St. Vincent is lucky to be alive after being involved in a major car crash when she was eight which saw her mother’s car "jackknife" into traffic.
The 34-year-old musician – real name Anne Clark – has turned her attention to filmmaking on her directorial debut ‘The Birthday Party’ which premiered as part of short film anthology ‘XX’ at the Sundance Film Festival last weekend.
St. Vincent has revealed the story of her film – which shows a
a mother’s efforts to give her eight-year-old daughter the perfect birthday after finding her husband slumped unconscious at home – was inspired by her own traumatic eighth birthday which saw her whole family involved in the traffic incident which they were all lucky to walk away from uninjured.
Speaking to Pitchfork.com, she shared: "When I turned eight, we had the party at a putt-putt golf course that also had an arcade. So me, my mom, my sister, my step-dad, and my best friend Doug were on the highway to the party and we were behind a truck that had a bright pink sofa on it. All of a sudden, the sofa fell out of the back of the truck. My mom put on the brakes, swerved to miss it, jackknifed, and hit the guardrail on the left side of the street – we spun around across three lanes of Texas traffic to the shoulder of the road. Luckily, no one was hurt, and we weren’t hit. But we were all in a state of shock."
St. Vincent – who has previously dated Cara Delevingne and Kristen Stewart – also revealed that things got even worse for her mother as she took photos of her smashed vehicle because she was repeatedly stung by a nest of fire ants and went into anaphylactic shock, narrowly escaping death.
Despite everything she went though, St. Vincent’s mum still took her to play mini-golf once she was treated for her allergic reaction and given the all-clear by doctors.
The ‘Digital Witness’ singer said: "My mother is a very obsessive picture taker, so in her state of shock, she got out and started taking pictures of the car – I don’t know if it was to document the experience or for insurance purposes. But as she was taking the pictures, she stepped into an ant pile and was stung by a thousand fire ants and went into anaphylactic shock. She fainted and almost died on the shoulder of the road in Mesquite, Texas.
"She went to the hospital and was OK. No one was hurt. So, I guess we proceeded to go play putt-putt."
St. Vincent recalls near-fatal eighth birthday
