SHERRYBABY LOOKS AT INCARCERATED MOTHERS

(VIDEO) Sherrybaby writer director Laurie Collyer keeps truth about incarcerated mothers in her screenplay.

Sherrybaby Writer director Laurie Collyer wanted to maintain a truthfulness to the character of Sherry played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, a former incarcerated heroin addict who is released to the probationary system only to find life on the outside just as brutal when she is kept from seeing her daughter. Laurie based Sherry on one of her close childhood friends and had many conversations with ex-convicts whose children spent time in foster care while their mothers were locked away in prison.

Sherry Baby opens Friday.

“I met this amazing woman who had this long scar down her face from some street fight. She told me she did five years for a five dollar crime. She was cracked out in the streets. When she came out of prison she went and got each and every one of her kids out of foster care. There were five of them. Put back her family, became a social worker and now that’s what she does for a living put families back together or not, sometimes you can’t. I think the most important thing I learned is that you can come back. It’s not like you’re doomed to do life on the installment plan. You can do your time and have all the traumas that you experienced in the streets and still lead a really, happy solid productive life.”