Eva Amurri

Spotlight By: Andrea Tuccillo
AndreaTuccillo@TheCinemaSource.com

Eva Amurri was born to act. Literally. Her mother is Susan Sarandon and her father is Italian director Franco Amurri so it seems only natural that she gravitated towards films. What sets her apart from other Hollywood offspring is that she prefers to forge her own path. She took her time breaking into the acting biz, opting to go to college before jumping into acting full-time. Now, with a degree from Brown University, Amurri is ready to take on Hollywood. With no less than four movies coming out this year alone, this celebrity daughter is well on her way to a successful career that's all her own.

So far, Amurri might best be known for playing the wild child amongst a school of devout Christians in the 2004 comedy Saved!. Now in her new film, The Life Before Her Eyes, she's playing the devout Christian. She plays Maureen, the conservative best friend of Evan Rachel Wood's rebellious character, Diana. The character was a stretch for the more outgoing Amurri, but she welcomed the challenge.

'That was the appeal to me, actually,' she says. 'At the time [when I read the script] I was working on this movie called The Education of Charlie Banks and I was playing a really different character, like totally promiscuous, party girl, Senator's daughter. It was a period piece; it was all this stuff going on. And I read the script and here was this girl, this born-again Christian virgin, good girl, who at the same time was really sweet and open-minded in order to be there for her friend and I thought, God what a great character. Very introverted. It was acting that I hadn't done before and it was scary, but I put trust in [director] Vadim [Perelman] and in myself and we got it to the place where it needed to seem realistic.'

So what's more fun' Playing the good girl or the bad girl' 'Playing the whore, of course!' Amurri says. 'It's so fun to play the extremes. I think that if Maureen was even more extreme in her ways it would have been that same idea. Extremes are the most fun to play because you can really put a ton of energy and imagination and there isn't this place where it's getting a little close to yourself where you have to kind of make sure you draw the line between self and character. It's so extreme that you think you can really go for it. It's much scarier to play things that are closer to you, I think.'

The film itself blurs the lines between reality and imagination as it switches between two different timelines. One focuses on the teenage girls' friendship and the events leading up to a horrific school shooting. The other follows a now-adult Diana (Uma Thurman) and shows how that fateful day completely changed the course of her life. However, nothing may be what it seems. Amurri believes there can be many interpretations of what the film really is about.

'I think that as long as people can come up with varying answers, there isn't one way,' she says. 'I think that if we wanted to force the fact that there was one way there would have been a very specific ending. For example, I have the way I think of it which I think when you're acting you kind of have to decide what happens for yourself to make it easier to act it, but we shot two alternate endings and the second one as far as I know is going to end up on the DVD. It's completely different and much more controversial.'

Although she won't say specifically what her own interpretation of the film was, she does admit that things become clearer the more times you watch it. 'When you go back and see it a second time there are things that are very, very specific'from the set dressings to our mannerisms, words or cues that really are exact clues, red herrings basically, and if you follow them you know what happens before it does,' she says. 'You notice more and more. It's a cool movie to see more than once because you notice things even within the first five minutes that you can relate to the ending.'

While figuring out the film's puzzles is a work-out for the audience, Amurri found that shooting some of the more demanding scenes was particularly taxing for her as an actress. 'It was very emotionally draining,' she says. 'Luckily during the shoot we had these extremes of emotion, we had the whole bathroom scene which we shot over three days which was really emotionally draining and then we had these other scenes which were really light and goofy and us just being young girls together which was really fun but it was just a weird balance of trying to be focused the whole the day and going home and trying to release a little bit.'

Portraying the close bond between the two friends was a key element to the story. Amurri says that both her and Wood were more like each other's characters in real life, so they had to work at finding a way to connect to their characters as well as each other. To capture some candid moments between the two, Perelman would sometimes roll the camera without telling them. It's this authenticity that Amurri hopes audiences will respond to. 'I think that people can really relate to it emotionally and can certainly relate to the friendship that it promotes and exhibits,' she says. 'It's definitely a friendship that because of their opposite personalities they're able to connect regardless and they're able to be there for each other regardless and it's either something people have experienced as a young person or that they wanted to experience as a young person. And I think that in the end here are these girls who are at the brink of finding out who they are and who are right about to hit the most exciting period of their lives and they don't get that chance. I think that's something people can really relate to especially when you feel lost or you're thinking to yourself why am I doing this or why am I doing that and you think what about those people who don't get that opportunity to make mistakes.'

She also believes that Perelman made the decision not to put a time-stamp on the movie for a reason. Both time periods feel exactly the same. 'He basically makes stories that are the anti-fairytale,' she says. 'The House of Sand and Fog was like that and this movie is certainly like that and I think with fairytales it's the same thing, you want to be able to tell it forever and have it be relatable so I think that was probably a very conscious choice. I can definitely see him making a choice like that.'

In addition to The Life Before Her Eyes, Amurri's other three movies coming out this year are The Education of Charlie Banks, Animals, and Middle of Nowhere. She's particularly excited about Charlie Banks, which co-stars Jason Ritter and Jesse Eisenberg and was directed by Fred Durst (yes, that Fred Durst). 'He broke all kinds of stereotypes in my mind,' she says of Durst. 'He was a focused, dedicated director and he made a great film. It's actually one of my favorite things I've done so far.'

If her role in The Life Before Her Eyes is any indication, there are many great things from Eva Amurri still come.