. In the middle of all that rebar there was life! I thought of it as my own personal ‘Hallmark’ card’.”

This series of photographs was almost Hedison’s personal life-story as if she was rebuilding it emotionally during one of the hardest times of her life. Again, her art was imitating her life and much more. As it so wonderfully expressed in the Art Works Magazine article, “The ‘(Re)building’ photographs … are poignant, often surprisingly beautiful and seem to hit a universal cord … That is the true beauty of Hedison’s photography – intensely personal but big enough to let the viewers interpret for themselves.”

Soon after Hedison was offered a role on The L Word. Hedison mentioned in the interview to fanofalex website that even though it was a hard year for her, filming The L Word “… was the right thing for me to do at the time and I’m glad I did it. But doing the actual [sex] scenes was weird. Here you have Rachel Shelley [Helena] who is straight as can be, playing a lesbian. And then you have me, who looks gay, playing a straight woman.”

Hedison said in the Curve magazine interview, “I wasn’t in great shape emotionally when I started working on that show” and the cast of The L Word was very supportive and inspiring to the actress when she began filming her scenes.  

In the Art Works Magazine article Hedison also shared her thoughts on the experience with The L Word, “‘it was good timing for me. They shoot in Vancouver (British Columbia), so I got out of L.A. for a couple of months, AND I got this great, sexy part. I mean I had to take off my clothes … The show was such a positive experience. I just had a great time’.”

Alexandra Hedison mentioned several times that she is more comfortable behind the camera but in addition to appearing in The L Word and some other TV shows, Hedison can be seen again in front of the camera as she hosting a new reality design show Designing Blind (A&E).

As we read about the show in the Curve magazine interview, “viewers will get to see her being herself; funny, a bit goofy, conscientious, inquisitive, stylish and beautiful. ‘It’s about as me as I’ve ever been on camera,’ she [Hedison] says.”

So, is The L Word experience over for Alexandra Hedison? She talked a little about it in the Curve magazine interview. With all her future plans, she is open to return to the show “if she’s asked and her time permits. There were definitely some loose ends between her character, Dylan, and Shelley’s Helena. Hedison notes that since Dylan turned Helena’s life upside down, Helena has been much more likable character. ‘My character sort of redeemed her,’ Hedison says, laughing. ‘My character made her look nice!’”

Hopefully she will be invited back to another season of The L Word and she will have free time to do it. But for now she has other projects in work and her life seems to be pretty good. When the Curve magazine interviewer asked Hedison about her ‘plan for life’, she replied, “Yes! It’s to come up with a really good plan.”