Arts
USC Undergrad Gets Lost
- Melissa Farman, a political science major in USC’s Thematic Option honors program, is appearing on Lost.
By Pamela J. Johnson on February 11, 2009 1:12 PM
If you’re among the roughly 13 million people who watched ABC’s Lost last week, you’ll remember the face - porcelain skin, hazel eyes, Lady Godiva hair - freeze-framed on the screen at the episode’s end.
And if you’re an undergraduate sitting in class, look at your neighbor. That may be her.
The woman in question is Melissa Farman, a political science major at USC College who snagged the role of young Danielle Rousseau in the Emmy Award-winning drama.
Farman, 19, will play the part of Rousseau again tonight. Going back 16 years before Oceanic 815 crashed on the island, the young Rousseau was pregnant. Lost aficionados know the baby is her ill-fated daughter Alexandra.
When Farman e-mailed her father a photo of herself in character, he nearly fainted when he saw the pretend baby bump, Farman recalled with a laugh.
“Melissa!” he hollered into the phone in his native French. “What has happened to you?”
Farman’s family lives in Paris, where the New York-born Farman was raised. She came to Los Angeles to explore screenwriting and theatre before heading to the University of Pennsylvania to study business. In an acting class, talent manager Peter James was struck by Farman’s ability to transform completely into her characters.
“It’s a quality you can’t teach,” James said. “She connects with her characters from the inside out.”
After consulting her parents, Farman decided to give acting a shot. Almost immediately, she won the role of the soulful, complex Rousseau on Lost, a guest role on the CBS police procedural series Cold Case and a supporting role in HBO’s feature film Temple Grandin with Claire Danes.
Farman, who speaks French, English, Spanish and some Mandarin, chose USC College to participate in the university’s Thematic Option, an honors program for general education.
Organized by themes rather than disciplines, the program offers courses from departments throughout the College. The multithematic approach appealed to Farman, whose first love is the arts — particularly poetry. In earlier years, she enjoyed math and science.
The humanities, and in particular the combination of political science, history and literature, she said, gives her an opportunity to study humans interacting with their environments and one another.
“This complements and fuels my love for acting, where I get to re-create those interactions at their pinnacle points,” Farman said. “I feel very fortunate that I can do both.”
Until her recent success, Farman considered acting a lifelong hobby. A precocious child, she has been performing since age 10, when she was accepted into an exclusive bilingual acting workshop for professional actors in Paris. A member of her high school’s Model United Nations Team, she graduated at the top of her class. Taking after her father, whose family members are pioneers in the airplane industry, Farman had decided to pursue a business career when fate took a turn.
Ever modest, Farman is taking success in stride.
“Right now my goals are to stay focused on school and prepare for upcoming roles,” Farman said. “It’s been a challenging and rewarding year and I’m enjoying every minute.”
TAGS: cinema
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USC in the News
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The Chronicle of Higher Education mentioned USC’s $6 billion fundraising campaign. The story noted that USC had already raised $1 billion in a “quiet phase,” including the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College.
The Guardian (U.K.) highlighted two major gifts to USC in a list of the 10 biggest philanthropic benefactors in America. The list included the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College, and the $110 million gift from USC Trustee and USC Viterbi School alumnus John Mork and wife Julie to create the USC Mork Family Scholars Program.
The New York Times featured the USC U.S.-China Institute documentary “Assignment: China — The Week that Changed the World.” The documentary, part of a series, examines media coverage of the 1972 Nixon trip that reshaped U.S.-China relations after a quarter century of isolation and hostility. “People look back now and take it for granted that the outcome was preordained,” said the institute’s Mike Chinoy, who produced the documentary. Voice of America also featured the story.
Los Angeles Times featured the Oscar Senti-meter, a tool developed by the USC Annenberg School, Los Angeles Times and IBM that analyzes thousands of tweets about the Academy Awards nominees. The story noted that Mexican actor Demian Bechir received an enormous boost on Twitter the day of the nominations, with a total of 6,893 tweets mentioning him, a 47-fold increase from the day before. The story noted the tool uses language-recognition technology developed in collaboration with USC Viterbi School’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab.
The Times of India (India) featured a three-day medical emergency training workshop organized in association with USC. At the workshop, held at GCS Medical College in India, 50 doctors and more than 100 paramedics learned how to improve emergency support systems. William Mallon of the Keck School of USC said that discussion topics included the use of portable ultrasonic devices to scan patients. “The ultrasound applications help physicians make accurate and timely decisions,” he noted. Daily News & Analysis (India) also featured the workshop.
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