Interview - November 1997

White hot Rachel Weisz

by Graham Fuller

Posh, pretty English actresses rattling teacups can grate on the nerves - but Rachel Weisz twangs ‘em instead. Whether witchy or snotty, ebullient or serene, twinkly-eyed or traumatized, she’s a wellspring of movie frissons. She was superbly unpleasant as the poolside preener in last year’s Stealing Beauty, an all-too-brief joy in this fall’s Going All the Way, is a silent force of nature butting up against Victorian mores in the current Swept From the Sea (her first star vehicle), and has three more films in the can. So what has she got to say for herself?

GRAHAM FULLER: You’ve been a busy girl.

RACHEL WEISZ: I have, haven’t I? It just turned out that every time I got a job, I got another one before the first one had finished. I don’t know why.

GF: I hated your character in Stealing Beauty.

RW: I didn’t have a good experience making that movie, and I think it’s because I was playing such a hideous, shallow, Eurotrash bitch. I felt like the symbolic antivirgin to Liv Tyler’s virgin.

GF. You’re much nicer in Going All the Way. The scene where you stride along the street teasing Ben Affleck is sublime.

RW: That girl seems like a hip-wiggling coquette, but I hope you see a lot more going on under the mask. There’s a moment when she takes her sunglasses off and looks at Ben and asks him what he’s trying to say. Really, she just wants to scoop him up into the car and drive off.

GF: What was it like playing this almost silent woman, Amy Foster, in Swept From the Sea?

RW: Silence says so much. I became incredibly solitary and unsociable when I was making the film, and I felt so contained. It was a luxury not to use words, because I could respond primitively to things. Silence gives Amy a strength, a way to disconnect. It pisses everyone else off, of course.

GF: Are you like Amy?

RW: Only in the sense that I don’t see myself fitting in anywhere. I do a very good act of fitting in everywhere, but I feel a bit alien all the time. I flash in and out, but I’ve always had the feeling I’m a mutant. I work so hard at covering it up that anyone who reads this will think it’s nonsense.

GF: Has acting made you more conscious of your body language?

RW: Yes. When I did Design for Living on-stage in London, I played a highly sexual femme fatale, and I think I learned how to pretend to be a woman in that, though I still think of it as an act. In my real-life relationships with friends and boyfriends, I yearn to be in a place where I don’t have to act at all - to the point that I risk being boring.

GF: You have time for boyfriends?

RW: I made four films this past year and I was single the whole time. I couldn’t have done Swept From the Sea if I’d been in a relationship, because I went away somewhere in my head. I was fulfilled until recently, when I suddenly realized I was living in a dreamworld. I thought, Hold on a minute, this is all fiction - what about something real? Then I fell in love.

GF: Congratulations. That’s still happening, is it?

RW: Yeah, and I’m taking some time off to remember how to live in a normal world.

GF: How should women be portrayed in movies?

RW: I like strong women who are sexy, funny, and clever. I’m not into the androgyny thing we’ve seen in the media, because I don’t think it’s healthy. People say it’s politically healthy, but I think it shows massive confusion. So I like womanliness; I suppose I would do, because that’s the way my body’s shaped.

GF: Hooray for womanliness.

RW: Yeah. Brilliant.

© (1997) Brant Publications, Inc. (2000) Gale Group