Amanda Peet

Interview By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

There are some things that ultimately never change in the course of any successful career, even if it is in an entertainment medium like film, and that's parenting. As anyone can tell you, parenting is a radical change in anybody's life.

It's a process that involves becomingly less self-serving as you're thrust into putting your heart into a new life procreated. And actress Amanda Peet is no different, as she had become pregnant with her first child in the midst of completing work on Peet's latest film, an adaptation of David Gerrold's novelette Martian Child, alongside siblings John and Joan Cusack.

'I was pregnant in the end when we did some additional shooting,' Amanda recalls, 'We did a bowling scene and I fell and I got really scared and I had literally been pregnant for two minutes and the baby was probably like the size of a little piece of grain of salt. Then, I started crying. I'm like, John, I'm pregnant! Could the baby be hurt! And he was like, Jesus, call your husband! I was such a drama queen. I mean I literally was a nightmare.'

Martian Child deals with John Cusack as a science fiction writer who adopts a boy who believes he's from Mars. Early on, the 35 year-old actress professed to have had a crush on the actor from her youth and even gave specifics as to when she first noticed him on screen.

'Probably The Sure Thing, maybe, and then, Say Anything. I mean, who didn't have a crush on him after that movie'' Peet gushes.

With that, it had to be asked whether or not her co-star noticed any of Amanda's old admirations of him during filming.

'Yeah. It was hard to miss,' she admits, 'It's just nerves. When you're working with someone new, it's a little awkward, but obviously, we love each other'or I love him anyway. I don't want to be presumptuous!'

A noticeable difference with this particular film is that unlike main characters in most dramas, Peet's character Harlee, who's John Cusack's character David's close friend, doesn't ever end up becoming anything more than that.

'I feel like it wasn't in the script at all, so we put a little more of it in, I think,' Amanda explains, 'There's a potential there, but it's left ambiguous. It's not my choice to resist it, because I'm just the actor. I don't get into those meetings, but I don't think, in a nice romantic comedy when the people end up together, just because something breaks the mold doesn't mean that it's good to me. Just like because something is an indie, artsy movie doesn't mean it's good. We're smart. There are smart romantic comedies where you know what's going to happen, but they're really beautiful and smart anyway.'

The actress also shared with us what director Manno Meyes was like on set. Born in the Netherlands, Meyes is best known for writing the script to the 1985 film The Color Purple, which got him an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay.

'He's really intense and he's really talky,' Peet divulges, 'He's like the opposite of Woody Allen, who doesn't want to talk about anything. He wants to talk about everything. So I think that's kind of fun because I'm a big talker.'

In touching with the film's theme, she believes that the simple fact that whether the most important qualifying factor in any adoptive parent is simply the love they are able to provide them.

'I think two is better than one and whether it's a man, two men, two women, whatever it is, I just think that children need a lot of attention and a lot of love,' Peet states, 'I don't think it necessarily has to be a father, but the more, the merrier.'

Also, we asked Amanda whether or not doing Martian Child has made she and husband, writer/producer David Benioff, consider adoption themselves in the future.

'I do think about it,' she admits, 'I think most parents do think about it, even after they've had their own child because it makes you think. It does make you have more weird affection for the children of the world, it's weird. Like I don't really feel changed, but if I think about children being alone, it's really something.'

In regards to her own entry into the world of motherhood, the actress shared the biggest life change in her becoming a parent.

'I'm tired, I'm tired all the time,' Amanda replies 'That's how my life has changed. I'm not kidding, but my life hasn't changed that much, except for that I'm sort of in love with two people. It's that I'm in love with my husband and I long for my husband and I sort of long for this other person, yet I'm not cheating on my husband. It's kind of great.'

'I smell her clothes after she goes to bed and I'm kind of in love with her,' she continues, 'It's weird, it's really weird. Like what am I doing smelling her clothes' It's like I'm a crazy person. Oh, you just don't understand!'

The downside of being the child of a famous parent is the unwanted thrusting of a child into the media spotlight. The actress explains to us how she will approach keeping her child as individualistic as possible.

'I'm working on that right now,' Peet says, 'I think it's maybe a little bit like a dance where you try to let them lead to some extent, in terms of their personality and their strengths intellectually and creatively. I feel like if she's a real math and science person, I'll find her ways to explore that and if she's a more artsy person, I'll try to go with her where she's going. But that's hard because I have dreams that I want her to be a certain way and have a certain kind of happiness and I don't know whether she's going to be like that.'

In hearing this, we asked Amanda if what she just said meant she will try to get her daughter to follow in her footsteps.

'I might try to, yes, whether I'd succeed, I don't know,' she replies, 'Probably, what we are trying to do, and what my acting teacher used to tell me, is to get in touch with that childlike innocence, where you are just un-self-consciously attacking the world, like attacking an impulse or expressing an impulse, to kiss, to eat, to run across the room because something shiny is there, to respond in the moment without going through some tertiary, second tertiary screening. But she's still really young. I play with her, but it's different. She's still really young, so we're not really like play-acting or anything.'

In response to the surprising publicity for the series' DVD release, we asked her whether or not she was shocked by the cancellation of the NBC comedy/drama Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip after one season despite rave reviews and even four Emmy nominations and a win.

'I think we felt it coming,' she believes 'I think it's hard when something is really shocking, but it wasn't a shock to any of us. It was a slow process of us realizing that it wasn't going well, what can we do, is there anything that we can do, but it was hard. We were on a really tough network in a really tough timeslot. Our lead-in was an action-packed, shit-kicker show.'

'I think there was an Aaron Sorkin backlash personally,' Peet adds, 'I think if he had been an unknown writer who wasn't famous and just came out of the blue, then there would have been a little bit more respect for giving some time to see if it worked out. Just because I think the voice is so smart and interesting and we don't have television like this mostly, except for maybe on cable. I think he's really a feminist. Nobody writes for women the way Aaron Sorkin does. It's just fascinating characters.'

Amanda says that the experience with Studio 60 wouldn't stop her from doing another television series.

'Sign me up,' Peet states, 'If the writing's good, sign me up.'

Amanda shared with us that she did a voiceover role in a CGI animated film called Terra, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. However, she claims that this CGI film, unlike the glut that Hollywood has put out the past few years, this one is not for young children.

'I think it's kind of scary actually, when I was reading it, I didn't think it was [for young children],' she believes, 'But I think a lot of them are really sophisticated, like Spirited Away, the [Hayao] Miyazaki films.'

As we wrapped up, we noticed the mostly drama-focused actress who often comes off very humorous. In that regard, Amanda explained to us why she tends to appear in so many dramatic roles and whether or not she'd consider doing more comedy.

'I think it just depends on the role,' Peet explains, 'I think sometimes that your role is so small and that there isn't room for much humor, and if it's not on the page or you're not playing someone who's funny, then there's no room for that, but I do get the sense from some actresses that when they do serious roles, they are humorless. And it's a kind of quality that I don't like.'

'Where as when you have someone like Kate Winslet, even when she's in a drama, you get the sense that she's full of humor and has all those engines running,' she continues, 'With actors and actresses, humorlessness is a quality that you feel sometimes, even if it's a drama and there's nothing particularly funny happening at that moment. Matt Damon is really funny, did you know that' He's so bawdy and funny and gross and hysterical, even in-between takes when he's like doing this insanely serious work.'