Posted by Mr. Beaks

Evan Rachel Wood is the anti-Lohan:  a talented young actress who devotes herself to her craft with a ferocity Lindsay reserves for a drunken night out at The Roosevelt.  Since her breakout role two years ago in Catherine Hardwick’s girls-gone-bad saga, Thirteen, Wood has booked six projects, the latest of which, an untitled Julie Taymor musical, she claims is her dream role. 

This week, however, she’s promoting the jet black comedy, Pretty Persuasion (see Tuesday’s interview with the director and writer), in which she plays a conniving, amoral, sexually advanced high school student who levels molestation charges against her English teacher in order to further her burgeoning acting career.  As usual, she turns in some wonderfully nuanced work that will once again draw entreaties from the studios, most of which she will once again decline, unless, as she says below, the role offered does leave her stranded in “conveyer belt”, prefab product. 

Evan was in a particularly giggly mood by the time she got to our roundtable (perhaps excited by the opportunity to speak freely without James Woods at her side dominating the conversation), which made for a lively twenty minute conversation.  Below, she discusses everything from teenage sexuality to the Julie Taymor project to keeping a straight face while James Woods is doing unspeakable things with a Kleenex. 

It’s nice to see you’re playing it safe after Thirteen.

Oh, yeah.  (Laughs.)

How do you compare Kimberly to your role in Thirteen?

Oh, she’s way worse.  At least my character in Thirteen, she wasn’t a bad person, she just wanted to be accepted.  Though, actually, that’s kind of what this character’s doing, too.  They’re both just not getting the love and attention that they need, and so they’re acting out in the only ways they know how.  They both feel alone, and they both… just want to be loved.

Does this one want love, or just fame and fortune?

I think she’s convinced herself that she just wants fame and fortune, but, no, she definitely wants love, and I think you see that at certain moments in the film.  She crumbles a little bit, and you can see that she’s just this scared little girl.  I think she definitely puts up that front of, “No, I don’t care.  I just want to get famous, and it’s all about me.”  But I think deep down that really kind of killed her.

Do you see any of your ex-classmates in Kimberly?

I do.  Very much, actually.  I based it on one specific girl who was exactly like this.  She was older than everybody else, and totally used her sexuality to manipulate everybody so she could get in that Queen Bee position.  Acted like my best friend and, then, had no problem stabbing me in the back, all with a smile on her face.  That’s just the worst kind, so that’s how I wanted to do Kimberly – just thought of her. 

And her name is?

(Laughs.)  She lives at…

High school classmate?

Middle school.

Middle school is so much more savage than high school.

It is!  Why is that?  Middle school is the worst!  At least for me it was such a weird switch from fifth grade, and then you get into sixth and you’re like, “I’m in junior high now”. 

You don’t know why middle school is more savage?

I don’t.  I don’t get it.

Puberty.

Well, that’s true.  Hormones.  (Laughs.)

Do you think this is a fair portrayal of Beverly Hills high school life?

I’ve never been in Beverly Hills High School.  I mean, it’s a pretty fair of just high school in general.  Not every teenager is like that, but you seriously cannot talk to one person that doesn’t know the first and last name of the mean boy or girl at their high school.  You could just point at someone and be like, “Oh, this person made my life a living hell.”  There’s always someone there doing it. 

But is Kimberly the extreme version?

Yeah!  Of course.  Although I really wouldn’t put it past some people to go as far as she did.

Really?  Talk other people into filing a sexual harassment lawsuit, and then—

No, I’m sure it happens all the time.  I’m sure people file sexual harassment lawsuits that are not true.  I don’t know about fifteen year-olds.  That might be a little extreme.

Can you talk about what it was like to have James Woods playing your father?

Oh, my god.  James was… (laughs) pretty interesting.  I have always loved him, and I was so excited about working with him.  I think he’s an amazing actor, and he’s always done constant quality work.  Working with him, we just never knew what was going to come out of his mouth, so keeping a straight face was the hardest thing ever.  We should all get Academy Awards just for managing to stay in the scene with James and not lose it.  And he would know it!  He would just sit there and go, “How far can I go before you’re just going to laugh,?”  You can actually see tears in my eyes in some of the shots from me just trying to [hold it together].

Marcos mentioned the scene with the Kleenex. 

That’s it.  That’s one of them.  You see it on my face, because I didn’t know he was going to whip the Kleenex out and do that, and when he does you just see me look down.  I kind of lean back, and look up at him like, “Why did you do that?  Why?  Oh, no!  We’ve still got a long scene ahead of us!  Why!?!?”  I mean, the whole movie was shot on one lens; a lot of the scenes are in one shot, and that was one of them that we couldn’t screw up.  It took so long, and we couldn’t do it to save our lives.  It was terrible.

It sounds like it was a very challenging movie.

It was.  We all had the best time making it.  We had twenty-three days to make it, and I can’t say enough good things about Marcos.  For having such a little amount of time, he was always so confident and so cool, and knew exactly what we needed to do, and worked so well with the actors.  We never felt rushed.  We always were having fun and constantly laughing and playing pranks.  It was awesome.  You really can’t ask for a better said.

Marcos said he had originally cast you in Elisabeth’s role [Brittany], and that you impressed him so much he switched you to Kimberly.  What was it about working with him that brought that out?

I don’t know.  You’d have to ask him.  He switched me to Kimberly before Thirteen, before any of that.  I don’t know.  I got attached to Brittany, and then I came in and met with him and… maybe that was it.  He’s just cool.

Do you find it maybe different that in Thirteen you were working with a female director as the female lead, and this one was a male director?  Did you find it different as to how your character was approached?

(Laughing)  Thirteen was so much female energy, it was always so chaotic.  But all my best friends are guys, so I usually do better with a male director.  It was great.  The whole crew was guys, too.  It was such a weird, female, teen sexuality movie, and I couldn’t believe how cool and respectful everybody on the set was.  Really, everybody just seemed like my older brother, being really protective and taking care of me.  Nothing was ever weird or uncomfortable.  It was really great.

Did they change anything in the script that you might’ve felt uncomfortable with?

There was stuff I was uncomfortable with, but I knew it was all very important, and I wanted to do it.  Marcos had a rule that if you’re ever uncomfortable with anything that the crew had to do it first.  So, let’s see… (laughs) to do the strip tease dance, I think Marcos got five grips to come over and do it first.  That really helped.  Jane Krakowski, when she had to take her shirt off, made the whole crew shoot the scene with no shirts on, and also made the entire crew fake an orgasm before she had to.  It’s all on tape.  (Laughs)  That was a fun night. 

Kind of along the lines of how your character says, “I’m fifteen; I don’t know how to do sexy,” do you feel that there is more pressure on teenage girls to act and dress more adult than there was maybe fifteen or twenty years ago?  And, if so, what started that?  Is it Britney Spears’s fault?

(Laughs)  No, I don’t want to blame anybody.  It’s a combination of things.  I don’t know how involved parents were before, but people just seem so blind to things now, and feel that if they ignore something it’s just going to go away.  People are so afraid about what teenagers are doing that they just don’t want to think about it, and they’re not going to talk about it.  I think if people were open about… all of that stuff with teenagers, it would really help.  Because you get to fourteen, and you’re like, “I’m having all of these weird feelings!  What do I do?  I don’t anything about sexuality, or what to do with it, or how to channel it, or where to go with it.  And nobody’s telling you, so you just go and look in all the wrong places.  You know, the mixed blessing of the internet and T.V. – they’re both amazing and curses at the same time.  I just wish people would be more open about it instead of just like, “Abstinence only!  No sex!  There’s no such thing as sex!  Okay!  And you don’t want to have it!”  And you’re like, “Yeah, I’m fifteen, and like what do I do?  I wish someone would tell me what to do, and teach me how to be responsible, and teach me how to be safe.  Tell me what to do, and maybe I wouldn’t want to do it so much if it wasn’t this forbidden thing, because that just makes people more and more curious about it.”  I don’t know.  What do I know?

A lot, apparently. 

(Laughs)  That’s just my opinion.

Obviously, you’ve done many movies, and have been around veteran actors.  Was there any advice that James gave to you?

I could listen to James talk for hours.  It’s just great to know that there are people out there like him who do encourage you and say, “You’re doing the right thing.  Hold out for those good projects, and you’ll always be okay.  Stay passionate about it.  Don’t go for the conveyer belt, packaged movie that’s just getting thrown out there and disappears.” 

What kind of character would you like to play next?

I’m doing it.  I’m getting to play my dream; I’m doing a musical.  It’s great.  I get to go to work every day, and act and dance and sing Beatles songs that I’m totally in love with.  And I get to play this really cool character, and she goes through so many changes and periods.  I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Who’s directing that?

Julie Taymor.  It’s very rare that I get along with female directors, but Catherine Hardwick and Julie are awesome.

She’s got such an amazing imagination.

The whole cast are just kindergartners when she explains to us what she’s going to do with a scene.  We just sit down cross-legged and look at her with our mouths open.  It’s amazing.

It’s an ideal situation for an actor, to have that sense of play so fully engaged.

Yeah, yeah!  And to know that you’re in such good hands.  It’s really nice.

Is that an ensemble?

Yeah, I guess.  But there are two main characters – a boy and a girl – and a little romance there.

And you’re going to be singing?  It’s going to be your voice?

It’s going to be me.  We’re all doing it.

Has there been much pressure on you to do a studio film?

Oh, yeah.

How do you handle that?

I’ve just got to keep saying, “No.”  I mean, I’m not against doing a studio film so long as it’s good.  But, you know, you get ones where they’re like, “It’s not great, but it’s not that bad, and it wouldn’t really hurt you.  You could probably get away with it.”  I’m like, “Yeah, I know I could do it, and make a million dollars, and it wouldn’t hurt me.”  But I’d be so miserable having to do it, having to go home at the end of the day and go, “Wow, that was so not fulfilling at all.”  And then having to go… like, I totally don’t mind doing press for this movie, because I love it and am really passionate about it.  But to go and talk about something all day that I hated… my head would explode.