Karen Elson

As scary as it is, I like making real, direct eye contact with people from the stage. In a sense, it's like modeling: that feeling of locking in and projecting some kind of emotion to try to captivate people.

I feel like somehow I'm living my life mentally in reverse. It's taken me to my 30s to feel relaxed and comfortable in my skin. I think I'm going to be dancing on tables when I'm 50. I really hope I am.

I'd worked at a small town newspaper, and I was thinking of all the strange stories that I had seen float through the newsroom in my time there that were dismissed as kind of amusing curiosities. Somehow from that I got to this idea of an eccentric alcoholic who built a lighthouse in the woods.