FOR MOST actors, the first film is a game-changer. But Arielle Holmes says her movie debut saved her life.
Holmes, 21, was a drug-selling heroin addict living on the streets of New York when writer-directors Josh and Benny Safdie (“Daddy Longlegs,” “Lenny Cooke”) noticed her at the Rockefeller Center subway station. They got to know her, and asked her to write down her experiences.
They used many of those as the basis for the script of “Heaven Knows What,” opening Friday.
Holmes wrote it mostly on computers at Apple stores.
“I’d stay a couple of hours there,” she says. “But the computers are kind of low, so I had to scrunch down and get close to the screen, because I have bad eyesight. That f—ed up my back.
“I’d stay till my back hurt too much or sometimes until (an employee) kicked me out.”
Holmes treated the writing like a job, as did the Safdies.
“I’d pay Arielle per page,” says Josh. “When I realized she couldn’t see, we gave her Benny’s old glasses, and she started churning out like 38 pages a day! She’d panhandle in the morning, then write from 11 a.m. to 7 at night.”
Holmes stars in the film as Harley, a semi-fictionalized version of herself. Harley’s destructive relationship with her boyfriend, Ilya (played by actor Caleb Landry Jones), leads to violence in an already hardscrabble life of homeless junkiedom. The two survive by “spanging” — asking for spare change from passersby.
Several of Holmes’ friends from the street costar in the movie, enacting scenes that echo their day-to-day lives.
The gritty indie movie, which feels like a modern update of “The Panic in Needle Park” (1971), was filmed in early 2014. Holmes’ memoirs — which are due to be published — were adapted by Josh and Ronald Brownstein.
The Safdies, who grew up in Queens and Manhattan, learned about life on the street while shooting the movie.
“It was very cold in New York when we were filming, and some of the people we were working with would say to the crew, ‘A blanket will save you.’
“They also use corporate New York in ways that make it easier to exist, whether it’s Starbucks, an internet cafe or Apple stores.”
Holmes grew up in Bayonne, N.J., and got into drugs from her addict and alcoholic mother, who she says smoked crack with her when Holmes was 12. She began coming into Manhattan, and at 16 she became involved with Ilya, who was four years older.
By 18, Holmes was hooked on heroin. She says she’s been arrested some “six or seven times.”
Holmes and Ilya would sell drugs and sleep in Central Park, clean up in public restrooms and occasionally stay at shelters like The Streetwork Project on the Lower East Side, an outreach center for young homeless people. She credits Streetwork with helping her at crucial moments.
After time in rehab, Holmes has been clean since August.
Ilya, who advised Jones on how to portray him in the film, was found dead at 25 last month in Central Park near 72nd St. A syringe was next to his body, but the cause of death was unknown.
“This movie does give people insight into kids they pass by all the time,” says Holmes. “People would act like I was born homeless. Like I was just always there.”
Josh says that when it came to giving her all for the film, which includes Harley’s suicide attempts (which Holmes herself lived through) and achingly honest pain, she didn’t want anything to seem false.
“I said to Ari, ‘How do you feel about nudity?'” Josh recalls. “She said, ‘I don’t give a f–k.’ For a scene in a bathtub, she said, ‘It’s not cool of me to do this in my underwear. I don’t want it to be unreal.’
“She wasn’t afraid to put herself totally out there.”
Holmes now lives in Los Angeles, has an agent and has had her once-long hair shaped into a short cut that recalls the ’60s hair styles of Jean Seberg or Mia Farrow. She’s working on a new film, and hopes to audition for others.
But her hard-earned edge and realism remain unchanged.
“I’m grateful that all of this happened, but at the same time, I’m grateful for every experience I’ve had in life,” she says. “Pain and suffering is a blessing. It teaches compassion and understanding.”
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