Famke Janssen

Interview By: Dan Deevy

DanDeevy@TheCinemaSource.com

Defying the stereo type is pretty much what Famke Janssen has been doing since the beginning of her career. Never satisfied with being labeled as one of the ‘pretty’ girls, she was always on the look out for non-glamour projects that could really showcase her talent as an actress not just another pretty face on a perfect body.

Last year Janssen starred opposite Chris Eigeman in the indie feature film, The Treatment; which walked away from the Tribeca Film Festival having won the award for ‘Best Made in New York Narrative Feature.’ In addition to the award and the accolades, the film also brought a new wonderful friendship into her life that eventually led to her starring role in Turn the River.

“Chris [Eigeman] and I became really good friends on The Treatment,’ she begins. ‘It was great. We just got along really well and had a good chemistry. Then he went on to write this thing and I guess he wrote it with me in mind and presented it to me one night at Nobu; a very different setting than the grittiness of the movie where it takes place,’ she chuckles. ‘And he said this is for you. So I read it and thought it was fantastic. I mean it’s great to be offered a lead in a film especially as a woman. Especially women as we get older the parts become more scarce, and it’s such a great part! It’s gritty and dirty and complicated and fantastic! I’m very happy with it.”

One of the main character points for Famke’s Kailey is that she is one of the most talented pool players around, so naturally she had to spend a lot of time learning the ins and outs of shooting pool. But now that filming is finished, the actress finds that in her real life she’s actually scared to play!

“I’m now intimidated by pool,” she admits. “I had this moment while we were shooting where for whatever reason, it sounds so hokey I really don’t even like to say it but it was almost as if I channeled the character and the pool part of it. I had a pool instructor who taught me how to

play pool for the part but some of the shots I have to make in the film are even by the pros standards really difficult shots that you can’t just make on command every single time. I mean you try, but one of the guys who tried to make the last shot that I make in the film, he was about a half a foot off of where he was supposed to be and I made it in the first take when we set up for it.”

It turns out that this burst of luck was beneficial not just for her, but for the entire shooting of the film as a whole.

“We didn’t have much time for anything because we shot it in 21 days,’ she explains. “All the pool stuff we shot in the first week. The pool hall was in Brooklyn with no air conditioning in the 110 degree summer weather hence the sweaty look. There was just no time to waste or practice and for whatever reason when the camera was rolling I could play pool. And I could play it really well. And so now unless you put a camera on my face I’m really nervous that I’m just not gonna make the shots anymore.”

Exactly how or why she was able to pull this off still eludes the actress and while she is very conscious of guarding against sounding too ethereal about the whole thing she does offer thought.

“There’s something magical about movie making. It’s hard to express and difficult to talk about but there’s something about the whole process of filmmaking that is such that you wait and you hope for the magical moments while you’re shooting and this was one of those things and we really needed it because like I said no money, no time, no budget, no nothing so thank God for the miracle moments that happened where I could play pool under the pressure that we had.”

Famke is the first to stand up and talk about the value of truly independent films in the market place and how influential it has been in her career thus far.

“It’s great because if I only relied on being in studio big budget films I would never have

the career that I’ve enjoyed to date,” she says. “Just because I get cast in specific very different types of parts in studio films than I’ve been able to play in the independents. What I mostly do is with the sort of name recognizability that you get from being in movies like the X-Men films I then go and they can finance a little indie on my name and I get to play the grittier, more interesting, more complex characters and leads versus little supporting parts or something.”

No stranger to support parts is the highly animated Rip Torn, Famke’s on screen mentor and pool hustling expert, Mr. Quinette.

“He’s great, he’s a character,’ she laughs. “Every single time I watch the movie he just makes me laugh because his delivery is so unique only he can say the lines the way he says them and I don’t think he has any idea how odd and funny and sort of unique and weird they are.”

When you see the movie you’ll see that Rip Torn is just the type of guy you could imagine having a lot of fun with hanging out at your local Billiards Bar but unfortunately during filming that wasn’t so much the cast for anyone.

“I’m imagining under normal circumstances it would be but we had no a/c and we were shooting in 110 degree weather in the summer in New York so we left the pool hall at any given moment of the day to then experience the summer outside but at least there was some sort of air a little bit versus inside the pool hall.”

So wile they may not have been spending much time inside the pool hall the pair definitely became friends and admirers of each others work.

Next up for Famke is a role in a film called The Chameleon which films in Baton Rogue Louisiana a place that she’s never been to before. “Its based on a true story,” she begins. “I play an FBI agent, the head of missing children at the FBI, who becomes obsessed with a case where a kid took on the identity of a missing child and for her own personal reasons because of things that have happened in the past

that she’s never been able to deal with she’s become really obsessed with this case to prove that this kid is not who he claims he is. It’s fictionalized but based on a true story.”

Whether it’s huge blockbuster films or a small quiet independents Famke Janssen is always a pleasure to watch and as she grows as a performer she’s just getting better and better so keep watching!