Mira Sorvino: the hot-stepper who dances rings around the hard roles

Interview, Oct, 2002 by Tim Blake Nelson

An Oscar-winner in her twenties, now producing films as well as starring in them, Mira Sorvino could be considered an overachiever, especially when you throw in her B.A. from Harvard and her snagging of Hollywood hunk du jour Olivier Martinez. But overachievers rarely manage to make their work look so fun. Or interviews, as Sorvino's shop talk with Tim Blake Nelson, her director in this month's The Grey Zone, makes clear.

TIM BLAKE NELSON: Hi, Mira.

MIRA SORVINO: Hi, Tim.

TN: The guys at Interview asked me to ask you about L.A., so let's do that first.

MS: [laughs] OK.

TN: You grew up and went to school on the East Coast--why have you chosen to live in Los Angeles?

MS: It was sort of a random thing. I was renting a house out in Malibu for the summer, and I saw a place that was on the market and fell in love with it. I had been looking for a New York apartment but I said, "Why not give L.A. a go?"

TN: I have always been scared of Los Angeles because it's hard to break out of the entertainment community. It's easier in New York, I've found, to have friends who don't do what you do. Have you been able to find that sort of community in Los Angeles?

MS: The good thing about living in Malibu is that you do escape that ever present feeling in Hollywood, the feeling that this is the town that makes all the product that's on the billboards. Still, it is a very insular town in terms of interests.

TN: OK. You really launched your career as an actor with phenomenal success, winning acclaim and awards for your performance in Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite [1995]. How do you feel you've evolved as an actor, and as a person since such an auspicious start at such a young age?

MS: Recently, I have learned to pare down what I do and still be effective and strong in a role. When I was younger I don't think I had a lot of self-confidence without the carapace of a character around me. As a person, as my grandmother used to say, we're all works in progress. I try to become more humble and more myself with every year. I think there was a while when I got famous where I was so confused and my head was spinning and now all of that noise has kind of quieted down, and I feel like I know who I am again, maybe more than before.

TN: You recently had two experiences as a producer, one developing a Holocaust film that ultimately wasn't made, and the other with Griffin Dunne for his successful indie Lisa Picard is Famous. What drew you to producing and what lessons have you gained from these experiences?

MS: Actually, I was associate producer of the first film I was ever in, Amongst Friends [1993]. I had started off, before I ever got an acting job, working at Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions as a reader. I was always interested in that side of the camera. Working on Lisa Picard, I so appreciated the actors' enthusiasm and energy. I gained a new understanding of how seamless a piece of the production an actor has to be, and how every element of a film is important. It gave me a sense of my place in the whole as an actor, something I'd not been as aware of before. I think it's helped me streamline my work.

TN: Now, Mira, how do you choose a role?

MS: I used to choose more randomly. Now I take the responsibility of choosing more seriously because it becomes an indelible part of your body of work. Something has to sing to me. That was what happened when I read The Grey Zone.

TN: Maybe you should describe the film.

MS: To me, it's about what people will do when confronted with impossible choices, what people will live for and die for, and how ordinary people deal with extraordinary circumstances. My character's a Polish-Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz. She's working at the Union Munitions factory, and she's smuggling gunpowder to the men who work in the crematoria, to help them stage a revolt. She knows that this may cost her enormously, and she has to face the consequences when that is put to the test.

TN: When I first met you for The Grey Zone, I was struck immediately, as anyone who meets you is, by how bright you are, and I wondered how it would affect your work. Would you say that your head or your emotions lead you when you're creating a role?

MS: It's a combination. I use my analytical side to do the research and the reading, but the bulk of the work is kind of nonverbal and feeling-ish. But you can't take the head away; it's on your shoulders. I think it's about finding the right control--you cannot let the head put the brakes on too much of the runaway horses of the emotional instrument, but you also can't let them go out of control or become self-indulgent because they're at the service of the scene. It's like playing a child's game of hot or cold.

Tim Blake Nelson directed The Grey Zone, which opens this month, and stars in the upcoming Holes, A Foreign Affair and Max & Grace. Opposite: Mira Sorvino wears a dress by RALPH LAUREN COLLECTION. Shoes by CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN. Fragrance: RALPH LAUREN GLAMOUROUS. Styling: L'WREN SCOTT. Hair and makeup: D. GAREN TOLKIN/Fred Segal Beauty/Kerastase. Special thanks: SMASHBOX, L.A. For fashion and photo details see page 195.