Mischa Barton: 'I've had a lot of therapy so I don't have to focus on the past' (original) (raw)

If you want to understand the toxic curse of Noughties celebrity, few women could teach you more than Mischa Barton.

In 2003, when she was 17, she was a New York high schooler and part-time actor with her sights set on Yale Drama. Then, she was cast as the lead in a TV show called The OC.

The OC was a phenomenon. A drama about a group of teenagers in California’s wealthy Orange County and their drastically dysfunctional families, about the class clashes between the overprivileged and the outsiders, about coming of age in dangerous extremes, it was glamorous, addictive, heartbreaking, ridiculous, aspirational.

Every generation has its defining American teen drama – Beverly Hills, 90210 came before it, Euphoria after – here was the one with a sexy indie soundtrack that gripped millennials, their obsession fuelled not just by hormones but by rabid tabloids, celebrity blogs and fan sites on the nascent internet.

It launched the careers of Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson, but Barton was its tragic star. She played Marissa Cooper, Newport Beach’s intelligent, enigmatic, increasingly troubled golden girl seduced by the new bad boy in town Ryan Atwood and whose parents’ high-profile divorce drove her to eating disorders, self-harm, drugs, and unsafe sex.

Her rebellion gave the drama its allure, and she was its idol. Even if you couldn’t relate to her lifestyle or to her plot lines (overdosing on holiday in Mexico, shooting her boyfriend’s rapist brother), you recognised and romanticised her angst.

Mischa Barton, Rachel Bilson, Melinda Clarke and Kelly Rowan in The OC (Photo: Channel 4)

The OC only ran for four wild seasons but its cultural legacy continues. It spawned a thousand copycats, led to real-life structured reality series Laguna Beach: The Real OC and later The Hills, and sparked the voracious modern appetite for entertainment focused on the excesses and overconsumption of the California elite that we still see in Kardashian empire and The Real Housewives of Orange County (and all its spin-offs). It came before social media and influencers, but it paved the way.

At the centre of the sensation was Barton. Impossibly cool, fresh, a little aloof, with composure that belied her age and an elegant transatlantic drawl, she was her generation’s it girl. She was inside or on the cover of every magazine; she was the girl you wanted to be and the one everyone wanted to photograph, the one brands wanted as their wholesome face.

Meanwhile, she, the youngest cast member, managed by and living with her mother, still a virgin and throwing herself into her first relationships, was trying to keep up with her older co-stars (there was an eight-year age gap with her love interest, on screen and, as it turned out, off, Ben McKenzie) while the world refused to leave her alone.

The OC’s four stars: Adam Brody, Mischa Barton, Benjamin McKenzie, and Rachel Bilson (Photo: KMazur/WireImage)

“It detracted from The OC,” she says, over the phone from her home in New York. “I think everybody felt that way. At some point the publicity machine was more than the show itself.”

Barton did not come from the showbiz world. Her Irish mother was an artist, her English father a foreign exchange broker who moved the family from London to New York when she was five years old. She was the middle of three sisters, a shy child whose acting talent was discovered when she was a child at summer camp and led her to roles in New York theatre. Her first film was the British fantasy Lawn Dogs, with Sam Rockwell – then came The Sixth Sense and Notting Hill, and small parts on TV and in and soap operas.

Fame, when it came, terrorised her. Her face, her weight, her clothes, her boyfriends – everything was under scrutiny. Paparazzi camped out outside her house; homeless people in Los Angeles were given phones to tip off photographers if they saw her; she was bullied by gossip bloggers like Perez Hilton (who has since apologised). It left her with PTSD.

Barton in California in 2003 (Photo: Ray Mickshaw/WireImage)

“It can become overwhelming to have everybody so invested in the way you look and your private life,” she says, “and less about your projects.” After three seasons of The OC she needed out. She requested as bloody a death as possible and in 2006 Marissa perished in a car crash that traumatised those who watched it and even left Barton in tears when she rewatched it decades later.

She returned to independent films, the theatre, small TV roles, launched a fashion line – but life after The OC still was not quiet. In the years after she left, she was arrested for drink-driving, went to rehab, and was detained in a psychiatric hospital. She sacked her mother as her manager, and eventually sued her for withheld earnings.

In 2017 a video of her drugged after having her drink spiked was published by the online tabloid TMZ, the same year a two-week fling filmed her having sex and another ex tried to sell the tape to the highest bidder. The lawsuit took over her life.

Barton is 38 now, and life looks very different. “I can’t tell you how happy I am,” she says. “I stay out of things. I’m not really in the limelight, and I really like it.”

She is single, sober, physically healthy and splits her time between New York and London – where her sister and nieces live. Her Instagram presents a woman carefree, travelling, a little silly, but still with that cool-girl edge that made her a muse. “I’m sure there was a time when I didn’t see that [it could happen], but I genuinely do feel unbothered by fame now.”

Mischa Barton in 2019 (Photo: Ian West/PA)

In the past, Barton has been open about how early fame, pressure and backstage backtalk on The OC traumatised her. In 2021, she wrote a shocking and moving article for Harper’s Bazaar magazine about growing up in the public eye – how she reflects on being sexualised so young and on her mental health breakdowns. Today, she seems reticent when I ask whether she looks back with resentment or regret.

“Honestly, I don’t feel that way at all anymore,” she says. “I’m too old to feel that way, and I actually look back at it quite fondly. At this point, I think that everything that needed to be said or aired out has already been done, and it’s very far behind us.

“I talk to Rachel [Bilson, who played her best friend Summer Roberts] on the regular, I talk to Mindy [Melinda Clarke, who played her mother Julie], and a lot of them regularly. I just don’t feel that way anymore. So much time has passed that it would be ridiculous to be harping on about anything that happened then.”

So we talk about her work now. In the past few years, Barton has appeared on the reboot of reality show The Hills in 2019 and the reboot of Neighbours in 2023. Her latest is a low-budget whodunit, Invitation to a Murder, the first in a three-part trilogy of fun, Agatha Christie-esque mysteries – which Barton loves.

She plays Miranda Greene, an amateur sleuth summoned unexpectedly to a mansion on a reclusive island along with five other guests. When one of them is found dead, she puts her detective novel addiction to good use. She is exactly the kind of character Barton has always wanted to focus on. “She’s a strong-willed, fresh, funny female lead. It’s not always easy to find those roles. But there are a lot more of them than there used to be.”

It’s true – well-written characters were scarce when Barton began working and now, especially on television, they dominate. “I think it’s got exponentially better, don’t you?” she asks. “On all the major platforms, you’re seeing all sorts of great female leads, more than ever, more than men. Black Doves on Netflix now with Keira Knightley, or all of the shows that Nicole Kidman’s been doing, or Kate Winslet. That kind of television wasn’t really happening in the early 2000s.”

Mischa Barton as Miranda Green in Invitation to a Murder (Photo: Plaion)

Maybe because of their predominantly young, female audiences, teen dramas and their stars are often underestimated. Did Barton find it hard to establish herself afterwards? A little. “After The OC people wanted me to do OC type things, but then I got to work with Richard Attenborough [on his 2007 film _Closing the Ring_], and he put me into Rada.” She took a Shakespeare course there, “and he opened me up to a whole new side of the industry. In this business you’re always proving yourself.”

But when your fame threatens to eclipse your profession, you have to work harder to prove yourself. Even now, look at Taylor Swift, who despite her prolific productivity is still undermined because of the interest in her private life. Or Ariana Grande, whose fame means people are surprised by how brilliant she is in song, or on screen. I wonder how Barton feels, looking back, at the “it girl” label and whether it distracted from her talent – or led her to miss out. She insists it didn’t.

“It is a funny label. What does it really have to do with your jobs or your fashion or your ‘je ne sais quoi?’” she asks. “I don’t know why that was such a 2000s thing. I think that it’s a huge compliment, though. It’s a very kind and sweet label.”

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Does she think it affected her sense of self at that formative age? There is a long, I suspect slightly infuriated pause.

“It’s kind of funny to look back at pictures of me now, all hippie dippied out,” she says. “I was growing up, and like anybody when they’re in their teens and their 20s, I just discovered Faces and The Doors and I thought the Rolling Stones were the coolest thing ever.

“It’s embarrassing. If you know how many interviews I did at 17 wearing a Rolling Stones vintage T-shirt, thinking that was original. But I was just going through what I was going through, and trying as much as I could to live my life, even though it was under the spotlight.

“It’s important to me to not focus on the past and to not think about it too much. I’ve had a lot of therapy not to have to.”

‘Invitation to a Murder’ is available on digital platforms