Arabella Oz on Her First Feature and Skinny-Dipping with ‘Outlander’s’ Sam Heughan

Arabella Oz discovered she wanted to act after a stint behind the camera.

Oz, daughter of daytime TV’s Dr. Oz, studied film at Columbia University and upon graduating immediately went into production on a short film.

“I was so horrified by how little I knew about how to speak to actors,” explained Oz of the experience. “I didn’t know the process or how to communicate my ideas to them.” In order to remedy this, she decided to take an extracurricular acting class, where she fell in love with performance.

When Starlight Ends, which premieres this weekend in Los Angeles at the Other Venice Film Festival, is Oz’s first feature film. She stars opposite Outlander‘s Sam Heughan, who plays a struggling writer who must choose between his work and the love of his life (Oz).

“We were moving. Everything was happening so fast,” said Oz of her on-set experience shooting the indie from writer-director Adam Sigal. “The days were long and the shoot was long but I loved every moment of it.”

The New Yorker says her most memorable moment from Starlight came during the first day of filming. “Sam and I were on the beach and I am supposed to take off my bathing suit and run into the water and I remember thinking, ‘Well I just met like 30 people and now I guess I’m gonna go get naked in front of them.'”

Oz continued: “I told myself that you just have to be brave and then I just did it and it turned out to be so much fun.”

Looking forward, Oz is hopping back behind the camera, citing Greta Gerwig and Lena Dunham as two of her artistic inspirations. She explains: “I think I am gearing more toward the writing and filmmaking.”

In fact, a short film that Oz and a friend made a few months prior, Our House, also is set to screen at the Venice fest alongside her feature acting debut.

Arabella Oz on Her First Feature and Skinny-Dipping with ‘Outlander’s’ Sam Heughan

Mia Galuppo

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