In her Allure Next cover story, the former Disney star talks about entering her 30s with a new TV series (the erotic thriller 56 Days), a new love, and a new sense of herself.
Duality comes up a lot in Cameron’s work—alter egos, inner contradictions, mirror images. Her role as the twin protagonists in Disney’s Liv and Maddie launched her acting career in the 2010s. Last year, she appeared as two different versions of herself in a campaign for Urban Decay.
This month, alongside fellow former child star Avan Jogia, she’s set to appear in the murder mystery series 56 Days as Ciara Wyse, one half of a couple building a relationship on secrets, lies, and double lives. “I think that the reason for me being an actor is my duality,” Cameron says. “I can channel my energy in very different ways. On any given day, I could be more of one part of me or more of the other.” Rather than get a table at one of the numerous swanky, more private restaurants near Cameron’s home in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, she asked to have a late-afternoon latte at Maman, a chain of rustic French cafés serving decadent pastries and virtuous juices. “Outside of my job…I know who I am. I have a very strong personality. The core qualities that I possess are evergreen.” As an actor, duality is a great thing to have. As a celebrity, not so much. “People tend to split you down the middle,” she says. “It's like, ‘But you were this, and now you're that. You're blonde again and you're dating a guy, so you are not queer. And now you have brown hair, so you're goth, but you're not wearing makeup, but you're goth.’” There’s another strange assumption made among her followers, Cameron says, that her recent return to brown hair signifies a mental health issue of some sort. The reality is far less scintillating. “People are always like, ‘Oh no, she's brunette, she's sad again.’ This time when I dyed my hair dark, it was purely because I needed to stop bleaching it,” she explains. “It's got to stop chopping itself off. It has to grow.” In fact, Cameron may now be happier than ever—personally and professionally. “I’ve stepped into myself more as a human. I have subsequently stepped more into myself as an actor,” she says. “I think it's really aided my work.” On top of that, she’s engaged to Italian musician Damiano David. “I am madly in love. I'm getting married. I found the person that I want to be with,” she says. But her happiness, she wants you to know, isn’t solely the result of falling in love. “I feel like I was always treading towards this beautiful period in my life, and I just wasn't ready—rejecting goodness, rejecting love—because I was in such a bad spot for so many years,” Cameron recalls. “The only reason I was able to find this chapter is because I stepped away from the public eye for a while. I really did the work, reading the books, going to therapy, crying, writing, spending time alone. Doing things that were strictly to get back into my body.” Cameron has been “excavating” herself, she says, and it’s paying off in unimaginable ways. “I'm entering 30 feeling, finally, like myself.” In her conversation with Allure, she digs into what that means. Allure: You will have just turned 30 by the time this interview comes out. Dove: Can you believe? Allure: Do you ever worry about getting or looking older in an industry that’s so youth-obsessed? Dove: Funny enough, no. I'm going to look different, and that's okay. I would be so lucky to look like I'm 50 when I'm 50. The roles that I want to play are going to be really good when I'm in my 50s. All the best roles are written for women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. I think getting older kind of bangs. How you feel about yourself is what defines your life…and how I feel about myself has only gotten better as I've gotten older. I hated myself when I was younger; I don't feel like that person anymore. I haven't felt like that person in a very long time. Something is happening with me turning 30, where suddenly all of the most glamorous things about my mother are becoming things that I'm attracted to. You know what I mean? It's like when your taste buds change. I woke up a month ago, and I was like: “Cashmere sweater! Ooh, bangles!' And I'm really interested in less makeup and more natural nails. I'm suddenly woman-ifying. Allure: People put a lot of expectations on their 30s, in general. How are you feeling about that? Dove: I remember something I told my mom when I was eight. I was wandering around in a $20 fake-fur coat from, I don't know, Limited Too or something, with Tic Tacs, pretending that they were headache medication. I was like, “I cannot wait to be an adult. No one takes me seriously.” Now I don't need anyone to take me seriously because I truly don't care how anyone takes me. I know who I am, I know what I'm capable of so far. I have no desire to be perceived in a certain way. The only way I desire to be perceived is truthfully—and I think I've chosen the wrong industry. Allure: In light of your engagement, how are you navigating the bridal space as a queer person? Dove: I'm going to have to figure out a way to design a dress that feels inclusive of the fullness of who I am. I think it would be wrong of me to go too hard either way. If it's my wedding day and we're both in suits, I'm going to look back and be like, “Well, fuck.” But if I go ultra-femme, I'm going to be like, “Well, fuck.” I truly do feel split down the middle energetically between a masculine-feminine energy. I always, always have. I have never fully integrated the two energies. I am authentically both of those things. I want to wear a dress. I like a beautiful white dress. It's either going to be really simple—so it's not about the dress and it's just about feeling like myself—or something that is so avant-garde, so different, that it feels like an emotional expression. I don't know, I've never had to think about any of this stuff before. I didn't ever know if I was going to get married. It was never one of those things that I had planned out. I didn't know what form my life was going to take. And now, I'm like a baby again. Allure: Do you know what you want to do hair- and makeup-wise? You love a bold look, but the expectation of “timelessness” for bridal beauty can feel limiting. Dove: I don't know. The wedding space is so specific, and I don't have any feelings either way about if I should try to fit into that or not. Your wedding should be about you, you know? I don't feel pressure to amalgamate or honor a specific idea of what a wedding should look like, but that doesn't mean some of it won't look traditional. I'm just not thinking about it. Allure: It sounds like the engagement is new enough that you haven’t had time to really dig into the details yet. Dove: Actually, the reason I don't have my ring today is because we're resizing it for a second time. So, yes, we're very early on in the process. It's so funny—there have been a couple times I've been photographed without it, and I always see people being like, “Well, the engagement is off.” And I'm like, “It's stuck at the jeweler. We're trying to make it a size four.” We weren't planning on announcing it at all. We were just going to let it happen organically, but we didn't think the day after he proposed. We landed in Australia, and there was this one pap, like, four blocks down with a mega-zoom . I thought, We haven't even called our grandparents. We haven't told anyone. I saw him, and I said, “Babe, I swear to God, there's a photographer down there…. He got the ring.” I took it off, I put it in my pocket. Allure: People wear all kinds of rings on their left hand—they aren’t always an engagement ring. Dove: But that looks like a fucking engagement ring. That's clearly what it was. I'm not going to lie, it was stressful because we were trying to keep it to ourselves. We're truly very private as a couple. I think there's an impression that we're not because we go so many places together and are photographed as a packaged deal. So this wasn't something that we were going to share. But it's a lovely thing. Now that it's out, I think we've gotten less shy about it. Allure: The celebrity rumor mill, especially on social media, has also been laser-focused on plastic surgery lately—trying to pinpoint if and what kinds of procedures people are getting. I’ve seen your name come up in that context. What do you make of that? Dove: If we're talking purely about looks, I could give a fuck. I do not participate in conjecture, and I do not accept conjecture on my behalf. It used to bother me when I was younger, feeling like anybody could say anything at any time. In general, it's not my business what people think and say . The person they are saying things about is not actually me because it's an idea of who I am. How they're perceiving me could never be accurate. It's however they've made me out to be in their head from the small bits of information. I think there's a bunch of people that think I'm mean simply because I wear sunglasses all the time and my mouth goes down. It's just a place to put anger and upset. I understand feeling out of control in the current world and wanting something to put upset into. I have no malice toward people who participate in that, it's just what it is. Allure: On another note, I saw the first few episodes of 56 Days and was mad I was left on so many cliffhangers. It is genuinely captivating. Dove: We shot the thing so long ago, so when I finally got to see it all cut together, I had the same feeling. I was like, “Fuck, I'm on the edge of my seat. They did this so well.” I was chomping at the bit to get more. Allure: The show revolves around sex in a big way. There are a lot of sex scenes, many of them intense. You mentioned in a recent interview that you were surprised by how intimidated you were by the nudity required. Dove: I wanted to be an actor since I was tiny, tiny, tiny, and I'd grown up watching actresses do nudity scenes, things that felt very normal to me as a viewer. I was like, “One day when I'm a big actress, that might be something that I brave and do.” I was always open to it. When this project came around, I was at a time in my life where I wanted to challenge myself. I read the script, realized there was nudity required, and I blindly was like, “Fuck yeah. I'm not scared. I'm ready to go. I'm an adult.” I just didn't anticipate that it would be so vulnerable. That sounds really silly in retrospect. How could I have not thought that it would be so vulnerable? It's not strictly about what your body looks like on camera. I've always been pretty okay with my body. I've never been massively confident in it. I'm not trying to go to the beach every day, you know? I have a little bit of stuff that I'm working on loving. I think every woman—conceivably, most humans—have insecurities. Allure: Everybody's got ’em. Dove: I remember watching an interview once where Angelina Jolie was like, “I am massively insecure.” And I remember thinking, I'm off the hook, because if you feel that way, everything's allowed. Everybody feels that way, it's just a human thing. So I anticipated some of the self-consciousness about . It was never the environment; it was simply the act of being witnessed by someone who is not your significant other in such a vulnerable way. It made my mind do flips and tricks, and it was a learning process. Allure: What was it like, pushing through those conflicting feelings? Dove: I didn't realize how much internalized shame I had until I did this. I thought I was really progressive in this way. I've always thought that nudity was beautiful and artistic and something to be celebrated. And I feel that way about other people, and so I thought I felt that way about myself. But on the other side of the body anxiety…you have this ownership of your body. It's like I've broken this seal of internalized shame. The modern Western culture around nudity really teaches you shame about something that is so human and natural and innocent. Nudity is innocent. You go to Europe, and on so many of the beaches, the women are topless and no one looks. The female body, in particular, has been commoditized to be this emblem of sexuality. Avan 's shirtless—we're not writing home about that, right? It's literally just my tits that are so, like, “Oh my God!” alarms blaring. Allure: Did filming those scenes change how you see yourself at all? Dove: I feel less crumpled and hidden. I feel more like I celebrate myself in the way that I celebrate other women. Like I've just burst through something. My number one—I guess you would call it a motto, even though that word makes me want to vomit—is if something scares me, that's the thing I have to do next. If you were a piece of marble and every hard experience was chipping away the excess, you'd take more shape after you do something that scares you. I'm sure there's someone who's going to read this and think, Oh, you took your top off on TV and now you're so evolved. Actually, yes. It was something that was personal for me to be able to tackle and understand. Allure: In the metaphor of the sculpture, what shape are you taking now? Dove: There's no way that I can say this without it sounding like double-extra, mega-heavy cheesy: I've never had what I could perceive as an end goal for my evolution because I think we're evolving forever. It'll never be complete. Photographer/Director: Erika Long Stylist: Carolina Orrico Hair: Gonn Kinoshita Makeup: Laura Stiassni Manicure: Leanne Woodley Set Design: Way Out Studio DP : Jimmy Liu Nyeango Writer: Nicola Dall'Asen
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