Interview By: Rocco Passafuime
Jordana Brewster is one of Hollywood's hottest young female actors working today. She first made a name for herself on TV soap operas like All My Children and As The World Turns. She made her film debut in the 1998 horror/sci-fi film The Faculty and made her biggest impact to date in the 2001 action/thriller The Fast and the Furious.
Brewster now returns to the world of horror as teenage heroine Chrissie in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, the new prequel to the successful 2003 remake, released in theatres on October 6, 2006. When Jordana first received word about it, she immediately jumped on board.
'I loved the original 2003 remake,' she explains. 'It was why I signed on to the prequel without a script. I loved Jessica Biel's performance, the cinematography of it, the look, the way it was marketed, everything about it. So I really wanted to be part of it.' For Jordana, working in the often down-and-dirty world of horror was, for the most part, a relief for her.
'I loved it,' exclaims Brewster. 'It's pain working on a film sometimes. You know when you have bad days, you wake up sometimes and it's like you got beaten by an ugly stick and you're like, 'Uhh, I'm going to stay in today'' But it didn't matter, because they just covered you. So it was kind of perfect. The dirt came on and then the blood and then, towards the end, when I was really covered, it was even better. So it was a release, because all the vanity went out the window.'
Jordana adds, however, that the experience does have a few drawbacks.
'The stickiness I hated because I felt like you were getting waxed,' she includes, 'If your skin stuck to itself, it was so painful to get off after each day. It was real hard to get off. Once we wet the haltertops, I could set them on a table and it would stand up by itself, because it was stiff. It was just disgusting. That was one of the perils of working on this film, but it was fun anyway. It was gross in a good way.'
The film was authentically shot in the story's locale of Texas. Brewster noted of her deep admiration for the environmental surroundings.
'It was beautiful and really scary at night and, luckily, not that many animals.' She says, 'I thought there would be more animals, like in the grass where I was. Just secluded and vast and really gorgeous and I loved Austin. Hanging out there was really awesome and it's a really great town. We'd drive back at like 5:00AM and hitting rush hour traffic. Being exhausted, you feel like you're in The Twilight Zone. It's very bizarre.'
At one point in the film, Brewster's character goes toe to toe with the story's deranged sheriff Hoyt, reprised by the character actor R. Lee Ermey. Jordana said it was not easy at times to overcome Ermey's infamously intense and often ad-libbed acting style.
'You have to just not take it personally,' she explains, 'He improvises a lot, so he didn't really stick to the script. If the script was like, 'Shut up, little girl,' he'd do things like, 'Shut up, you ugly bitch!' And I was like, 'Oh, my God, is he saying I'm ugly'' I'd take it personally. So you just have to really be like, 'OK, he's totally in character and he's not attacking me personally.' But he's is hardcore in that character, so it was really fun to watch him go, because it was no holds barred with him.'
Jordana says she was more than adequate to prepare herself emotionally as an actor for the intenseness of a horror environment.
'I never had to take myself out of the circumstances of the film,' she explains, I 'I just really put myself in that. It's always a part of you, just going through those emotions regardless. Having the blood on my hand, just staring at that, in some weird way helped me. Going into a corner and jumping up and down sometimes helped me. When I was in a rut, the menthol [makeup put on to make you cry] helped me. Sometimes that's needed in horror.'
She also went on about how she pits herself against the clich' that constantly has plagued the genre of potential victims who seem to make dumb choices.
'I think as an actor, you have to believe if something doesn't ring true, you call yourself out on it and you talk to the director about it, otherwise you're not going to sell it to yourself and to the audience,' Jordana notes, 'I never really questioned that moment that much, because when you're hearing the screams and she's that close to you, I don't think it's that difficult to turn back. And you're not thinking that clearly anyway. You've just lost someone. It's a sense of rebellion as well. There's a mixture of emotions as well.'
Brewster also recollects how different it really was between working on the set and seeing the film privately and watching it in a theatre in an audience.
'The first time I saw the movie, I wasn't that scared because I think I was desensitized and I knew what was coming. The second time I saw it with an audience in a real movie theatre with the sound cranked up and I was really scared. I was jumping at the right moments and I was cringing and I wasn't looking at certain parts and it was really frightening. It's a great group experience. You need the group with everyone grasping each other.'
As far as Jordana Brewster's next turn in film goes, don't expect the now 26 year-old raven-haired beauty to dive head-first into the first thing that comes along.
'I'm waiting right now,' Jordana says, 'I'm just looking for the right thing. I don't know what I'm going to do. It depends on the material and whatever appeals to me at that phase of my life.'
For now, Brewster also recently appeared in the independent romantic coming-of-age drama Nearing Grace, which was released in limited engagement on August 18, 2006 and should be released on video sometime in February 2007.
'Nearing Grace is a really sweet movie,' Jordana gushes, 'I'm really proud of it. I think it's the character that challenged me the most. She was completely not me. I initially didn't want to do it because she was so overtly sexual. It was the first film where my dad goes, 'Oh, cool, you weren't playing yourself. You were really something different.''
