Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
Juliette Lewis hasn't changed a bit since we were first bowled over by her in such roles as her Oscar-nominated turn in CAPE FEAR or in such memorable parts as those in NATURAL BORN KILLERS, KALIFORNIA, ROMEO IS BLEEDING, WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE, MIXED NUTS, STRANGE DAYS, FROM DUSK 'TIL DAWN, and THE WAY OF THE GUN. She's still that skinny, adorable kid (okay, she's 37 years old, but she hasn't aged a day since she turned 25) that always added a slice of weird energy to any role she inhabited.
In the last 10 years, Lewis has been working less frequently, choosing instead to focus on her music career, both with her band The Licks and without. I saw her a couple summers ago play with The Licks and Lollapalooza, and she rocked like an iron kiss.vShe's been slowly and steadily working her way back into film acting with key roles in such films as Mira Nair's HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS, STARSKY & HUTCH, CATCH AND RELEASE, THE SWITCH, and most memorably in Drew Barrymore's directing debut WHIP IT, which got royally overlooked last year for no damn good reason. But not until I saw Lewis as Roseanna Perry in director Tony Goldwyn's conviction did I truly see her back at full strength as an actress. Her transformation in the trashiest of trailer trash is utterly complete and magnificently terrifying. She's like watching mental illness take human form. The film is solid as well, but Lewis will steal a big piece of your soul when you see her in action.
The evening before our sit-down interview, she and Betty Anne Waters (the subject of CONVICTION, who is played by Hilary Swank in the film) joined me for a post-screening Q&A, where Juliet kind of stole the show with her charm, wit, and legs. With this in mind, her comments at the beginning of our talk might make more sense. Please enjoy my chat with the comeback queen, Juliette Lewis…
Capone: Hello again.
Juliette Lewis: Hey, Steve! We’re like old friends now.
Capone: It’s like coming home. I thought that went pretty well last night.
JL: It did.
Capone: I thought the questions from the audience were really good.
JL: Oh, they were so astute and smart. Once I figured out who the audience was made up of, I knew where a lot of them were coming from. But there is a lot to bite onto in this film, a lot of questions.
Capone: If I cover some of the same stuff we covered last night, I apologize. Obviously I wasn’t recording.
JL: I don’t mind, sure.
Capone: Talk about how this part came to you and your first exposure to this character.
JL: Well I was really excited, because it was something so intensely dramatic, and I’m just inching my way into film again. Like I said before it had been five years and I hadn’t made a movie deliberately. I started a whole other career as an independent musician and so I was ready. I was ready to go, “Oh I remember that other thing that I love,” and it started with the Drew Barrymore offer WHIP IT, her directorial debut and then from there I did Mark Ruffalo’s directorial debut as well with a movie called SYMPATHY FOR DELICIOUS, with Laura Linney and Orlando Bloom, and that went to the Sundance Film Festival. Then I did a couple of comedies this year, one with Jennifer Aniston [THE SWITCH], and then another one that’s coming.
So this role, you look at it and you go “Okay, let me consider it.” It gave me an opportunity to do something I had never done before and that was play all this complexity and these transitions in such a short period of time and completely transform. The transformation is what hooked me. The fact that you meet her when she’s 25 on the witness stand and then 18 years later. What excited be was the life she led within that time and meeting her again with all of that damage and the lies upon lies, and then the transformation visually, because wanted to lose myself completely.
So that’s what excited me; I had never seen a role so much where I could shed everything about myself and create a completely different character. So that was for starters just purely on the script, and then the script itself was a really great script with a really great, compelling story. Then when you hear it’s all true, you just can’t believe it and then you are a part of something bigger than yourself; you're sort of the power of cinema to shed light on things that happen in our world both positive and negative. That’s exciting. And then the cast involved, I was just salivating. Sam Rockwell is a favorite of mine. Hillary Swank, Melissa Leo, and then of course Minnie Driver, so I was really excited to be on this team.
Capone: I think the word you used last night was that you wanted to be unrecognizable. Because people do recognize you, I think it’s fair to say. And in your return to film, you were okay to not just to be unrecognizable, but to be so in kind of a hideous in a way?
JL: Oh, I know I scared a few people with NATURAL BORN KILLERS, but that was broad compared to this. This is the person you see who you don’t want to stand next to, who is on the street corner or who is standing in line….
Capone: I’ve seen people like that in grocery stores.
JL: Yeah! Where you know they are somehow functioning in society, but they are unpredictable and unsettling, there’s an energy there. It’s a frequency, and I wanted to capture that and I wasn’t kidding when I said, “I wanted to create something so strongly you could almost smell her space,” like she never leaves that small space and it comes from self-hatred. Do you know what I mean? Doing some bad things, but ultimately she’s self-hating, and she doesn’t take care of herself. She just spins a web of lies and drinks her wine to escape. You see all of that in that one scene. I also love that you are entering her world. That had an impact, rather than if she came to them in the office.
Capone: It is quite the funhouse. She does and she’s breaking down crying. She’s watching her soaps and she’s drinking wine, but the strangest transformation, I think the one that gets the biggest reaction is when suddenly she knows what a statute of limitations is, and they even comment on it in the movie about her sudden clarity when she realizes that she could be brought up on perjury charges. What did you think about her at that moment? It seems like she sobered up really fast when they asked for a signature on that deposition.
JL: It’s one of my favorite parts, as well, because you can see it in junkies. You can see it in junkies, you can see it in “crazy people,” that somewhere that soul still knows what they are doing, and they're hiding behind a mask of emotions or insanity sometimes. Then there are other people who are altogether gone, but I love that. It reminds me of a junkie, because you could have somebody crying and explaining, but they have enough sense to call so and so and get to the street corner and round up the money and to manipulate somebody to get the money to do the thing. They know what they are doing. But no, that was intense, and it ultimately what’s selfish and disgusting about her and the true story is she did not sign the paper.
Capone: Right, you said that last night.
JL: Her daughter ended up testifying about her lying. Isn’t that wild? And I talked to Barry Scheck, because Betty Anne wasn’t on set when I was there. Barry Scheck would tell me stories of how she would call up drunk and she would keep flip-flopping. She drove them nuts, but it shows what a destructive individual she was.
Capone: Do you find it more interesting to play characters that are damaged in some way rather than someone living a typical suburban lifestyle, for example?
JL: I could get mildly defensive on this point, because I know what you are asking, but you are identified with the films you have done that are successful, and so my most successful movies were NATURAL BORN KILLERS, KALIFORNIA, which became this little cult classic, WHAT’S EATING GILBERT GRAPE. The a Woody Allen movie that was good or that was well received.
Capone: HUSBANDS AND WIVES?
JL: Yeah and then CAPE FEAR. But like after NATURAL BORN KILLERS I did a Nora Ephron comedy with Steve Martin and Adam Sandler [MIXED NUTS], and nobody saw it. So it’s sort of like if had that become a major hit, it would have then been this genius move, because it was something completely different than a Mallory Knox [her character in NATURAL BORN KILLERS], I was a pregnant brash girlfriend to Anthony LaPaglia.
Capone: I’m certainly not implying that’s all you do.
JL: No, no, no, but you’re not the first to say it either.
Capone: Because I also wanted to talk about things like WHIP IT, which you’re playing the strongest person you might have ever played before, and I just wondered if you had found those damaged characters a little more interesting.
JL: You know what? I think in my heart of hearts for whatever reason I connect with this primal underbelly of existence. Those characters I can play, but I don’t feel I’ve had enough of them to tell you the truth. I would love to do a role like MONSTER or something like that. Whether I’m the daughter in CAPE FEAR or a girlfriend, I’m really looking for that conflict, because I know we are all filled with contradictions and conflicts. It’s never what you see. There’s always what you conceal and what you reveal, and that’s the exciting thing about acting for me, so “damaged,” no, I’m not looking solely for that. That could be one color.
Capone: Yeah. You said you took a few years off to focus on the music. Have you had to work to get back in people’s sights again?
JL: Absolutely. I was going to make a joke and go “I took time off to focus on music and not in the Joaquin Phoenix sense.” I actually made records.
Capone: Yes you did. As I told you yesterday, I saw you play at Lollapalooza and I got up early to make sure that I saw you.
JL: Very nice.
Capone: Talk a little bit about inching your way back into film again.
JL: This business is a wild thing, and you become really grateful for your opportunities and you become, of course, humbled, but at the same time you have to maintain a confidence of sorts in what you have to offer that maybe somebody else doesn’t, because it’s all so competitive, and it’s how you could even do what you do. You have to feel you have something to give, so with that said, that’s why I’m saying it’s really about the collaboration and more now, I’m in my mid-30s and I feel like I can follow those words of “Enjoy the experience” with this. The things people are saying about how they are receiving my performance or mentioning a possible nomination, that’s all really mind-blowingly flattering and makes me nervous, so then I really have to remind myself--because it is a hype business--but really remind myself I know what I think I achieved in doing the role and working with Tony and everyone involved, and that was a very special experience.
Capone: Being in Drew’s movie, that was a pretty meaty supporting part, very memorable and just really fun. I love that movie to death.
JL: Yeah, you and me both.
Capone: And what you did and what Kristen [Wiig] did is just exceptional. Was that the first one you did on your comeback?
JL: Thank you. That was the first thing back in five years, the first thing back, and I rode skates and trained for two months and went into sot of “Derby Bootcamp.” There was a lot of incredible energy on that set led by Drew. I’m not going to do all supporting roles. For me, if integral to the story and really gives me something to chew on and make special in a way, I'll take it. What I refuse to do is something forgettable. I’m not saying, everything I’ve done is memorable, because that’s not the case. That’s the other thing in this business, you can’t call the shots and the outcome of things. You can have a lot of people who fell in love with the project, and everyone’s hearts are in it and it just doesn’t go anywhere. That’s the disheartening thing sometimes.
Capone: I know you are in DUE DATE, which is coming out in a little while.
JL: November.
Capone: Who do you play in that, because I haven’t seen you in the trailers yet. Are you allowed to say?
JL: There’s this one little montage-y part of the trailer and there’s a snippet of him and [director] Todd Phillips. He’s actually in the scene with me for a second. It’s like “Oh, is that me?” That’s a proper cameo, in that it’s one scene and I got to work with my favorite comedian, Zach Galifanakis, who was my favorite. Before that I was like “What? My scene is with Zach?” I always YouTube him and watch his stand up. And then Robert Downey, of course, to work with an old friend since our bootcamp in NATURAL BORN KILLERS, that was really fun for me.
I play a pot dealer. I’m sort of the surprise in that Todd just called me out of the blue and was like “Hey, I think I have this part I really want you to play.” I’ve never said no to him, but you are especially not going to be saying no now that he made the world’s biggest comedy in the universe [THE HANGOVER]. It’s a really good, funny script. You are going to die. It had me laughing out loud in my hotel room.
Capone: You mentioned the Mark Ruffalo film. Is that coming out? Is anything going on with that?
JL: That’s one of those things.
Capone: I remember reading about it at Sundance.
JL: It won the [Special Jury Prize-Dramatic] award. Those are one of those little movies. I don’t know if it will ever come out or if it will be on DVD. I don’t know if there’s a release for it.
Capone: Okay. Excellent.
JL: Okay, cool.
Capone: Thanks a lot.
JL: Thank you.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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