"But I also learned in school about Thomas Edison that year. So I wanted to be an inventor. And I loved animals. So I also wanted to work with animals. So I had all these passions."
Growing up in Blacksburg Virginia, the home of Virginia Tech university with "science and engineering in the air", the idea of being an astronaut won out.
To study astrophysics Massie went to the University of Virginia but her love of the arts eventually won out and she returned to Blacksburg to study theatre arts at the Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts.
She went on to perform in a variety of shows throughout the United States, until she decided the time had come to develop her own show.
"I always wanted to be on an international tour and I never got cast in one. So I decided I wanted to develop a show that I could take anywhere in the world. A solo play is the most portable."
The time had also come for her to "take science out of the box" she had put it in.
"I realised that an interest in science is such an integral part of myself that I needed to honour that part of myself and bring it back into my life by integrating it in my work. So I decided I wanted to feature this story of a woman in science."
A friend talked about Austrian-born Hollywood screen siren and inventor Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000) in a brainstorming session and it was "Hedy from that moment on".
"She’s a fascinating woman to portray. I’m an artist with a scientist’s heart and she was as well."
Massie’s only pause was at the thought of playing someone considered at the time to be one of the most beautiful women in the world.
"The person who suggested her to me didn’t have a question about the fact that I could play her. I have to, as I’m preparing, suspend my own disbelief so that the audience can suspend their disbelief. But I believe that Hedy is there with me in the show. I really want to honour her and tell the story that she was never able to tell during her lifetime."
"She had a mind for wanting to know how things worked. She would take things apart and put them together to understand how they work, and her father really fostered her inquisitive nature and would teach her things."
To develop the show, Massie read and watched everything she could about Lamarr.
"I marked all the things that were interesting or ironic or funny or just ironically stupid about her navigating the world as a woman in a man’s world."
As a result, Massie decided to include in the show some of the different people in Lamarr’s life over the years such as her husband, Austrian military arms merchant Friedrich Mandl, co-stars Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Judy Garland and Bette Davis, her directors and parents.
"I felt that it’s much more interesting to me as an audience member to see things happening in real time and to see all the characters. So I wanted to make it a lot more fun and interesting by instead of having Hedy say this happened ... I wanted to make it more in the moment and more alive. So anytime I could bring in another character, I do, and I play all the characters."
It means Massie performs around 30 characters in the show, including three of Lamarr’s husbands, something she loves doing.
"It doesn’t get boring because I enjoy dialect work. And how often is it that a female performer gets to play leading lady in character roles simultaneously?"
She uses different acting techniques and vocal choices to create the characters, while remaining dressed as the glamorous Lamarr.
"Hedy makes sure that the audience knows what’s happening at any given time."
Massie’s favourite character in the show is Stewart, Lamarr’s favourite co-star, partly because his voice was so iconic that it gives her something to latch on to as an actor.
"Where other people that are characters, people might know their name, but not know what they sounded like.
"And when I was growing up, my dad always spoke so highly of Jimmy Stewart, because so many Americans thought the world of him, because he could have found a way to not serve, and he was having none of that."
The show, HEDY! The Life & Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, is not just about entertainment for entertainment’s sake. Massie also has a mission to encourage young people, women especially, to embrace science and technology.
"It’s an inspiring story because it shows how anyone can have an idea and figure out a way to implement it. It shows how even if society sees you a certain way, that you’re capable of so much more than what people might dictate."
Massie firmly believes if young people pursue the things that make their hearts sing, they will be able to bring the best of themselves to the world and have the most joy in their lives.
"And if I could play Mae Jemison as an astronaut, I would, but I can’t. That’s what I’m trying to say to everyone. To also pursue your passions."
Her journey from scientist to artist to sometime science educator has "played out this way for a purpose", she says.
"Because I took this road less travelled from science into the arts, I have found this opportunity in celebrating women in STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths] to play Hedy Lamarr, who was an inventor but also an actor."
It does not end there though. She is planning to make a trilogy of shows about inspiring women and is developing one on physicist and astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, and is thinking the third might be on English zoologist and primatologist Jane Goodall — "the greatest working woman in the world still trying to save all of us and all the animals".
So while she did not become an astronaut herself, she has been able to continue her passion for science.
"Now being an actor, having this particular mission, I’m able to do all the things that I wanted to do when I was 8 years old — in a way that I would never have imagined at the time."
It has also enabled her to travel the world. Since the show premiered Off Broadway in 2016 she has toured it to 19 countries on four continents and garnered 30 awards.
"I love knowing people and being friends and colleagues with people in other places in the world. It gives a different context to world events when you know people in the places that are experiencing whatever turmoil or joy."
It was as a Fulbright Specialist touring through South Africa, sponsored by the US State Department, World Learning and the US embassy in South Africa, she made a connection which has led to her visit to Australia last year and New Zealand this month.
"It was a lifelong dream just to go to Australia and to come to New Zealand. And it was wonderful last year finding this way to not only go and experience the country and the culture there, but to also share my work and share my mission and become a part of communities and get to know people in a way that’s different than when you’re just a tourist," she said.
To see:
HEDY! The Life & Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, March 19, 8pm,Te Whare o Rukutia; March 22, 5pm, March 23, 2pm, Dunedin Teachers College Auditorium
