Emily Mortimer: tired of movies where all the explosiveness comes from special effects? Try this actress

Interview, July, 2002 by Graham Fuller

In the most troubling scene in Nicole Holofcener's new film Lovely & Amazing, a neurotic Hollywood actress, vividly played by Emily Mortimer, stands naked in front of the star (Dermot Mulroney) she has just slept with and asks him to describe what he sees. He bemusedly complies, commenting on the asymmetry of her breasts, the bountifulness of her pubic hair and, worst of all for her, the fullness of her upper arms. Although she has taken control of their fleeting tryst, she has also willingly exposed herself to humiliation--characteristic behavior for this ineffably pretty, tender young woman, who is in such need of love she picks up stray dogs.

A rueful meditation on women's lack of self-esteem in a society that sets merciless standards of beauty and professional achievement, Lovely & Amazing also stars Brenda Blethyn as Mortimer's mother (a nervy liposuction patient), Catherine Keener as her sister (a failed artist whose husband cheats on her), and 10-year-old Raven Goodwin (as her overweight black stepsister). Mortimer's own self-exposure in the film reveals a raw courage in the hitherto demure English actress that her previous roles--in the likes of Elizabeth [1998], Scream 3, The Kid and Love's Labour's Lost [all from 2000]--had barely afforded. The Oxford-educated daughter of barrister and Rumpole of the Bailey author John Mortimer, she is poised for stardom. Currently in risk-taking mode, she can next be seen as a leather-clad hitwoman in the upcoming Formula 51.

GRAHAM FULLER: I can imagine a lot of Hollywood actresses would have coveted the part of Elizabeth--who is, after all, a Hollywood actress--in Lovely & Amazing.

How did you wind up getting it?

EMILY MORTIMER: It's because of Brenda Blethyn. We were doing a film [The Sleeping Dictionary, to be released next year] in Malaysia nearly two years ago, and we were sitting by the pool at our hotel one day and she was reading this script. She said, "God, it's the most beautiful script, but I don't know whether to do it, because I have to have liposuction on my stomach. [laughs] Do you think it'd gross people out to see me in my bra and panties?" And I said, "Not at all, and if it's brilliant, you should do it." And she said, "There's this great part for you. I'll tell the director." People often start talking about other projects when they're doing a film together and you're sort of put in this slightly embarrassing position because you don't want to ask too much about it in case it looks like you're angling for a job. I didn't think anything more about it, but Brenda bullied my agents into getting me an audition. In the meantime, I read the script and there was something about it that desperately made me w ant to do it. I eventually went in and read for it, and I remember my boyfriend [actor Alessandro Nivola] came and picked me up somewhere in Beverly Hills and I burst into tears because I thought I'd completely fucked it up. The next thing I knew, Nicole [Holofcener] said she'd like me to do it, but she was terrified that there were going to be two English people in her little L.A. family. So I then went through a huge rigmarole to prove that I could do an American accent.

GF: Did you empathize with your character?

EM: I identified with her extremely, of course, but it didn't feel intense. It wasn't like, 'Oh my God, this is speaking to me in such a big way, and it means so much." And I think that's a testament to Nicole's writing. The dialogue is so brilliantly written that all the preparation you do in terms of going in deep and soul-searching seems almost irrelevant. You've already responded to it immediately in a way that you haven't even really had to think about. It's more in retrospect, when I see the film or think about it, that I feel the agony of Elizabeth more than when I actually played her.

If you're asking about how much of her is like me, I would say a lot, but in a slightly different way. I definitely fluctuate between massive extremes of feeling entitled to happiness and then feeling totally worthless and unentitled. So I understand that confusion. But for her it manifests itself in her feelings about her physicality, and I've never had that anxiety.

GF: After she sleeps with the movie star. Kevin. she asks him to critique her body-- especially the things that embarrass her about it--as she stands naked in front of him. But obviously it's your body that's being described.

EM: Yes, Nicole and I wrote that speech together.

GF: So it was completely tailored to you?

EM: Apart from the line about the big bush, which was always there, though I have to say I did manage to come up with quite a big bush myself. [laughs] So, yeah, apart from that, I had to sit down and tell her all the things I find mortifying about my body. Of course, all women and a lot of men are self-conscious to a certain extent about how they look, but I don't feel like it's one of my pathologies. There are lots of things I am very neurotic about that would've been much more agonizing for me to have dealt with in such a personal, exposed way.