Jordana Brewster
The “Fast X” actress shares her fearless approach to life and love.
By Lindzi Scharf
Twenty-twenty was a year of self-reflection and major change for most people. Jordana Brewster is no different. The “Fast & Furious” star was supposed to be promoting “F9,” the ninth chapter in the action franchise, last May. Instead, like the rest of the world, she found herself in the middle of a pandemic. One that hit home.
“I got COVID early [in 2020],” Brewster says, seated on a modern blue couch in her Brentwood living room. “I knew that it was scary, but I didn’t know how scary it was. Thank goodness, because I am one of those people that will Google every symptom and then develop the symptom. I’m not sure how I got it, but then I had the antibodies, which enabled me to not live in complete and utter fear.”
Once she recovered, Brewster spent quarantine soul searching, which led to major life changes. “My husband and I separated,” she says. “We’d been married for 13 years. That was a huge shift, but it was also right for both of us because we just slowly drifted apart. He was working all the time. He’s in Europe now working on a set. We’re better off separated than we were married.”
Shortly after, she began dating Mason Morfit, CEO of investment firm ValueAct Capital. “I fell in love with someone who is truly a partner and now we have an extended family,” she says. “He has four kids; I’ve got two. I see how much I’m growing and changing within that new structure because I feel completely supported and completely held and it’s also allowing me to live in my power.”
How does one find love in a pandemic? To borrow from the Beatles, Brewster got by with a little help from her friends — or better yet, her best friend who connected her with Morfit. “I would visit her often in San Francisco,” she says, “so I’d met [Mason] a couple of years ago, but then obviously nothing happened.”
Brewster looks up as Morfit enters the room. “I’m talking about how we met, my love,” she says, patting the couch. “You can come…”
He sits next to her. “He’s been separated for two years,” she explains. “We reconnected once I was separated and that was that. But I always thought he was very handsome and charming and smart from a distance.”
The couple became engaged by September 2021 and were married a year later.
LOCKDOWN LIFE
Aside from falling in love during the pandemic, Brewster focused her energy on making sure her sons, Rowan and Julian, were happy at home. “My seven-year-old [Julian] didn’t adapt to homeschooling very well,” she explains. “Luckily, my son goes to a school that’s really adaptable and they worked with us. My son was not Zooming. He just refused and he would unmute himself and say crazy stuff and so we had a tutor help us. I had to create a structure for them because — just like I thrive with structure — so does my son Julian. Rowan was still going to preschool, which was fortunate because the day gets really long when everyone is stuck at home. We had to get creative with what they were doing. Luckily, my sister has two sons, so we formed a pod and they were able to go swimming here and play soccer here. I tried to keep as much normalcy as possible for them.”
Morfit chimes in: “And you did a lot of writing.”
“I was also taking writing classes on Zoom,” she explains. “I stopped myself from going crazy that way.”
She says she finds writing to be cathartic. “I’ve spent so much time in my adulthood being shut off and being closed down and trying to think of the right thing to say and the perfect thing to say,” she admits. “At forty, and now I’m forty-one, this thing just clicked in me where I’m like, ‘The more flawed I am, the more other people are going to relate to me,’ because that certainly happens with me. When I see someone open up and I see that they’re being vulnerable, I can relate to that and it gives me strength, so I like to pay that back.”
She’s been taking online classes through playwright and “Method Writing” teacher Jack Grapes. “He has an amazing program,” she shares. “He’s not so much, ‘Here’s how you write a script and this is the structure.’ He’s about how to unlock your brain and your subconscious and get you writing and [how] to get out of your own way. It’s fun. It’s the kind of thing where you’re in front of twenty people and all of a sudden you’re sharing really personal stuff.”
For the time being, Brewster is, she says, “exploring the creative act” of writing by dabbling with different mediums.
She also kept her craft sharp with virtual acting classes, but admits, “I had so much stage fright on Zoom. There’s something about twenty-four or fifty strangers watching you on that little square. That’s far more terrifying than having an audience where they’re in the dark.”
It’s a surprising admission from someone who has been in front of the camera since she was a teenager. Brewster made her acting debut on “All My Children” at fifteen. She starred in her first feature film, director Robert Rodriguez’s sci-fi horror film “The Faculty,” by eighteen. Shortly after, she booked “The Fast and the Furious,” which changed her life.
COLLEGE CREDIT
Despite a flourishing acting career, between shoots, Brewster attended Yale University as an English major. “I felt like it was a huge opportunity and I didn’t want to pass it up,” she says. “I am a bookworm. I love reading. I loved being able to do that, and on campus I felt really safe. I loved going to lectures and taking notes and then studying Monday to Thursday and then going back to the city and partying Friday to Sunday. To me, it was never a question of ‘Am I going to go to college? Or am I going to go pursue my career?’ I always thought that I could pursue my career after. It was something that was important to me.”
FINDING HER FOOTING
After college graduation, Brewster relocated to Los Angeles at twenty-three. “When I got to L.A., I realized, ‘Oh, wow. Jobs aren’t coming as easily,’” she says. “I had to adapt and I had to start working on my craft. I found Nancy Banks, my teacher, and I started going to acting classes.”
That time period proved to be a major adjustment for Brewster in more ways than one. “It was a big shock to the system,” she remembers. “I wasn’t used to driving. I wasn’t used to being alone. I wasn’t used to not being super busy because I was used to juggling work and school. L.A. has such a different rhythm. It felt like a lonely place; not anymore at all, but initially it felt very lonely.”
Over time, that changed. “I found my footing once I had kids and had roots here,” she says, “because then you’re forced to have a routine. I’ve always been more grounded in routine and I only established that once I had kids. That’s when I felt comfortable and like it was my home — once it became their first home.”
HER PATH TO MOTHERHOOD
Her path to motherhood wasn’t quite as straightforward. After battling infertility, Brewster underwent IVF and surrogacy to have her two boys. While grateful, she worried that other mothers might judge her personal journey. She has gradually become more comfortable talking about her experience and recently teamed up with ovulation test manufacturer Clearblue for its “conceivinghood” campaign, which aims to erase the stigma that surrounds atypical experiences.
“I didn’t realize just how much I would open up,” Brewster says. “I started to talk about my journey and I realized, ‘I don’t want to tell twenty percent of the truth. I don’t want to tell thirty percent of the truth. I just want to lay it all out there.’”
She continues, “I feel like we live in a culture where we’re not allowed to say, ‘It’s been hard.’ It’s like — you see [on social media] the moms that are putting the schedules on the whiteboard and their kids are Zooming perfectly for school and they’ve got all the snacks perfectly [set out] and their kids aren’t eating sugar and they don’t have screen time.” She pauses in mock frustration. “I’m like, ‘But can we also be real about the other [stuff] and what else happens?’ I think that’s important too because otherwise we’re doing ourselves a disservice. It is hard to work and be a mom, and it is hard to navigate parenting every day when there are so many challenges.”
WORKING IT
Brewster is equally honest when discussing the often harsh realities of the entertainment business. While she’s never considered any other career, that’s not to say that she hasn’t done plenty of self-reflection between gigs.
“It was difficult dealing with the lulls when I wasn’t working,” she says. “I have such an active brain and I’m such a type A person that I wanted to work, work, work — and when I couldn’t, that was frustrating for me. I had to reevaluate like, ‘Do I want to go back to school? Do I want to start producing?’”
With time, “Fast & Furious” became a major franchise, which provided Brewster more freedom between jobs. It also allowed her to work on smaller independent films like the forthcoming drama “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” and writer/director Sophie Lane Curtis’s romantic drama “On Our Way.”
Brewster says she feels a newfound sense of bravado within her work; however, admittedly, it has taken time for her to realize that “perfection in acting is boring. It’s like handcuffs that won’t allow you to take risks.”
Her newly unapologetic approach is on full display in “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers.” In the script, Brewster’s character turns around, pulls down her pants, and wiggles her butt to make a point. The film’s director Robert Machoian and actor Clayne Crawford had no expectation of her following through with the direction on the page, but Brewster felt it was an important part of the character.
She remembers thinking, “I’m going to totally fucking do this because what do I have to lose?” She laughs. “Beforehand I went shopping for cute thongs. And I did it.” She says everyone on set was shocked. “They were all like, ‘Jordana! What are you doing?!’ They had no idea it was coming.”
PERSONAL GROWTH
Brewster admits it’s taken time for her to reach a place of fearlessness. “Ten years ago, I was so concerned about, ‘How does my stomach look? How does my butt look?’” she admits. “I call it the Maxim era and the FHM era of, ‘Yes, you have to be talented, but you also have to be a certain size and not too fat and not too skinny.’” She says the anxiety she felt was a reflection of the time. “There was so much pressure on actresses to look a certain way and that’s exhausting and such a waste of energy because instead of reading or focusing on your character, you’re focused on ‘How do I look right now and is it perfect enough?’ … I used to get notes, ‘They’re asking you to lose some weight,’ and I would carry that for years because how could you not?”
She says that the climate in Hollywood has shifted to some extent. “When I watch TV, I’m like, ‘Wow. It’s so refreshing that the women can wear stuff that’s not [revealing],’” she says. “They’re not being treated as sex symbols unless that’s important to their character. That’s awesome and it’s reflecting life a little bit more. I think we’re going in the right direction.”
Brewster says she’s curious to see where her interest in writing might take her personally and professionally. “I want to start collaborating with someone,” she says. “There are female creators that I admire. I’m obsessed with Frankie Shaw. Did you ever watch ‘SMILF’? It’s so good.”
Brewster wants to explore stories with women that reveal every facet of their lives. “Oftentimes in my career, it was always like, ‘This role as [Someone] Perfect,’” she says. “I want to explore roles that are far more flawed. I would like to experiment and take risks.”
SELF-CARE
The past couple of years have also allowed Brewster to take better care of herself. “I think slowing down during COVID helped me have the presence of mind to do all of these things with intention,” she says, “whereas before I was like an octopus doing a million things, but I wasn’t truly present for any of them and that created this sense of go, go, go and anxiety. I don’t like operating from that place.”
Brewster credits her “amazing” therapist Kasey Crown with helping her land in an enlightened place. “She’s awesome,” she says, “because she’s a therapist, but not a conventional therapist. She grounds me before each session. There’s going to be a meditative retreat in Ojai where she’s helping me learn to check in with myself before I say yes to anything. She’s helping me develop boundaries. I feel like I was boundaryless for so long.”
Brewster says the silver lining of this time has been having the ability to slow down, look inward, and take inventory of her life.
“I’m braver and stronger than I thought,” she says. “I didn’t give myself enough credit.”
HOW SHE LIVES…
HER OFFICE
“I spend a ton of time in this room,” Brewster says. “This is the desk I share with my boyfriend. I did writing class through Zoom and acting class through Zoom. I found that when I was doing Zoom and it was a computer and just a wall, I would get anxious for some reason. It was claustrophobic, so I really like being able to do it with the window looking at the trees. It’s a more creative workspace for me.”
FRAMES FROM MASON
“Mason made these for our anniversary,” Brewster explains. “They’re so cute. His gifts are [so thoughtful]. Do you know that restaurant Tre Lune in Montecito? And they have those little chairs on the wall. So we got one of those because we go there all the time and we love it there. Those are little mementos that mean a lot.” She shares that one of the images features her handwriting. “I was like a thirteen-year-old,” she laughs, “and then I took a picture of it.”
HER GRANDFATHER’S DESK
“This desk was given to me by my dad and it was originally my grandfather’s,” she says. “It went from New Haven, where my grandfather was president of Yale, to Maine, where my dad was living, and now it’s here. I was touched that my dad gave it to me. And he keeps telling me that there are secret compartments, like you can pull these out and have additional space.”
HER DOG ENDI
“She’s so sweet,” Brewster says. “She was supposed to be a boy. I was calling her Endicott and then she was a girl, but I still called her Endi. We got her in March of [2020]. We’d lost our lab when I was shooting ‘Fast’ in about 2019 and it was time.”
THE LIBRARY
“Having a library was important to me,” she says of the space, which also doubles as the family’s dining room. “I feel like people no longer have formal libraries because now everything is on a Kindle or you’re reading on your iPad, but I love books and I love hard copies and I love collecting books. Then I had this custom made, so that you can go all the way around. It’s a little bit of a hazard with the kids, but I love it.”
HER BOOK COLLECTION
“There’s something about L.A. that makes me sad where every house you go to is a new build,” she says, “and it lacks history and character. My parents were moving from New York to L.A. and they were like, ‘We have all these books. Do you want them?’ And I said, ‘Of course.’ And then it enabled me to have this mix of old and new that brings so much character [into the home].”
BOOKS FROM HER DAD
“My dad passed down a bunch of these,” she says, pointing to Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly Novels. “These beautiful ones. They’re from his library and it’s an heirloom that means a lot. And then I have a couple of books from when I was in college, like ‘The Ornament of the World’ [by María Rosa Menocal].”
RACHEL CUSK
“These are my favorite books that I’m reading right now,” Brewster says. “I’m obsessed with Rachel Cusk. Have you read her? She’s so good. She’s brutally honest and raw about marriage and divorce and raising children. She’s great. My college roommate is still a really good friend of mine. She lives in London and she works at the London Review of Books, so she always has an in about who is up-and-coming and who is a voice I would really love because she knows that I was obsessed with Virginia Woolf. I like that sort of rawness, no filter. So she’s like, ‘You would love Rachel Cusk.’ Same thing with Muriel Spark — who I love. I’m drawn to brutally honest voices because that’s where I’m at. At forty-one, I’m more into being honest and open and raw because I feel like, ‘Why not, you know?’ I feel like we can all benefit from someone’s truth.”
A GIFT FROM MASON
“My boyfriend just gifted me these,” she says, referencing “The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway.” “I love when you read a short story and then it just keeps coming back to you after. They’re haunting in that way.”
FAMILY PHOTOS
“This is a picture of me with my sister from back in the day,” she says. “We are [close]. She lives down the street. And she has two boys, too. It’s nice because the boys hang out. Four boys all at once is a lot. It’s a lot of energy.”
THE LIVING ROOM
“This room is essential,” she says. “When I’m up in the morning and making breakfast or getting ready for dinner, I need to have my eye on the kids because Rowan especially is a hazard to himself. He’s really interested in adult stuff, so I have to be able to have an eye on everyone. That’s why it’s nice that this is an open space. They’ll play Nintendo and watch television and I can keep an eye on what they’re watching as I’m either on a call or prepping dinner or making lunches. I love that it’s a communal space.”
AN IMAGE OF RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL
“The photograph resonated with me because I grew up in Rio from the age of six to ten,” Brewster says. “When I saw it, it reminded me of home. I love it.” She says she’s yet to visit Rio with her children. “I’ve been dying for them to go,” she says, noting her kids like to stare at the photograph and create stories about the different characters featured on it.
HER TREADMILL
Brewster says the treadmill represents “sanity” for her. She spends 30 minutes running every morning while reading or listening to podcasts. “It’s something I need to have a good day,” she says. “My boys get up at like 5:30 am, so I have to get up at 5 am in order to get my gym time in. It’s the time I have to get informed or get centered. Today was I listening to Caroline Myss. She’s a spiritual teacher. I was listening to her because I was like, ‘I need a little centering,’ so I was doing that as I was running.”
HER TEEN CHOICE AWARDS
“Who needs an Oscar when you’ve got a Teen Choice Award?” Brewster deadpans in a mock New York accent. The surfboard-shaped awards ordinarily hang in the kids’ playroom as an homage to her work with “Fast & Furious.” “I hadn’t gone back and watched the ‘Fast’ films in so long and then I was shooting a podcast for Entertainment Weekly. I rewatched ‘Fast Five’ and ‘Fast’ One. They’re so good. I look back and I’m like, ‘I was so good back then,’ but I was so in my head at the time. I [remember] undercutting myself by thinking, ‘Oh, well, I didn’t try hard enough at this section.’ We waste so much time criticizing and focusing on what’s wrong.”
FRAMED ACCOMPLISHMENTS
“I never had anything on my walls and then my boyfriend framed these for me,” Brewster says, referencing press clips her father recently brought back from her childhood home. “He was like, ‘We need to put these up. You need to celebrate that.’ It was really sweet.” Morfit adds, “It was just sitting in an envelope. I was like, ‘This should be framed.’ And that Vanity Fair thing is so cool. And that was just sitting there.” Brewster admits, “I don’t often acknowledge my successes, which is why it’s so nice that I have Mason who is like, ‘No, no, no. We’re putting that cover on the wall. We’re framing it and celebrating it.’”
HER VEGGIE GARDEN
“The vegetable garden dies and lives according to [my schedule],” she says with a laugh. “Sometimes I maintain it. This time around, we planted stuff that we’re actually going to eat like lettuce and apples. There’s an overgrowth of mint, which I don’t know what to do with. Rosemary — we can season fish with. I love showing the kids where their food comes from. Rowan loves it. He’s a mini gardener. He loves going out there and picking the food. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but the upkeep is a little more challenging than the idea of it.”
