Rachel Weisz - Brief Article - Interview

Interview, June, 2001 by Ted Loos

FROM WWII TO ANCIENT EGYPT TO HOLLY WOOD'S A-LIST

Rachel Weisz has a special knack for getting our attention-as numerous devoted websites will attest--and then keeping it with her intelligent (and varied) performances. For someone with such a presence out in cyberspace, the raven-haired Brit acts mighty down-to-earth. Weisz often displays a self-deprecating laugh, but this modesty can't mask the fact that 2001 is turning out to be her year. So far she's anchored the epic action film Enemy at the Gates, the dark indie Beautiful Creatures, and the just released mega-sequel The Mummy Returns. Next up: The Cambridge grad romances Oxford lad Hugh Grant in the adaptation of Nick Hornby's About a Boy. Sounds edifying, indeed. So what's her idea of a good time? "I'm a people person, really," says Weisz, 30, who lives in London. "I just see my friends, go to the pub and just talk and talk and talk." So let's talk.

TED LOOS: Flipping through your dossier. I came across something one doesn't typically find on an action star's resume: Cambridge University.

RACHEL WEISZ: It was the best three years of my life in lots of respects--completely idyllic. I would just lie by the river and drink wine and read poems. It was such a luxury. I specialized in Henry James' ghost stories, like 'The Turn of the Screw" and "The Aspern Papers." God, I had such a pretentious title for my dissertation. [laughs] Something like "The Pursuit and Flight of Self and Others"!

TL: Sounds pretty heady. Did your studies prepare you for a career in acting?

RW: Not very directly, no. I studied English literature, which is not exactly vocational. I could have become a journalist, I suppose.

TL: So how did you end up on the other side of the tape recorder?

RW: [laughs] When I was at Cambridge I started a theater company called Talking Tongues with another girl. We wrote about eight plays together, and we used to take them to the Edinburgh Festival. We won a Guardian Award [sponsored by the British newspaper], moved to London and I got an agent. Then I slowly and steadily... sold out. [laughs]

TL: Do you really think that you've sold out, or are you just being sarcastic?

RW: Well... it's a mixture. Although if you can be in a successful commercial pic, your presence can help finance smaller, quirkier, weirder, riskier projects, like Beautiful Creatures.

TL: And you're still very much involved in theater. You played the Liz Taylor role in Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer recently.

RW: I did, the year before last in the West End. It was incredible. I think it's the best thing I've ever done.

TL: What was so good about it?

RW: I really got into her character and the poetry. If you really get into the poetry of Williams, he's like Shakespeare. It just sustains you.

TL: What other theater projects have you done recently?

RW: I did, with the same director who did Suddenly Last Summer, Sean Mathias, Design for Living in the West End, which recently opened in New York. Oh god, that was a fun play. We did it extremely sexy.

TL: Probably wasn't that much of a stretch. [laughs] You also played Petula, your character in Beautiful Creatures, extremely sexy. Other than that, though, she doesn't seem to have much in common with your own personality.

RW: Oh God, I hope not! I'm so not a trophy girlfriend type, so Petula was a bit of a journey. I've met a few women like that in my time. There are a few guys I used to know, these pseudo-gangsters from North London, and they had girlfriends like Petula. I kind of based her on them. TL: Quite a different method than the special effects work on The Mummy Returns. RW: Completely. Special effects can be a little draining. When you work with an actor, you get energy off of them, but when you're working in front of a green screen, with just your imagination, you can get a bit tired. But, you know, one mustn't grumble.

TL: "Grumble." That's very English.

RW: [laughs] I know. And I don't think I've actually got a right to grumble. I just can't bear it when actors moan about things, because we've got such great jobs.

TL: That being said, what's been your most moan-worthy experience of late?

RW: There's a very challenging scene in The Mummy Returns--I never thought I'd pull it off. It's a battle between me and Patricia Velazquez. We're in ancient Egypt and dressed in gold bikinis-well, normal bikinis spraypainted gold. We had to learn this Japanese martial arts technique and fight one another with two little tridents. It was very Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. [martial arts sounds] Woosh-woosh-woosh!

TL: Crouching Tiger meets Goldfinger.

RW: Exactly! It's a great, great chick fight. We're done up and we try to kill each other. How fun!

Ted Loos is a New York-based writer.