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difficult for me to find roles. Many times I heard that I seemed "too mature" to play my age range. Constant predictions from directors and producers were that “one day things would click” . . . but I wasn’t right for the role in the meantime. What type of roles do you prefer? . . . Searching for roles in my 20s, I felt that a very large number of the female characters I was encountering on the written page were daft and one dimensional, insipid bimbo renderings. I was a bit of a high brow when it came to selecting roles, even when choice wasn’t an option, and livelihood and paying rent were really all that mattered. Without . . . credentials or experience, I moaned and groaned about the poor quality of material. My eyes and ears and heart were open for something I'd never seen or heard or felt before, for groundbreaking work that would take me on a new and exciting journey. . . . I was always on the hunt for super-fine films, fresh films that opened my mind to the possibility of considering life in other ways. I wanted to be in the kind of movies I was willing to pay to see, movies where the people on the screen were real and for whom I felt compassion, movies that were brutally honest. I was looking for characters who were utterly human. This is how I continue to choose my roles. What awakens your spirit? What stretches your mind? What moves your soul? When I read a script, I want to be moved from my everyday rigidity, ennui, complacency, familiarity, and be transported, invited to new places, per spective, and ideas. I look for authentic, unique voices in directors and writers . . . who contribute to social consciousness, not social chaos. . . . This is the driving force in my career—to align myself with passionate storytellers. There are times I have made choices by the balance in my bank account and felt malnourished as a result. [Sometimes] my path has been smooth sailing, sometimes treacherous, sometimes mis leading, sometimes precarious, shaky and slippery, and at times downright ominous and menacing. But the one thing that has remained dependable and steadfast is my reason for doing what I do. I relish any opportunity I can find to investigate what it means to be human. In my opinion, next to music, movies are the most influential important medium in the world. They are primers for how to live, how to love, how to think. . . . Stories change the world. It’s lamentable, but there is a dearth of good stories about women, women viewed in three dimensions with complexities and inconsistencies and contradictions. I look for female characters in which I can believe. . . . Whether I love her or hate her, there is never a lukewarm response to a role, and always there is a desire to defend why she is the way she is. Has any one actor/actress been your role model? Meryl Streep, Annette Benning, Diane Weist, early Faye Dunaway have always moved me; among my contemporaries, Cate Blanchett, Cate Winslet, Samantha Morton, Juliet Binoche. They are contin ual risk-takers, actresses who conduct themselves with grace, mystery, elegance, and great intelli gence. How do your approach new roles? It’s contingent upon a number of things: the director, my scene partner and his/her methods, and my knowledge of the character's experience. I do tend to work from the outside in. Hair, makeup, and wardrobe are most ponderous and critical in the beginning stages of development. I have to look in Vera Farmiga, studio portrait
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