About Me

Laura grew up in South Carolina where she, her brother and sister, and her parents always spent their family time watching, discussing, and communicating through movies. In fact, her extended relatives have often dubbed her family "the movie hounds."

Although Laura's first love is literature, which she also teaches, she has a soft spot for film. The first actor she became a fan of was Audrey Hepburn after her father showed her Sabrina when she was 7 years old. She still has a copy of a People magazine tribute issue completely devoted to Audrey the week she died in 1993. Similarly, she became a life-long fan of William Holden and Billy Wilder after her father first showed her Stalag 17 a few days after Sabrina. To this day, Christmas does not feel like Christmas to Laura without a screening of Stalag 17. 

When she was 11, she went through a phase in which she would only watch Alfred Hitchcock films. When she was 15, she went through a similar phase with Martin Scorsese. In fact, Laura and her brother watched Scorsese's Goodfellas almost everyday...for about three years. She kept a Goodfellas poster throughout college and still considers it one of her favorite movies, among many others. 

Her favorite actress of all time is Vivien Leigh, and her favorite actor is Daniel Day-Lewis--and she takes pride in being a Day-Lewis fan before it was trendy. Currently, she is most interested in British directors Ken Russell and John Schlesinger, critic Mark Kermode, and actresses Glenda Jackson and Faye Dunaway. Her "top ten" favorite films include:

1. Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
2. Women in Love (1969)
3. Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
4. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
5. The Godfather, Parts 1 and 2 (1972 & 1974)
6. Some Like It Hot (1959)
7. Chinatown (1974)
8. The Age of Innocence (1993)
9. Network (1976)
10. Rebecca (1940)

In her spare time, Laura enjoys traveling, reading, and exploring libraries. In 2014, she was in London and got to see Some Like it Hot and Lady from Shanghai at the British Film Institute (BFI). It was the first time in her life she got to see one of her favorite films in the theater--a realization that left her both sad and mournful for the present state and future of film. She is also concerned about the apathy toward classic film in her generation and hopes to ameliorate this issue at least to an extent through her blog. 

Thank you for visiting, and enjoy!