Radha Mitchell

Interview By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

It goes to show that you'll never know where the next great acting talent is likely to bloom from with an actress like Radha Mitchell. Born and raised in Australia, Mitchell started out on the long-running soap opera Neighbours for one season, which ironically had many former cast members in the past becoming internationally-famous singers like Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, and Natalie Imbruglia.

However, she's gone on to acting in films ranging from Pitch Black to Finding Neverland to Melinda And Melinda to Silent Hill. Now, Radha's latest film finds her working with Academy Award-winning director Robert Benton in his newest film, the drama Feast Of Love.

In the film, which is based on a book by Charles Baxter, Mitchell plays Diana, one of a group of friends in Oregon who experience love in both positive and negative ways. When Mitchell recently discussed the film with us, one of the first things the 33 year-old actress shared was how she was won over by how antithetical the script was to other films made nowadays.

'What I liked about the script actually was that it was unabashedly sincere,' Radha explains, 'It's a movie that is heartfelt and it's kind of tricky in this climate. It's not really cool to talk about your feelings too much and a lot of the cinema that you see is either glib, cynical, or nihilistic. So what I enjoyed about the film is that it wasn't, it came from the heart.'

However, her reasons hit a point of irony when discussing what she loved about playing the role.

'What I enjoyed about my character is that she's glib and cynical and nihilistic'within that story and you see her kind of evolve,' Mitchell says, laughing, 'She's in a tricky emotional situation and things have to go to the worst point before you move forward. In walking the line between being the bitch and being someone you kind of like and identify with is an interesting challenge as an actress.'

When discussing how her character's love interest Bradley Thomas, played by Greg Kinnear, is in many ways antithetical in nature to Diana, Radha expounds on the many complexities of Diana.

'He was such a nice guy, too. How could you hurt Bradley's feelings'' she believes, 'I don't know if David was her kind of sole connection, but it's very rare that you find that can meet you on that level, if you're an intense person, in that way. So how do you ignore that and let go of that' And I think her attempt is to move forward with her life and marry a really nice guy that your mother would certainly recommend, this guy's going to be a really good guy for you. And then to be in that situation and realize it's a lie, she has to kind of find a way out of it and it's tricky, it's very tricky, but life is tricky.'

Mitchell also discusses a particularly eyebrow-raising scene when Diana and her friends strip naked and how she and her cast felt about having to do that.

'We did feel vulnerable as actors, to be honest, to be naked,' Radha says, 'But it was also sort of liberating, in a way, to'(laughing) be looked up by thirty people who got their clothes on. I mean, how much of our culture is about protecting ourselves and hiding in these sort of masks that we carry around, when you are in that way''

When asked about whether she felt there was anything to gain from being nude in a movie, Mitchell philosophized about it as a personal learning experience.

'You learn a lot about yourself (laughing),' she claims, 'It pushes a lot of your insecurities about your body and how you're presented and you're like, 'Fuck,' excuse my language, 'This is how I am, that's it,' and there's a truth to that. That's what I thought was interesting about that scene. It is very honest.'

She also shared how much she enjoyed the opportunity to work with director Robert Benton, who won an Academy Award for his 1979 film Kramer Vs. Kramer.

'I mean, I really loved this movie Kramer Vs. Kramer obviously,' Radha gushes, 'And what I liked about it was this kind of liberty and naturalism in the way the camera would sort of linger and move around the room and it wasn't so precise and specific. So there was this sense of casualness and that was what was interesting to me to see scenes that were very real and the people in them very natural and that's a great tone to work in as an actor. For me, it feels more comfortable than this kind of more performed performances that you often see.'

She also goes on to add that Benton being much older than much of the cast helped give Feast Of Love an interesting perspective.

'I really think the scenes are interesting, especially in the context of this movie,' Mitchell notes, 'Because the movie has a softness to it and a sweetness to it and that is where it begins and where it ends. And then, there's this kind of messy bit where these naked people are slapping each other, but taught from the point of view of someone that is 75, even that seems ridiculous. You know what I mean''

'You think you take your life so seriously, especially when you're in your thirties, when your choices seem to be so significant, like if I do this, it's going to lead me there, I don't want to mess up my life or whatever,' she continues, 'But for somebody that is 75, it's over and you could see the silliness of it all and that it's going to happen again and again. And there'll be generations of these similar kind of stories where we're all going through the same thing and I think that's what special about the film.'

Radha also believes that it was how the film approached the content that made her and her cast more ultimately comfortable with doing a nude scene.

'I think it's a very European style to be so casual with nudity and you kind of have to sign on for that in the film,' she notes, 'And I think that's why the people that did sign on to this movie agreed to it, because they knew the tone wasn't exploitive, wasn't titillating, that they weren't trying to say anything other than this is how humans are together. For that reason, we all saw it as challenging and interesting that if it was going to be viewed in a different light, I think we'd be interested in doing it.'

With that point in mind, we asked the Australian-born actress how she thinks a more sensitive American audience will react to the nude scene in the film

'I don't know how audiences will perceive it,' Mitchell responds, 'It will be interesting to see because in many ways, it is a family movie and they're going to have a bit of T&A or whatever (laughing)'however you want to phrase that. But yeah, there's human bodies and it's a family movie at the same, which is probably not what American audiences are used to. And there's some death, but the dog doesn't die.'

Radha also singles out praise for Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman, who not only stars in, but narrates the film as well, after previously receiving accolades for narrating the surprise hit documentary March Of The Penguins. She also notes how the use of narration in Feast Of Love evolved to ultimately choosing him to do it for the film.

'Can you imagine a better voice in the world'' she enthuses, 'Everyone at a certain point, they were going to give us all a little narrative about ourselves. Because the book itself is told from multiple perspectives and everybody talks about what happens, but they all have their own point of view on what happened and it's often conflicting.'

'But they really couldn't make a movie that made complete sense by doing that, so they changed it,' Mitchell adds, 'And then, they felt, let's bring in some of those monologues, because they're great, but they just stuck with Morgan (laughing), great voice.'

We also asked Radha what she thinks audiences will like most about Feast Of Love.

'I love the fact that you can quote these lines from the film,' she believes, 'I mean, there's a lot of quotable lines from the movie. Having read it for the first time, there's lines that have stayed in my mind.'

Last but not least, we asked the actress what is the next film she has on the horizon. Mitchell replied that her next release will be the Australian thriller Rogue, which will be released in select theatres here in the U.S. on October 12.

It tells of an American journalist who goes into Australia in the outback and encounters a man-eating crocodile. Radha chose to part with us by recounting a rather interesting story during the shooting of Rogue regarding it's location in the hot climate of the Australian outback.

'You know, there was one guy, Sam Worthington, who's actually shooting a movie with James Cameron, and he jumped into the water with the crocodiles (laughing),' she recounts, 'But in the Northern Territory, there could be crocodiles anywhere in any water that you go in. There's signs everywhere saying don't swim, but it's so hot, it's like 50 degrees Celsius, that you take the risk sometimes because otherwise, you're just going to melt.'

'So there's people that do get eaten by crocodiles,' Mitchell continues, And there's one legendary story about a guy whose head got bitten off because he wouldn't put his beer down, because you get kind of laissez-fare and its very hot, so things get kind of slow. But it's a reality and there's real-life crocodiles walking around.'