Mena Suvari Says It’s ‘Amazing’ What Has Come Following the Radical Honesty of Her Memoir: ‘I’d Rather Be Free’ (Exclusive)

Talking to PEOPLE about her new sci-fi horror film 'Ick,' the actress opens up about how she's learned to 'filter out the noise'

Ever since writing a book, Mena Suvari’s life has become an open one — and that’s how she prefers it.

Settling in for a conversation at the Toronto International Film Festival, Suvari is marking 25 years since she was here with 1999’s American Beauty, a film that ultimately won Best Picture at the Academy Awards and jettisoned Suvari, then 20, into the spotlight following her breakout success in American Pie.

It was an exciting, confusing time. “I overextended. I was too impressionable,” she recalls of those years while speaking about her new film, the Joseph Kahn-directed sci-fi horror Ick at the PEOPLE/Entertainment Weekly studio at the festival.

In Suvari’s 2021 memoir The Great Peace, she revealed her history with a predatory manager following her arrival in Hollywood at age 15, along with surviving childhood sexual abuse and drug use used to numb her pain. Since releasing the honest tome, Suvari, 45, is still living in a more radically honest place, which she says has been freeing.

“I wrote my book because I just needed to get it out of my life, and I wanted to move forward. I couldn't hide anymore, and I knew that I needed to do it for myself. And after I'd finished writing the book, I got pregnant,” she says of her now three-year-old son Christopher Alexander with husband Michael Hope.

She has since officially cast off the front she’d been putting on for years. “I just felt like I was playing a game with myself all the time: ‘I'm this person. I didn't have that past, and I'm everything that you want me to be.’ That's what my life was: ‘Who do you want me to be, and how you want me to be?’ That's what I learned how to do,” she recalls. “And so now I'm sort of like, ‘No, I'm getting to know me, and this is what I like,’ and I'm learning to be okay with just learning how to accept myself.”

But what has surprised Suvari is how much living her truth has attracted to her life.

“What's amazing is the things that have come out of that — people that have thought of me, other work that's come. And that was only because I had to step out of my own way. It's just about fear. We're so afraid that if we make this move, if we do that move, we're not going to be accepted. I still don't have all of those answers, but… I'd rather be free, and I'd rather have these conversations and hope that it helps somebody.”

Starring in Ick has been exciting, Suvari says of the satirical film The Daily Beast called “a horror-comedy cult classic in the making,” which probes the events of a small town when alien life invades Earth and the headline-weary population fails to see the threat at their door. The Film Stage called the film "a riotous take on the creature feature and a scathing satire of society’s apathetic attitude in the face of existential threats."

Kahn, who has directed iconic music videos from Britney Spears' "Toxic" to Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do" "is exactly the type of person that I like to work with because he knows exactly what he wants," says Suvari.

“It just really means a lot to me that any creative sees me as a part of their vision,” adds the actress, who had to choose between attending the festival and the Sept. 9 Creative Arts Emmy Awards, where she was nominated for Outstanding Performer in a Short Form Comedy Or Drama Series for the dystopian streaming series RZR.

Surrounded by a supportive team (“it feels like they see me as a person”), Suvari says she feels grateful for the space she's in now.

Related: Mena Suvari Opens Up About Struggling with Postpartum Depression 'Every Day' Since Son's Birth

“Everything that I've experienced in my life has really tried to bring me into this place of ‘I only have so much control, and I am letting go, I'm trusting, and I'm going with it.’ And I'm enjoying it more. That was one thing that I had to learn, too. You filter out the noise.”

And at home, she’s happily living that toddler life.

“He'll be three and a half next month. He's great,” says the proud mom. “He's shining. He's very fiery Aires. He's a little negotiator. I'm like, ‘Are you a lawyer?’ He is always negotiating, but he's my greatest teacher, and I tell him every day that he's the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Ick is currently seeking distribution at the Toronto International Film Festival, which runs through Sept. 15.

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