Actress and director Xan Cassavetes is following in her father’s footsteps (Picture: Capital Pictures)

‘There are so many people I know who could be the greatest film-maker but who will never get the chance to make a movie; it’s all about what somebody is going to make back,’ says Alexandra ‘Xan’ Cassavetes. ‘There are not a lot of romantic ideas about making movies anymore. I don’t understand how everything works but I don’t want to, because then it will be real – and my job is to be unrealistic!’

Cassavetes is no stranger to the film world: the daughter of the late actor/director John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands, she grew up in the midst of a film set. John Cassavetes was a pioneer of US independent film-making, using improvisation and cinéma verité and partly financing some of his films, which included A Woman Under The Influence and Husbands.



‘A lot of films were shot in our house. We had to give up our rooms for hair and make-up,’ Cassavetes explains. ‘The memories are really good and familiar and nothing about it was obnoxious or fancy in any way. I think all of us who grew up in that house have really warm memories and associations with making movies like a giant family.’

Brother and sister Nick and Zoe are also actor/directors. ‘If we have an idea for something, we call each other first,’ she says. ‘We really care about each other’s opinion. It’s very nurturing and exciting to be their sister.’


Cassavetes originally wanted to be a science researcher but admits she was terrible at maths in school. She did, however, pursue her first love – music – and had a band. Now, continuing in her father’s footsteps, her first feature film finds her dabbling in the world of horror with Kiss Of The Dammed.

It is about a vampire who finds her soulmate in a writer but has her idyllic life threatened by her sister. ‘I think vampires would want to find a way to stay attached to the living, the way human beings do, and that is through love, interrelations and meaning,’ says Cassavetes.

Kiss Of The Damned follows her 2004 documentary Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, about the 1970s LA cable channel famous for its eclectic film programming, which Cassavetes loved watching. The influence of that channel – and of Hammer Horror films – is evident in Kiss Of The Damned.

‘I wasn’t trying to have a 1970s vibe,’ she insists. ‘But it’s a cross between those stylised horror movies and the sort of soft-core erotica I used to watch on the Z Channel. There is a kinship between arty horror and Emmanuelle-type movies.‘

So why has it taken so long to make her first film? ‘Because nobody wanted to make a movie with me,’ she laughs. ‘My taste in films doesn’t lead financers to think they are going to make a zillion dollars. I just want to make something that is true to itself and that interests me; otherwise, how can I have the audacity to think it’s going to interest anybody else?



‘I am working on another movie but I can’t talk about it because then it will never be made,’ she jokes.

Kiss Of The Damned is out now on DVD and Blu-ray.