Eva Mendes

Interview By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

If there's any woman that clearly enjoys glamming it up on the silver screen, it's Eva Mendes. She's glammed it up for Revlon, Calvin Klein, Maxim, Flaunt, Italian Vogue, and even PETA.

She has also always managed to look glamorous on film in movies ranging from Training Day to 2 Fast 2 Furious to Hitch to Ghost Rider to The Women. Now Mendes's latest glam role is as bombshell Sand Serif in the film adaptation of the 1940's comic strip The Spirit, directed by none other than former graphic novel artist turned filmmaker Frank Miller.

Like Miller's first film effort Sin City, The Spirit is an ultra-stylized film noir world. We asked the 34 year-old actress how she felt being a part of a pulpy comic book world.

'I thought I was pretty subtle, don't you think' No, I'm just kidding'' Eva replies, 'Well, what I just loved about this was that my character was created in 1940's, so I had this real dame broad kind of appeal to the character.'

'And she was so over-the-top and fantastical,' she continues, 'And she has some of the best lines in the movies, with 'Shut up and bleed!' being one of my favorites. But, strangely, I've used it since. So, it was just so collaborative and amazing.'

One of the film's highlights is the outlandish mix of post-modern and 1940's-style costumes many of the characters sport. Eva, in particular, who plays the classic bombshell dame, says she donning that persona was an absolute delight for her because of the symbolization behind her character's seemingly glamorous persona.

'It was a dream for me to get so wrapped into this character,' she says, 'You know, how many times am I going to play a woman who's been married 14 times and killed almost all her husbands and play a jewel thief. The interesting, fun part for me was definitely putting on the glamour and wearing the clothes, but because it was rooted, the core of this woman was pain and we can superficially look at it and say, oh, God, she's a diamond, a diamond thief, how superficial, diamonds, yada, yada, yada.'

'But when I realized that symbolized, because of her past and not having anything be stable in her life, that a diamond is a rock and a rock symbolizes stability and it's so solid,' Mendes adds, 'Once I found that foundation, then it made me realize where she was coming from. So I could go big and be as ridiculous as I wanted to be, whether that was in hairstyle or in action or in wardrobe, as long as I was rooted in that major need to fill that void. So I had a fantastic time and, again, it was from one of my favorite periods, when women were dames and broads. They weren't afraid to speak their minds and throw out a curse word every now and then, so it was fun for me, definitely, to say the least.'

Despite being known in Hollywood for so many sex symbol roles, Mendes says she felt no hesitation or qualms whatsoever to play a character who blatantly flaunts her sexuality as a weapon.

'Well, I think that the point here for me is that if I just felt like an accessory, first of all, I wouldn't have done the film,' she insists, 'And then, if I would had been pressured to do it for whatever reason, I would have felt really shitty about myself just flaunting it without it having a foundation. But the point is that my character uses everything she has as a woman to get what she wants. So, in the reveal when actually I show my backside, you know, he's asking for it.'

'You know, I'm in a towel, he says, how's about your head, oh, really, you know'' she adds, 'So she's a smart ass who's going get what she wants and she got out of the arrest by using her body in that situation. So, if there were no brains behind the body, I would have major qualms with it. But she's so kick-ass in every way. She's such a smart dame that, yeah, part of her sexuality, part of getting what she wants is turning up the sex, so I had no problem with it in that for this film.'