(By Matthew
Belloni & Stephen Galloway, The Hollywood Reporter, 30 November 2012)
The Hollywood
Reporter: What makes you afraid as an actress?
Anne Hathaway:
You start with an easy
one!
Naomi Watts: I'm not happy unless I've got a little
bit of fear going. I'm always trying to pull out. I'm always calling the
director and saying, "I don't know if I can do it." With Mulholland
Drive, I was completely terrified working with David Lynch. I was
going on years and years of auditions and being told I was too this, too that,
not enough of this, not enough of that, to the point where I was so afraid and
diluting myself into absolutely nothing -- and then he just looked me in the
eye and saw something. He just spoke to me and unveiled all those locked masks.
THR: Do you
still have those masks?
Watts: Yeah, I keep them in reserve. (Laughter.)
Amy Adams: I was 30 when I got Junebug, so I
had the same thing. Whoever was getting the job, I tried to figure out what
they did and do the same thing. I remember hearing about Naomi's experience.
That gave me a lot of faith in times where I was going to quit.
THR: How close
did you get to quitting acting?
Adams: Pretty close. Not quitting in the sense
that I wasn't going to be an actress, but maybe move to New York, move back to
a smaller market. I just wasn't happy. If I wasn't going to be happy, then it
wasn't worth it.
THR: Are you
happy now?
Adams: Yeah. (Laughter.)
Rachel Weisz: Fear is like the steam that fires the
combustion engine. You need fear to get a performance going.
THR: In real
life, as opposed to acting, what makes you afraid?
Weisz: What is real life?
Sally Field: The freeway! It's terrifying. (Laughter.)
THR: Denzel
Washington said something interesting at the Actor Roundtable. He said,
"You attract what you fear." Do you agree?
Anne Hathaway:
That would explain some
relationships! (Laughter.) Actually, Rachel, I have a question for you.
Is it true you have a tattoo on your hip of a ladder because of the theater
piece that you did?
Weisz: Um, yeah. I started out very avant-garde
[at Cambridge] -- I've sold out very steadily since then! It was more like
performance art. It was me and another girl, and we were at university
together. We had this stepladder, and we used to basically hurl each other off
this ladder, and often we would bleed. We were 18 years old, and we just
thought that was really cool and radical. I'm joking about it, but it's
something I'm extremely proud of, and I had a ladder tattooed on my hip to
commemorate this theater company -- which isn't, like, a ladder to my nether
regions. It's the avant-garde theater troupe.
THR: Anne, in Les
Miserables you're playing a part your mother played onstage. Did that make
you afraid?
Hathaway: Yeah. My mom was in the first national
tour, and she understudied the character [Fantine] whom I wound up playing. It
made me nervous to tell her that I was auditioning for it, just because I knew
how much it would mean to her, and I was worried that if I didn't get it, she
would be disappointed, and if I did get it, it would be weird. And she was so
cool about it. We talked about the character. And when I got the part, no one
was happier for me.
THR: Was there
a piece of advice you took from her in preparing for the role?
Hathaway: She gave me an image. My mom and I were
talking about the idea that Fantine has lit a match, and she's just watching it
burn down. And she needs to blow it out and let in the darkness. It was amazing
to have that conversation not with an acting teacher, not with a director, but
with your mother. I'm the only one here who's not a mother. I hope to join the
ranks soon.
THR: Helen,
were you nervous about the nudity in The Sessions?
Helen Hunt: Sure. But you read something beautiful
rarely.
Field: It's also -- Helen, I realized we're, um,
the only ones sort of a certain age, or my age is more certain than yours. It
gets harder and harder, girls.
Hunt: My desire to be in something beautiful
was bigger than my nerves. I met this woman whom I play [Cheryl Cohen Greene],
and she's in her 60s, cancer survivor, grandmother, still a working sex
surrogate who is as enthusiastic about her granddaughter as she is about the
orgasm that the man who maybe was never going to have one is going to have. I
heard all of that and thought: "Prostitutes. Let's not dress it up."
But then you meet her, and you really hear what she does. It's really
something, you know?
THR: Marion,
is there a role you've played that changed your life?
Marion
Cotillard: After La
Vie en Rose, I started to feel the need to clean up some relationships,
which was really weird. Suddenly, I needed to start fresh. Sometimes you go
deep inside yourself, and I think it opens things inside of you. I don't know
if you can really identify what it is, but you just need to heal. Did I answer
the question? (Laughter.)
THR: How has
fame changed your life?
Adams: I am going to get in an altercation with
the paparazzi. It's going to happen. They keep focusing on my child. You guys
are mothers. How do you handle it? Because I need to calm down. I have a really
bad temper. I need to learn how to control myself.
Hathaway: I'm thinking about that because I really
want to have a baby, and my husband and I are like, "Where are we gonna
live?"
Cotillard: Come to France! We have laws!
Field: It's just such a different world. I've
been here for 50 years, in the business. They had fan magazines, and they would
set up young stars on these dates with people you didn't know, you didn't like.
Recently, I was going through stuff, and I got horrified. I was doing this at
17, 18, 19, 20.
THR: Can you
say no to press? Mila Kunis said recently that a studio chief had told her she
had to pose for a men's magazine if she wanted to work for the studio.
Hathaway: At The Princess Diaries 2
premiere, they wanted me to arrive in a carriage, and I said no.
Field: I was doing a series called The Flying
Nun [1967-70]. I didn't want to do [the show] more than life itself; I was
so massively depressed, I weighed 40,000 pounds. Then they asked me to appear
at the Golden Globes. "We want you to fly across the Cocoanut Grove, and
we want you to present an award." I did not have the guts to say,
"Are you out of your God darn mind?" So I said, "I won't wear
the nun outfit." Now I find myself flying across the Cocoanut Grove into John
Wayne's arms at about 400 miles per hour, wearing pink taffeta. It made no
sense whatsoever. I wasn't even the flying nun. Now I was little porky Sally
Field in a pink taffeta outfit flying across the Cocoanut Grove. (Laughter.)
Weisz: But you stood your ground.
THR: Have you
ever really fought for a role?
Weisz: I fought for The Constant Gardener.
I hounded the director. I called him a lot, and I wrote him a lot of letters.
They were quite bold, basically telling him why I thought I was right to play
the part. That's very un-British. But I dropped my British-ness and at the end
of the day [director Fernando Meirelles] said that tenacity was right
for the character.
Hunt: I've had to fight for every part --
certainly As Good as It Gets. I was too young, too blond, too
on-a-sitcom, too utterly uninteresting for this part. I had spent many, many
years where the director would want me but the studio wouldn't. In this case, I
had the reverse. I was suddenly on a big TV show [Mad About You] and I
had been in a huge blockbuster [Twister]. The studio was saying,
"Read her," but he [director James L. Brooks] didn't want to
see me. My experience of acting is not this kind of lightning-in-a-bottle
thing. It's like elbow grease: work with someone, work with yourself, find the
shoes. You said, "What scares you?" What I thought of is the feeling
of being bad. There's no feeling like acting when you know it's bad.
Hathaway: I always think I'm terrible. So it's
always a relief when I find out that I wasn't. I've had roles where I realized
that I was in way over my head -- and that is my biggest fear. My biggest fear
is overreaching. I have been in situations where I felt swamped, and it's
turned out really well; and I've had other situations where I've had to walk
off the film after five minutes because I realized I was in way over my head.
THR: You've
done that?
Hathaway: Yeah. I've had a couple of films that I
just can't watch. The experience that I'm thinking of -- and I will not say
which one -- I tried to get out of it because I just knew from a technical
standpoint I wasn't going to have enough time to prep and I just talked myself
into it. It was just too good of an opportunity to pass up and I thought,
"I can get there, I can do this." And when you don't feel that you
got there, it's always going to just gnaw at you.
THR: Anne, how
was your experience hosting the Oscars?
Hathaway: Oh, scars.
Hunt: You were great!
Hathaway: Thanks. I went into it with a lot of
trust and a lot of hope, and I had a blast doing it. And I realized afterwards,
I played to the house; it's a 3,500-seat theater, so I was just shooting energy
to the back of it and it was like a party! It was great! And I think it looked
slightly manic and "hyper-cheerleadery" onscreen. But I have no regrets
about doing it.
THR: Did you
watch a tape of the show?
Hathaway: Oh God, no! Whether or not it was an
actual failure, it was perceived as a massive failure. [To Amy] By this
wonderful media that buys pictures of your daughter! I've stopped talking to
the paparazzi because there's no point.
Hunt: When Hillary Clinton was running
for president, they were asking Obama about foreign policy and they were
asking her, "How do you stay healthy on the road?"
Weisz: Going on with your Hillary Clinton thing,
when you do actor roundtables, does age come up as an issue?
Field: Would you ask them about nudity?
THR: We've
never asked about nudity. But we ask the same questions of the men, except: Do
you think Hollywood is tougher for women?
Adams: I think women's concerns are different.
Our priorities sometimes are different. And there is a reality: You're told
constantly that you have a "shelf life," and I don't know that men
are told that by the media, by other actors and other actresses, you're just
told that.
Field: I'm almost 66 and I have a lot of awards,
but I fought like holy hell to get Lincoln. Steven [Spielberg]
had asked me to do it a long time ago, like in 2005. By the time it was going
to be made, the original person [Liam Neeson] had dropped out and Daniel
Day-Lewis came on board, and from the time that he first asked me, a little
voice inside me said, "You'll never do it, Field. You'll never do
it." And I have a problem with that little voice, because that little
voice sometimes becomes my self-fulfilling prophecy. A lot of my life and
career has been about huge compromise, about selling out. I had no choice: I
had children to raise, there are my priorities. And I also know that I'm 10
years older than Daniel and 20 older than Mary Todd Lincoln, and I
thought, "This is going to be a problem." And Steven said, "Yes,
I don't see you with Daniel. Sorry." But I said, "Steven, test me!
I'm not walking away!" And Daniel out of the graciousness of his heart
flew in from Ireland and we did some bizarre improv; but I became Mary and he
became Mr. Lincoln for about an hour! When I got home the phone was ringing,
and Steven and Daniel were on the phone saying, "Will you be Mary?" (Applause.)
Weisz: It's interesting: I often get told,
"Don't go and read." And last year I read the prequel to The
Wizard of Oz, and this one character is really evil, the Wicked Witch of
the East, and I thought, "I really love this role," and no one wanted
me and [director] Sam Raimi didn't want me and I said, "I want to
go and audition. That's my job. I'm an actor." It was one meeting, we sat
and talked for a couple of hours, and he asked me a lot of interesting
questions about my parents and my childhood. And the casting director read them
with me and Sam kind of operated the camera.
Hathaway: Do you feel more confident if you've
auditioned and gotten a role going into it?
Adams: Yes.
Hathaway: I do too.
Hunt: Well, otherwise the first day of shooting
is the audition.
Watts: Oh, it's horrible! I have such bad
memories of auditioning that I just get clammy. I mean, I did 10 years of
driving around Los Angeles just to get two bits of paper to go and line up for
two hours the next day -- they couldn't even fax you those pages. I have such
haunting memories of auditioning and have literally been in a room where a
director has been sleeping -- a very fancy director.
THR: Feel free
to say who --
Watts: No, no, I won't. Although it's --
Hathaway: Tempting?
Watts: I'm partly English and partly Australian,
and I'm not good when I have to prove myself. I'm really not.
Weisz: I'm sure you can do anything! You went
from there to here.
Watts: Well, I can't apparently do comedy.
Cotillard: I fought for a project and I fought for
the director and then I spent two months in the middle of the desert wanting to
kill him and wanting to beat myself because I fought for him and he was so bad.
He had no idea what we were doing, he had no idea what he wanted to do. I
wanted to choke everybody in the desert. Then I realized that if I don't trust
the director, if I don't like him, I'm going to be bad. I got my French version
of the Razzie nomination [for worst performance] and I really wanted to have
it! I didn't want to be mean, but I had my acceptance speech: "Without this
director, none of this would have been possible!"
THR: Is there
any one role that you would love to play?
Hathaway: I want to play Catherine the Great.
I'm reading a biography on her life right now, and it's such a great story. It
involves sex and the denial of sex, and she was so brilliant and there's just
so much vastness. I'd love a crack at it.
Hunt: I have this Lady Macbeth fantasy.
Field: We were in a Shakespeare class together!
Hunt: We were!
Watts: I would just like to do a comedy at some
point before I die.
Field: You know what? Honestly, truly, it really
is hard even in literature to find older women, because if there is an older
woman in a great piece of literature, usually she's very much in the
background.
Cotillard: I would like to play a monster, like
Gollum or something totally that you have to create almost everything.
Weisz: I tried for years to develop a true story
about this woman named Julia Butterfly Hill, an activist who lived up a
Redwood tree in Sonoma County for two years and four days, on a platform. She
was trying to stop the trees from being knocked down. I spent a lot of time
with her and I visited the tree, and I found it really moving. And it was an
impossible movie to get made. It was hard enough to make a female-driven drama,
but they were like, "She's just up a tree!"
Adams: I would really love to produce stuff for
other actresses. Everyone talks about producing stuff for yourself, but I'd
actually love to do it for other actresses.
Hathaway: [To Field] You don't know this, but I
tried to write a movie for you, about a spy. And I thought Sally would be
amazing, because who would ever think she was a spy? I think women are starting
to take more care of each other. I feel like we're moving into a place in the
world where we're going to be able to apply it. At least that's my hope.
Weisz: Maybe we can do the female version of The
Hangover -- all of us on a 24-hour bender.
Hunt: I'm ready to do that, even if we don't
film it!
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