entertainment
Casting herself
in the
perfect role
Wayne actress Haley Finnegan is sick of asking for permission
WRITTEN BY PHILIP DEVENCENTIS PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANNE-MARIE CARUSO
H
aley Finnegan was at
a speakeasy in Playa
del Rey on the last
night of April 2018
when she jotted down
her idea on a bar
napkin. The actress had all but quit
show business until that evening.
But then the 34-year-old — she says
she is “25, if you are casting” — was
struck by one of those rare lightning-
bolt moments when she came up
with the concept for Westfalia.
“I take these things as signs, you
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SPRING 2020 WAYNE MAGAZINE
know, that maybe I’m doing what I
was put here to be doing,” Finnegan,
a native of Wayne, said in an inter-
view at her childhood home.
In conversation, Finnegan pretty
much recounted her life story —
from learning to play the ukulele to
her love affair with the French lan-
guage, to every waking moment of
that night in Los Angeles when she
wrote Westfalia, which she directed,
produced and acted in as leading
lady.
The 16-minute film, set amid the
campgrounds of Lake Tahoe, was
born at the bar and completed in less
than a month. It was shot over four
days in May 2018. Finnegan said she
wrote the entire plot sequence,
including a loose script, overnight.
“I stayed up until the sun came up,”
Finnegan said. “And then I decided
that I was going to use my life sav-
ings to make this film — and I did.”
As she hammered out the structure
of each scene, she took another sip
from a glass of Sauvignon blanc and
delivered another text message to her