Emily Ivy Wilson

Born, February 20, 1979, Walnut Creek, California

Portrait written by Nancy Wilson (mother)

Emily was born eleven months after Will and Nancy got married. She was the apple of her parents eyes. She was an easy baby and a pleasant child. When she was four her father became very ill with malignant melanoma. She understood that something wasn’t exactly right. She asked her mother, as they were driving past a graveyard, if people got put underground when they died. That was obviously an idea that troubled her. Her father did die, a month after she turned five and when her mother told her this, she said “I don’t believe it.” She had a friend over at the time and they were drawing pictures on the kitchen table. Her friend asked her what she was drawing and she said she was drawing a picture of her father under the ground because her mother had told her he had died. Her friend said “No, you should draw a picture of him in the sky.” So she did that. She left the drawing on the foot of her bed when she went to sleep that night. In the morning she told her mother that she had seen her father in a dream and he had told her “I can’t take the paper with me, but I can take the pictures.” These experiences helped her very much. Some months later she told her mother that she had decided to be happy. She has been a remarkably happy person ever since.

Early in her life Emily fell in love with acting. She was cast in her primary school plays and was the lead in her fifth grade graduation play. Throughout Middle School and High School she remained convinced that her future would involve work in the theater. Our many family trips to the Ashland Oregon Shakespeare festival served to reinforce that vision. She was a very good student academically, but she never wavered from her chosen path. She went to George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and finished a theater major in three years. During the summer of 2000, after getting her diploma, she and her mother rented an apartment together in Paris. While Nancy went back in the fall, Emily decided to stay on and got herself both a job and an apartment. She has lived in France ever since. She began studying L’Ecole Jacques LeCoq in Paris, a famous physical theater training program. After finishing the program, she developed a relationship with her favorite teacher. After a few years they were married.

A short video made by Emily and her brother when they about 13 and 10.