She is quite the underrated talent factory. I recently returned from a trip with her and must admit I came back singing the gospel of LeeAnn. (Interview by Janna Irons)
So, let’s begin with the obvious starting point: Tell me about surfing with your dad in your early youth.
Yeah, I started surfing with my dad, and my mom—she surfs too. They taught me in Biarritz when I was probably 3 or 4. Surfing was in my life since I was born. First my dad would put me on his board and I would just lay on the front. After that I learned to surf playing with my brother in the shorebreak. Since I was little, my dad always gave us advice.
What kind of advantages did you have growing up the daughter of such a legendary surfer?
When you have a name that is already kind of famous you get more attention, even when you just start surfing—people hear about you and want to see how you’re doing. I spend a couple months a year with my dad, but my brothers who grew up with my dad in California got to surf with him everyday and watch him everyday and that’s really good inspiration and motivation. If you see him do his turns, you’re going to try to do yours the same, and I think that helps your surfing. My dad and I don’t have the same style, we’re definitely different, but I think there are definitely a couple of things that we all [LeeAnn and her brothers] took from our dad.
You also recently made a film?
Yes, my boyfriend and I made a film called Titan Kids. I went to visit him in Brazil in his home town, and life there is crazy, super different from where I live or most places in the world. And surfing is really important over there, so we kind of wanted to show how surfing can help kids in the favella over there and be something really positive for the place. It’s a 26-minute film, where we follow some of the kids’ everyday life, so it shows all of the problems over there in North Brazil. There are some big surfing champions over there—like Tita Tavares and Pablo Poblema—lots of really good surfers, so we just wanted to show how surfing affects them there. We got an award for it at the Anglet Surf Film Festival last year, so that was really cool.
Full Interview on Surfer Mag
