Giant Drag's Annie Hardy Makes Screen Debut in Spike Jonze Short

Things might have been quiet on the Giant Drag scene for the last few years, but the fuzzy indie-blues duo is back with their smart, sultry 'Swan Song' EP, which was released Feb. 16. On top of that, singer and guitarist Annie Hardy made her acting debut in Spike Jonze's experimental short movie, 'I'm Here.'

"That was weird, weird in a good way. It was my first professional acting, acting not in a music video acting," Hardy tells Spinner. The movie, which follows Jonze's big screen release 'Where The Wild Things Are,' premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Unfortunately, Hardy wasn't able to attend the festival in Utah. "My friend kept texting me saying, 'Now we're going to this screening, now we're going to this party, there's so and so,'" Hardy reels off with mock annoyance.

Right now, she's busy in the studio recording Giant Drag's next full-length record, but Hardy says she wouldn't discount more acting roles at some point. "I definitely wouldn't mind doing more acting as long as it's a part that's close to my personality," the L.A. native says. "I'm pretty good at it, I think, I hope. My mom, when I was younger, wrote, directed and produced her own plays, so I grew up around that. There were always rehearsals at our house."

'I'm Here,' which updates Shel Silverstein's 'The Giving Tree,' takes a basic premise of robots being discriminated against by humans and weaves a bittersweet allegory for racism, factory farming and general mass prejudice. Hardy plays a robot and her rudimentary costume included wearing a cardboard box over her head, which put her in a comfort zone that the rookie actor was grateful for. "I had something to hide behind," she says. Jonze's low-key approach helped, too. "Spike Jonze was a great person to have my first acting experience with. He's very flying by the seat of his pants, just yelling things out and letting it happen. I even got to make up some of my own lines."