interview Jennifer Jason Leigh
chatted with Nathaniel R on December 17th, 2007 on the phone

 

continued from page one

Whatever my minor qualms about Margot at the Wedding, there are a couple of elements that I think work like gangbusters. Her sisterly vibe with Nicole Kidman is one of them. I told Jennifer Jason Leigh that their rapport actually reminded me a bit of Julianne Moore and Madeline Stowe's weirdly intimate cackling in Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), a film in which she herself appeared as a multi-tasking sex worker. The sisters are much different in Margot... but there's that same strange spark, a moment of immediately distancing familiarity. You're seeing a history of intimacy that you're not a part of. You recognize it but it's some secret world between them, for their eyes only.

Margot (Nicole Kidman) and Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) share a laugh
and an adolescent memory in Margot at the Wedding (2007)

I don't think it was just my imagination that Jennifer Jason Leigh really sparked to the conversation when it came time to sing Kidman's praises for her performance in the title role. Leigh felt that the intimacy with Nicole was easy. They had a lot of time to rehearse together (two weeks --more than movies usually get) and, as it happily turned out, they had similar working processes "we both come at it from the inside and we're fairly introverted". She went on to characterize Kidman as "incredibly generous. No diva in her at all" and marvelled at the speed with which Kidman would be in and out of the makeup trailer. "She's so fast and authentic and just lovely"

Leigh described acting as a "willingness to believe" and felt that Kidman exemplified this and that acting with her was easy. She reconfirmed something I've heard a lot recently from actors: the better your scene partner, the better your own performance. She also praised the film's production designer for helping them with the intimacy and characters and backstory. Every detail of the house helped. She noted that there would be little things in every drawer, games they might've played as kids together. There was a lot to draw from as actors.

On the topic of sisters, I couldn't resist the lure of her co-stars Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer in A Thousand Acres (1997, pictured) but Jennifer wasn't as forthcoming here. She reminded me that they didn't have a lot of scenes together (true) and perhaps to cool my need for Pfeifferania of any sort, she offered up that she was a fan of her work and that she knew her a little bit personally before filming. This story somehow involved Mare Winningham's house (who played another screen sister to Leigh and won an Oscar nomination for the pairing in Georgia) and Michelle's previous husband but my mind glazed over on the details, lost as I was in memories of impossibly beautiful farm wives.

I was time to wrap up but Jennifer Jason Leigh agreed to answer a few questions from Film Experience Readers.

One anonymous reader wanted to know if it was true that Jennifer was friends with Paul Thomas Anderson and will she work with him in the future? Jennifer replied rather cryptically that that was true but "he knows what he wants". In other words (I presume) he'll call her if he has her in mind for a role.

Kurtis sent along a funny question. "Was it hard for you to not force-feed Christian Bale on the set of The Machinist?" This question caught Jennifer Jason Leigh off guard but it also brought out an unusually lengthy torrent of words. She revealed that she had had nightmares during filming. And that it was hard to look at him. She likened it to seeing a deformed or dying person and the discomfort and confusion about trying to look at them without only seeing this one obvious aspect of them. Jennifer shrugged off my suggestion that she had also gone there (in the television movie The Best Little Girl in the World, 1981, in which she played an anorexic teen) "I didn't go that far...he did this to himself. Intentionally."

Just before the goodbyes, I finally found my way to the indelicate topic of the Oscars, knowing that my awards-mad readers would be after me with pitchforks and torches if I let the chance slip by. What of this long line of snubs, Jennifer? Any thoughts on the Oscars? Philosophical or diplomatic, take your pick, but she felt the word "snubs" indicated that people thought she was deserving which she interprets as a good thing. I reiterated in my awkward way that it indeed was --this was not my night! First Will & Grace and now this?-- and that in Oscar circles she's usually placed at the tippity top of "most overdue" lists with her unusually long line of snubs. She laughed and shrugged it off with a pretty good joke if you ask me "...don't wanna break that streak!"

Jennifer Jason Leigh's eternal Oscar snubbing might not end with her downtrodden sister act as a bride to be in Margot at the Wedding but she can always console herself with numerous critics' awards and her own recently revived career. She'll next appear in Charlie (Adaptation) Kauffman's directorial debut Synecdoche, New York. Phillip Seymour Hoffman stars as a playwright but the true draw for some viewers might just be the delicious actress smorsgabord layed out to devour: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Emily Watson, Hope Davis, Michelle Williams and Dianne Weist. The movie can't arrive soon enough even if Jennifer Jason Leigh's first Oscar nomination continues to take its sweet time coming.

 

-Nathaniel

Discuss this interview @ the blog

Suggested Viewing
Five Essential Leigh Films for your rental queue: Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989), Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994), Georgia (1995) and her triple threat as director, writer, and star of The Anniversary Party (2001)

Related Articles
Margot at the Wedding on Nicole & Jennifer's performance
Oscar Snubs Ten egregiously mistreated actors (...besides Jennifer Jason Leigh)

Previous Interview
Max Von Sydow on Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen and his rich 50+ year acting history in the cinema

 

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