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‘Failure is not an option” has always been my family’s catchphrase; it’s flight director Gene Kranz’s famous line in the film Apollo 13. When I tell people it’s our family motto, they often joke, “That’s healthy.” But it isn’t about being the best. It’s about refusing to stop being.
I’ve loved Apollo 13 since I was a child. To me, Ron Howard’s 1995 adaptation of one of humanity’s greatest rescue missions is the perfect film to watch when you feel you might implode – because they got home. It is a film about a successful failure. When the Nasa director warns: “This could be the worst disaster Nasa’s ever experienced,” Kranz replies: “I believe this is going to be our finest hour.” Every time I watch that scene, I start crying.
Since I was little, if I couldn’t understand an emotion, I used scientific examples and historical events as analogies and metaphors to explain my emotional state. For this reason, it was never the trapped floating astronauts led by Tom Hanks’s Jim Lovell who fascinated me. It was the white-shirted, spectacled, chain-smoking engineers and scientists in Mission Control.
It was sexy, crew-cut Ed Harris saying: “Let’s work the problem, people. Let’s not make things worse by guessing.” It was Gary Sinise as Ken Mattingly refusing to take a break (“If they don’t get one, I don’t get one!”) as he tried to get his friends home.
Mission Control embodied everything I loved about humanity and learning: teamwork, creativity, rationality, calmness and respect for the data and the facts. This was why, in 2025, when my own systems module exploded, Apollo 13 became my breakup movie. On a balmy night in Australia in April 2025, my relationship with my fiance ended in a concrete hotel room under a flightpath in Sydney, 15 minutes before I was due to perform to 2,000 people.
Instantly, my brain shut down and went into survival mode. I moved into my own dreamlike Lunar Module (the lifeboat that saved the astronauts). I worked flat out but on reduced power. In 2025, that meant touring Australia and the UK with a show in which I pretended to be a horse, while also relearning three shows for the Edinburgh fringe.
People suggested tragic weepies to watch: Call Me By Your Name, Twilight, Blue Valentine. They said: “You should let it out.” No, thank you. I have to be a horse later! Give me a film where there is categorically no chance of people having sex at all. I don’t need romance films full of tears. Words mean nothing to a depressed mime artist! Life isn’t romantic declarations. It is actions that matter. It is waking up, brushing your teeth and putting your clothes on. Survival is Ed Harris declaring, “We are not losing the crew!”
The immediate explosion passed; survival mode lasted much longer. I was operational, but only just. The astronauts survive because they trust Mission Control. During the second half of 2025, Mission Control became every WhatsApp group on my phone. My friends and family made sure I ate, drove me to every show. My sister let me borrow and subsequently lose most of her clothes. My brother told me he loved me more than he had in his entire life. Everyone lied about my new haircut. They kept me on the right trajectory. They found the duct tape and rebuilt my lifeboat while I concentrated on putting one hoof in front of the other.
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Whenever I felt I couldn’t keep going, I returned to the film and revelled in the knowledge that it was based on truth. If Mission Control could get three men home from the other side of the moon, I could rebuild my confidence, travel the world as a horse and prepare for the Edinburgh fringe.
Now, when people ask how I am, I tell them I’m like the crew of Apollo 13. I’m home. I had a rupture, but I landed – and, like Mission Control, I am focusing on the next mission.
Because failure is not an option.
Elf Lyons Is the Woman on the Edge is at Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, to 31 August.
