Interview by: Alysa Salzberg
AlysaSalzberg@TheCinemaSource.com

Let's face it: Rebecca Romijn seems to have it pretty sweet. She works with amazing people, takes on challenging and even iconic roles, and has a new puppy, to boot.

She enters the room with this puppy, called Better, in her arms. 'He's still a puppy,' she explains, 'and we're both going through a certain amount of separation anxiety.'

When you think of the recent end of her marriage to John Stamos, you have to wonder whether Better isn't the only source of her separation anxiety. Still, Romijn isn't here to talk about her personal life beyond Better. After all, she's got a lot of movies to discuss.

The most recently released of these is Godsend, in which Romijn plays a loving mother whose young son dies tragically, and then is cloned so that a carbon copy of him can live again. But, as with most sci-fi cautionary tales, things go wrong, and horrible things ensue.

Though Godsend is a science fiction movie, it is, of course, strongly based in fact. So much so that as she and her co-stars read about daily advancements in human cloning while on the set, their perspective started to change. Jokes Romijn, 'We started off making a movie that we thought was sci-fi and then...we're like, is it...sci-fi, or just 'sci'''

Making Godsend was about more than that blurry area between fact and fiction, though ' Romijn also made some friends while on the set. Director had her, Greg Kinnear, and Cameron Bright (who plays the son in the movie) go to the park together, and generally get to know each other well. The required bonding turned quickly into a bonding of choice; between takes, says Romijn, 'we didn't have time to go back to our trailers so we'd just sit in this room together and play games and make up songs and throw stuff at each other, and on the weekends we'd go to movies.'

Romijn describes Bright as a 'great, great kid.' This praise isn't just reserved for him ' Romijn seems to express most things in superlatives, but what's more surprising than hearing such enthusiastic words from what could be a world-weary model/actress, is that her enthusiasm seems genuine.

Of Godsend director Nick Hamm, she says, 'Nick comes from a strong theater background and he's really good at...getting [the movie's small cast] together and on the same page, and setting a really interesting tone for the movie.'

Rebecca's platitudes aren't reserved for the cast members of her most recent project only. For example, of Punisher costar Thomas Jane, she says: He's 'an actor's actor,' who with his extensive preparation for the role 'really set the tone for the whole movie, and...really raised the bar for all of us....I thought he was awesome. I really hope this [movie] does huge things for him.'

Of another of her Punisher co-stars, John Travolta: 'I never even met him until two days ago....I was like, I heard he's a great guy, and it turns out he was.'

Her feelings about working with Robert De Niro on Godsend ultimately go beyond words. 'You pinch yourself for a few days and then you start getting into the work and, you know, he's great, and he's super-mellow, super-low key, really really funny....He was just sort of taking the piss out of the dialogue because a lot of it's sort of melodramatic because it's a thriller, so it was funny ' it was really funny seeing him in rehearsal, and then it was like, I wonder how he's gonna do it when the cameras start rolling, and sure enough the cameras start rolling and it's a totally different game, you know, he starts turning up the gas and it gets hotter and hotter and hotter and when you're playing opposite that it's like, oh my God I can't believe...that I'm experiencing this right now. It's insane.'

One thing Romijn doesn't do in superlatives is complain. The woman is a trooper. Part of this may be due to her attitude towards acting. 'I was kind of a theater geek growing up,' Romijn recalls, 'I did a lot of musical theater and I sang.' But despite these intense beginnings, 'one of my teachers actually sent [me] a paper that I wrote when I was in seventh grade about being an actress, and I['d] totally forgot[ten] that I['d] wanted to be an actress.' Still, for a long time she was hesitant about trying to pursue her dream; 'once I started modeling, there were so many models that wanted to be actresses that I was like so, um, I guess it's pretty clich', and I never...let those words pass through my lips once I started modeling. I just never planned it out. Some of these opportunities just sort of presented themselves to me and I started with MTV.'

As more opportunities for acting roles came her way, 'I sort of started with this 'I've got nothing to lose' attitude, and I didn't at the time. I was like, 'Fine, yeah, I'll go audition for that.''

But this carefree attitude eventually grew more serious. Still, the same combination of intensity and insouciance also comes out when Romijn discusses what it's like to change from one role to another. At first, she describes a role as 'an insulated experience,' and a set like 'a summer camp' ' neither one permanent or lasting. It seems she can change roles and settings as quickly and smoothly as X-Men's Mystique changes forms. But then Romijn adds: 'You become really consumed when you're working on these projects....The first couple days [after a movie's wrapped] I just lay around in bed just to completely decompress because I'm just exhausted, and then it takes like a week to get back to normal.'

This intensity of the last part of her statements comes through in Romijn's work. From the strong, silent Mystique, to Jessie Duncan, the grieved, horrified mother in Godsend, Romijn often calls upon her less bubbly emotions to bring her roles to life. One of the things several critics have remarked upon is how well she conveys heartbroken, despairing sobs and tears in her role in Godsend. Romijn seems to dismiss the challenge of crying scenes at first: 'Once you start crying [in a scene] it's easy to keep on crying.'

Later, though, she elaborates further: 'If I do find myself alone at home sobbing hysterically, which sometimes I do, you know, [I] start studying it because you realize that you might need it someday, as a tool when you're acting. You want to know what it feels like in your body, you want to feel it in your face, you want to know what your face looks like....Crying,' Romijn sums up, 'is very therapeutic. Acting is very therapeutic.' She gives a gentle laugh.

Romijn seems to feel lucky to be where she is, and honored to be playing the roles she's gotten. When X:3 begins shooting, she won't deny that one aspect of getting back into character will be hard: 'I'm not looking forward to donning the blue [Mystique costume]...honestly, that costume is like a work of art. It's a pain in the ass to put on but it is a beautiful costume and I love that character....I'm really proud that I get to be Mystique.'

The comic book movie adaptation genre 'is an exciting genre to be a part of, and it's such a tough crowd to please.' Romijn found this out personally when she went to her first comic book convention a few weeks ago. 'When you do deliver and you make them happy, they're so appreciative....These are all characters that [fans] have been waiting their whole lives to be brought to life. You don't want to let them down.'

It doesn't seem like Romijn will let them down. Her drive has led her to take on numerous roles in an ever-growing body of work. Yet maybe part of the reason she can still remain so positive and not give in to sheer exhaustion is summed up by her thoughts about her chosen profession: 'That's why actors like what they do, because it's fun to play make-believe, I guess, it's just a big game of pretend. But I think...most actors like to connect to their dark sides as well as their light side, and that's the challenge and that's the fun and that's the work.' Hmm...fun and work, light and dark ' acting seems to be a delicate balance of total opposites. Luckily, that kind of thing seems to be right up Rebecca Romijn's alley.

Click Here For Our Review of Godsend.