Interview By: Jeff Wilser
Laura Linney is a workaholic. Even she admits it. Last fall, she squeezed in two feature films, Love Actually and Mystic River. This year she tops herself: after finishing up scenes for Kinsey, she had only 48 hours off before shooting P.S. . . . and still managed to shine on Broadway.
In the midst of this frantic schedule, she somehow found time to sit down with TheCinemaSource to discuss her role in P.S. Linney gives an achingly good performance as Lousie, a lonely divorced woman who falls for someone half her age (Topher Grace). She carries the film'there isn't one scene without her.
Linney admits that even for her, the brutal schedule was challenging. 'It's always tricky. As these things happen with small movies, when they get the financing and they're ready to go, they go. And you've got to go with it.' She laughs. 'It's all a little bit of a blur, to be honest with you. Because this movie was sort of squarely on my shoulders in some ways'as far as being in every single scene of the entire movie'which is terribly daunting.'
In P.S., Linney's character is her own age and body type, marking a sharp contrast with Kinsey, which required her to play a much older woman. 'With Kinsey it was much more from the more outside in,' she says. 'I'd never worked that way before. She's a very different body type than I am. There were wigs and prosthetics and contact lenses and eyebrows and fat suits'I gained a lot of weight for the role. And then P.S. was so much more psychologically and emotionally . . .thick.'
Given that she and Topher Grace had no time for rehearsals, their chemistry is astonishingly good. Linney says they clicked right away. 'There were a lot of really wonderful, wonderful actors that read for this part. And then Topher came in, and it all made sense. He brought a whole thing to it that we hadn't seen before. And he made me understand my character better. And thank God. Because this piece would not have worked without that.'
When pressed to specifically describe how she pulled off some of the tougher emotional scenes, she pauses, thinks for a second, then says, 'Acting is very hard to talk about. Because you either sound stupidly pompous or falsely self-deprecating. So I don't quite know how to talk about it without sounding one way or the other. All I can really say is that I did an enormous amount of work to prepare for a movie such as this, and with the help of Topher and Dylan and the crew, what happened just naturally happened.'
Okay, but what about her life outside of work, her hobbies' She laughs and says, 'It's horrible to refer to life as a hobby! I spend as much time as I can with family. I read a lot.' She pauses. 'But . . .it has been an unusually busy few years. Really busy. Unhealthily busy. I'm aware of that. But it's also been the best three or four years that I've had. Every project that I've had as been enormously satisfying.'
Without missing a beat she cites off recent reads: 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which I loved, Middlesex, which I've loved, Savage Beauty is a fantastic biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay. I picked up The Catcher in the Rye, which I hadn't read since high school, because I barely remember it, so I thought I should read it again. I'm reading An Equal Music right now, which is really good . . .Oh! And Three Junes! Loved it, loved it, loved it!'
Not only well read, and prolific on the screen, Linney is also one of the few A-list actors that crossover from theater to film . . . and back again. 'I just make a point to keep it that way,' she says. 'It is hard to go back and forth. Whichever one you're comfortable in feels really good, and the other one is terrifying.' She laughs again. 'They're so different, and they require doing completely different things. And if you're out of shape doing one, you're that much more nervous about it when you get back to it. So I have a very strong rule with myself about doing a play every other season. Even that, quite frankly, isn't really enough.'
Her successful film career is still a surprise to her. 'I didn't know what to expect, to be honest with you. It's far more than I ever thought it would be. Particularly film. I just never expected it. And I love it. It took me a while to get used to it, and was I very intimidated at first, but it really is the great surprise of my life.'
Inevitably, given the plot of P.S., she's asked what she thinks of relationships between older women and younger men. 'Everybody makes such a big deal about it, but I keep saying, look it's been around forever. It'll be around forever. It just so happens that it's en vogue at the moment.' She jokingly pronounces 'en vogue' with an exaggerated accent.
She's asked if women can get away with it more than men. Looking downright aghast, she backs away from the table in mock-outrage. 'I beg your pardon' I beg your pardon' Like older men have not got away with dating younger women' What are you talking about'' She laughs, loudly, when the question persists. 'What are you talking about' That's been the standard. Forever! Even in movies. Hello, Michael Douglass/Gwyneth Paltrow' In the commercial movies, the woman is always 20 years younger than the man. Always.'
Still a little miffed'it's not clear whether jokingly or not'she continues. 'I mean, that's so interesting that you ask that, because people are so used to seeing [older men with younger women] that they see that as the norm. It's like when you saw Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt with that woman who was his own age. People were shocked! I mean, guess what' Guess what'' She looks around the room, incredulous. 'I mean, am I wrong' That's so interesting. I think that's so funny.'
P.S. has just one sex scene'a good one'and it's refreshingly un-Hollywood. 'I never thought that I would ever think or say this sentence: 'I'm really proud of that sex scene.' But I really am. I think it's a really interesting scene. For a number of reasons. There's no nudity. And yet it's extremely intense and sexual and erotic, without any nudity. It's filmed in real-time, which is very unusual. But what I love about it is that it comes so early, which is such a shock'and then you learn so much about both of them, while watching them. You watch them go through all of these emotions, coming together, you learn so much. And consequently it's an effective scene. It does something to the story. It impacts the story and it educates the audience about things that you didn't think you'd learn while watching a scene like that.'
And with that, she gets back to work.
JeffWilser@TheCinemaSource.com
