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| The Gentleman Thief |
A film about an art heist starring John Travolta and Lukas Haas, The Gentleman Thief opened in US cinemas yesterday, and is also getting a digital release. I was pleased to note that it also stars Rebecca De Mornay, who has been making something of a comeback in recent years, appearing in a variety of interesting roles; and still more pleased that she was available to discuss it. What surprised me, I explain, is that when I first read about the film, I found her character described as if she were merely Travolta’s love interest – and she does not strike me as the sort of person who takes love interest roles.
“You're absolutely right,” she says firmly. “No, she is not. She comes with a lot of mystery and a lot of background that we don't know about.”
How much of that was there to begin with and how much did she develop herself?
“There was nothing there to begin with. When I first read the script, I was the audience thinking ‘Okay, who is this woman?’ And then I saw ‘Oh, they used to have something, that's interesting.’ And then, you know, the plot twist that happened in the film I wasn't prepared for. So then I was like, ‘Oh, she's able to do a lot of high stakes gambling, really, to gamble with people finding out what she's doing.’ It's very dangerous and she knows it.
“So I realised she's extremely smart and extremely gutsy in a way that I'm not – the gutsy part. As they say, if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. I stay out of the kitchen. She can take the heat. And so that was fun to play.”
And we have to see her as a dangerous person because we have to have that sense of threat to the other characters in the film.
“Yeah, I mean, she was able to load that gun okay.” She smiles.
She has some great banter with John Travolta as well.
“That was all there to begin with,” Rebecca says. “I really like the writing. Chris Sivertson, I believe, is the writer. I love the bantering scenes between them and I love the banter actually that he had with his brother Lukas Haas in the trailer. It’s that great line when he says ‘It's going to be a piece of cake.’ And he says, you know.” She rolls her eyes, summing up the Travolta character’s reaction. “It's banter. It's like they’re colleagues, they’re peers. It's got its own flirtation without being overly flirtatious, which really appealed to me. And working with John, I mean, it's very easy to do flirtatious lines that aren't really flirtatious, but they really are.
“We didn't have much time to work on it. It is. We just are, I think – you know, I played his wife over ten years ago in a movie, and ironically, in the late Eighties he actually flew his own plane to a location where I was doing a movie in New Mexico, to see if I could do a part. We were supposed to be undercover cops together, and I was dying to do that, and that movie fell apart. So we keep re-encountering each other, which is fun.”
So what about playing an art expert? Did she do anything much to prepare for that?
“No, no, I was winging it. I do have a great love of art myself, and I've been to museums all over the world, and I just went with that for this film, knowing art and knowing how to be a businesswoman. I am a businesswoman of my own little tiny empire. But it's all just magnified onscreen. She makes a lot of money, but she's working for very wealthy people, which is the way my career used to be. I understand the dynamics of it, and I love that she loved art, which I do too.
“I used to be able to pick and choose [roles] a lot more, but that's just what it is. I spent a lot of years being a mother of two daughters. That really was my focus for a good 20 years. I was a single mother, and the business has been very good to me because it's accepting me back when I was gone for quite a while. So I'm very grateful to Hollywood. It seems to be evaporating, you know? Hollywood people moving out. So many fewer films are being made, but nonetheless, Hollywood's been good to me.”
I mention that I saw her in Saint Clare a couple of years ago and spoke to the director, Mitzi Peirone. She remembers the film fondly and is pleased to hear that Mitzi spoke well of her, but amused when I mention that Mitzi was nervous about calling her to offer her the role.
“Everybody's terrified of me because I'm in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle,” she says. “Everybody thinks I'm that character, all these years later. No, but that was so fun. That was like feminist guerrilla filmmaking. I mean, she was also flying by the seat of her pants. It was only her second film, but it was a very unusual film and it was a lot of fun. I really liked it.”
She’s played some other scary characters as well as in the Hand that Rocks the Cradle, I point out. Many people are scared of her character in Marvel series Jessica Jones.
She laughs at that. “Well, I guess she was, come to think of it. You're right, she wasn't as terrifying as others, but she was a very manipulative mother and stepmother, wasn't she?”
What attracts her to characters like that?
“I think unconsciously, what I was drawn to when I wanted to become an actress was that I’m fascinated by humans. I'm fascinated by psychology and to illuminate the human condition from the inside out. You know, if you're a psychologist, you're looking and trying to understand someone's psychology. As an actor, I feel like I'm coming to understand that character's psychology, and then I'm going to show it to you. I'm going to be it so that you, by osmosis, will come to understand what's going on for that person. And I know that it worked because I had no understanding of the Hand That Rocks The Cradle character, for example, when I first read the script.
“She's awful. And why is she doing what she's doing? I had to come to understand her from the inside out. Why she feels justified, what has torn her apart so that she's able to tear other people apart like that, and what is actually going on for her in the scenes that we don't know; and finding those things and illuminating it without telling the audience any of it. Audiences are smart. We get it if somebody's truthful to what's going on. I thought everybody would hate me after that film, but in fact, people love me being like that in that film. I think they only do because they see what's at the core without knowing it. They're seeing it, and she's a very tormented person.”
So how did that process work with the character in this film?
“This character is more straightforward,” she says. “I see her as a gambler. She knows what she's doing, but, you know, I'm not a gambler. I'm a Virgo, and I don't like taking risks, and she takes them. So I'm drawing on people that I know who are fine to take the risks.”
It’s not easy to find female characters that age who are given the space to be sexy onscreen, I note.
“Yeah, I mean, it was very close to age appropriate, the pairing with John – which is unusual. I'll never forget once when I was in my mid-thirties, and I think Sean Connery was in his late sixties – I can't remember, it was some huge age difference – but there was a female role, and they said ‘No, you're too old for that part.’ Yeah, opposite him. Are you kidding?
“Sexism is a thing across the world. It's not just here. But we're making progress overall in the world. In some parts of the world. Not in all parts of the world. But yeah, it was an enjoyable thing to be able to have that backstory with John in this film and then to see it move into a future story with them. Not necessarily in a film.”
So what was the actual shoot like?
“It was three weeks, and it was very turbulent. The first bit was in the Florida Keys, which I'd never been to, which was amazing. And then we shot in Miami and then we flew to Mississippi, and then we were shooting in Mississippi in a casino and around who knows where. We were shooting an action film at the same time with those travel days and everything, in three weeks. So it was the most frenzied shoot I've ever been part of, I think. And yet Randall [Emmett], our director, just pulled it off that you don't see that. You see what you need to see. It's great.
“I have two other films in the can, but they seem to be having trouble getting distribution, so I can't really talk about them yet. One of them is really good, I know for a fact. I don't know about the other one.
“I did this John Patrick Shanley play in New York just a couple months ago. There's a limited run off Broadway, and I had the starring role. It's called The Pushover, and it was an extraordinary experience. I didn't realize how much I actually liked working on stage. There were four scenes really over a 90 minute period, and the two middle ones lasted an hour together. I was in them back to back. I never left the stage for a solid hour, and I had a ton of dialogue. And when I started the rehearsal process, John Patrick Shanley offered it to me, and I had just then lost my voice.
“I had laryngitis, bronchitis. I had some weird acid reflux thing in my throat, so I couldn't speak. I just got the biggest part of my life on stage and I had no voice. And interestingly enough, I just took it on faith that it was going to work out, and it did. I went to this top throat specialist in New York and she gave me tons of injections and all kinds of things. It was hair raising, but we pulled it together and it was actually really invigorating as an actress. I remembered that I hadn't done a play in 25 years, so that's something that I'd like to do more of.”
