Regret's a Funny Word

The Simplicity and Love of Charlotte Rose

Drinking tea with the charming yet well-spoken upcoming romantic-comedy actress as she opens up about platonic love, regret and advice.

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY

JILL ANDERSON

for Styles Savvy

Landing her first movie at age 22, Charlotte Rose soon became the latest upcoming romantic-comedy actress. Detail-orientated, charming and friendly, Rose is known for lovingly leaving ‘thank you’ cards for everyone who she worked with on set, including well-known co-stars that can’t help but spark rumours of potential love affairs. After her fourth project and now at age 25, Rose has recently begun to branch out to modelling and has successfully caught a brand deal with the famous Lumière clothing line.

As busy as she is, Charlotte took time for me and insisted that I come over to her newly bought three-story home for tea and homemade scones for the interview rather than a dinner somewhere in downtown LA. She was rather excited about the interview, she had told me, because she had decked out her living room in fairy lights and used the good China teacups her grandmother gave her years ago.

Met with a large grin and a warm presence, Charlotte quickly invited me into her humble home and sparked up a friendly conversation. She gave me a quick tour of her house before excitedly showing me the brand new scone recipe she tried out for us (she added some Marmelade!). As she lit her living room fireplace and poured our cups of tea, I found a seat in one of her large dark green chairs; the kind where you sink into with a good book. After Charlotte handed me a buttered scone and a hot cup of tea, she took a seat in the chair directly in front of me with a content smile.

Note: The interview below is not verbatim and has been edited to reflect the main points that have been said. Not everything written underneath is accurate to the flow of the conversation.

Anderson: I have to begin this interview by asking you, what made you decide to have the interview with tea at your place instead of over dinner?

Rose: I honestly don’t know. I thought it would be nicer to have it in my living room than across a restaurant table. It’s more cozy and intimate, almost. Plus, I wanted an excuse to use my new-to-me tea cups and try out the new scone recipe I found.

Anderson: Ah, I see. I appreciate your hospitality. Tell me, you’ve worked on four different projects in the last three years as the leading role. You must have been very busy and working incredibly hard, but you’ve also made it clear in your other interviews that luck played a huge role in landing the auditions. What would you tell someone who keeps failing at something they really want?

Rose: As cliche as it may sound, the only thing you can do is keep trying. Because every time you attempt something, you learn something about either yourself, the process, what not to do or a combination of the three. So with each attempt, you’re gaining new information while simultaneously doing it differently than how you did it previously. And as long as you’re not doing the same thing over and over again, which is impossible because subconsciously you’re going to apply the knowledge you’ve learned, you’ll eventually get it.

Anyone who says that they were successful the first time, is lying through their teeth. I got my agent when I was 15, and it took me YEARS of countless auditions to earn my first leading role. And like I said before, talent and hard work are important, but also luck plays a huge role.

Anderson: Hm. That’s interesting. You were auditioning for 7 years before you landed a movie. Is there anything you would have done differently in your case? Do you have any regrets?

Rose: Regret’s a funny word, isn’t it? I don’t think it really exists, if I’m honest with you.

I mean, think about it. To feel regret is to feel disappointed over a choice you made because it didn’t work out how you initially hoped. It’s wishing you would have made a different decision than what you did because you’ve missed out on some ‘potential opportunity’. But, if you knew beforehand that it wasn’t going to work out how you wanted it to, wouldn’t you have made a different decision anyway?

Like, say you had to reach a certain destination, and you had the choice between driving down Path A or Path B. You chose Path B, which takes you a lot longer than initially planned. But when you get to your destination, you learn that Path A would have been a better choice because it’s quicker. If you knew before you took the trip that Path A would have been a better choice, wouldn’t you have chosen it? Why would you choose to drive down Path B if you knew Path A would have been quicker?

My point is that you don’t know what you don’t know. So please, for the love of God, cut yourself some slack because you did the best that you could with the information that you had. Okay?

Forgive yourself for the decisions that you’ve made. The past version of yourself didn’t know it would turn out how it did. You talk about how ‘if I could turn back time, I would do A, B, and C differently because I know better now’.

But that’s exactly the point.

You know better now. You know more than you did before. Learn from it, and move on. There’s no point in dwelling on past decisions. Please don’t feel guilty if and when you do dwell, but don’t spend too much time on it. Forgive yourself, because that version of you did not intend to be hurtful.

They say that if you feel a sense of distance when speaking about your past self, it means that you’ve learned and grown from who you once were. And that’s all honestly anyone can do.

But do I have any regrets? Heck yeah, I do. Like anyone and everyone, I have a never-ending list full of cringe-worthy situations that I would pay an embarrassingly good amount of money to remove from my memory. But if I were allowed to turn back time to change what was to be what could have been, I wouldn’t do it. Not because of some ‘your-experiences-make-you-who-you-are’ bullshit (which I do think is true, to some degree). But because I would turn back time to re-experience situations that will never happen again. I would pay so much more money to be able to relive all of those drunken late nights with my friends, those family dinners I had, or even those vacations we took on the beach. If I could, I would spend all of my savings to make it happen.

We never know when we’re experiencing something for the last time, which is heartrendingly devastating.

Anderson: It is really sad. I think that most people would choose to relive their good memories rather than fix their mistakes if they had the opportunity to go back in time.

Rose: Yeah, they probably would. And do you know what else I would do if I had the opportunity to turn back time? Do you know what I would do and where I would go if I could go back in time? It’s a bit of an unusual answer but I would visit my mom and dad when they were my age (mid-twenties), before they had me and before they even met each other. I would want to see what they were like. I would want to sit down and have a conversation with them about their interests and their aspirations before it all; before they met each other and started a family.

If I had the opportunity, I wouldn’t tell them anything about the future. Instead, I would simply ask them question after question because I would want to know who they were, and how much of their life they sacrificed or put on hold for me and my sisters. Not in like an ‘I-think-my-parents-regret-having-me’ kind of way, but more an ‘I-want-to-know-what-they-were-like-because-I-love-them-so-much’ kind of way. Does that make sense?

Anderson: Yeah, it makes perfect sense.

Rose: I’m sure this wasn’t the kind of answer you were looking for. I’m sure you were just expecting a short and quick response but then I ended up on this big spiel on how regret is a social construct and talking about my parents.

Anderson: That’s okay. It’s a great perspective to have and I wish someone would have told me that when I was in my 20’s. I wish I learned many lessons in my 20’s rather than my late 30’s. What is some other advice you would give to women in their early 20’s?

Rose: I mean, I’m only in my mid-20s myself, so I just left my early 20’s. But I was talking about this to my therapist the other day, about how the advice you give is the advice that’s only applicable to your own life and your own experience. And not everyone lives the same way as you do. So, no matter the advice you give, if you, yourself haven’t learned that certain lesson yet, it’s going to go straight over your head and you’re not going to understand it until you do. Does that make sense?

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(a snippet from the 1st page of the Charlotte Rose interview from Style Savvy magazine)