Best Supporting Actress winner Melissa Leo.I interviewed Melissa Leo in January of 2009 for her much-buzzed about (and Oscar-nominated) turn in "Frozen River," in many ways a fitting precursor to her Oscar-winning role as Mark Wahlberg's overbearing mother in David O. Russell's "The Fighter." During our talk, Leo was engaging, dramatic, and mercurial, much like her performance on the Oscars. She remains one hell of an actress, and we at The Interview congratulate her on this well-deserved win.
Melissa Leo: Many Rivers to Cross
By
Alex Simon
Born and raised in New York City, Melissa Leo is one of those faces you always see popping up on the big or small screen at least once a year, and you invariably find yourself asking "Wasn't she in fill in the blank with a movie or TV title of your choosing" and you'd probably be right. A fiercely prolific actor who studied at the Mount View Theater School in London as well as SUNY Purchase's renowned theater department, Melissa Leo made her film debut in Henry Jaglom's Always in 1985, and literally hasn't stopped working since, appearing in nearly 80 films and TV productions. Stardom has eluded Melissa Leo until now, with her turn in Courtney Hunt's micro-budget indie hit Frozen River, which won the Grand Jury Prize at last year's Sundance Film Festival. Announced in the wee hours of this morning, Melissa Leo has been tapped as a nominee for Best Actress by the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Leo has made a career of playing tough, unglamorous women who are still retain their femininity in spite of the life of hard-knocks they've endured. Her unapologetically weather-beaten facade, which looks like she stepped right out of a Walker Evans photo commissioned by the FSA during the Depression, has served her well, appearing on hit television series such as The Young Riders as the most authentic-looking frontier gal in TV history, to her long-running role as Det. Sgt. Kay Howard on the lauded Homicide: Life on the Street, as the toughest of Baltimore street cops, trading blows and bullets with the baddest bad and good guys alike. Other notable turns recently include a recurring role on Showtime's The L Word and Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
In Frozen River, Leo wears her character's existence of hardship, disappointment and determination in every well-earned facet of her remarkable face. As Ray Eddy, a single mother in upstate New York facing dire straits after her husband takes off and absconds with the down payment for their new doublewide trailer, Leo fashions one of the greatest portraits of feminist perseverance and survival since Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, which earned her a Best Actress Oscar for 1974. Faced with losing everything she has, Ray joins forces with Lila (Misty Upham, also excellent), a Native American girl, in smuggling illegal Chinese and Pakistani immigrants in the trunk of her car across the Canadian border into the U.S., over the frozen river that separates the two countries.
Originally filmed as a short, Courtney Hunt shot her feature version on the digital Panasonic Varicam in 24 days in sub-zero temperatures in and around Plattsburgh, New York, Frozen River's first time writer-director Hunt has earned herself an Oscar nod as well for her original screenplay. The film is still playing theatrically and arrives on DVD from Sony February 10.
Melissa Leo sat down with us recently to discuss this remarkable capstone in her career.
When I first saw Frozen River the film I kept thinking of was Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.
Melissa Leo: Oh, I like hearing that! Yeah, I see what you're saying. I think it's a fair comparison in that it's about a woman's journey of self-discovery and survival. So yes, I'll take that. Thank you! (laughs)
Tell us about how you found Ray.
I didn't find her. Courtney (Hunt) found her. Courtney spent nine, or more, years researching this story, these circumstances, and put it down in a spectacular and sparse script. In the short I didn't even know what Ray's name was. I was just "the blonde" and Misty (Upham) played "the Mowhawk." There's a moment that does wind up in the feature where we drop the bag on the ice and we have to decide whether to go back or not.
Melissa Leo in Frozen River.Are we going to see the original short on the DVD?
I'm not sure. You'll have to ask Courtney. (laughs) Then we waited three years until we got the funding for the feature, had nine days of pre-production, and shot in 24 days.
Such great things can come out of situations like that where you have a gun to your head.
Yeah, and in the art of filmmaking, which is very different from the theater, primarily because in the theater you do something very rehearsed and practiced, and you try to hit something each night that you go on. Film is the art of capturing the moment. So when you're flying by the seat of your pants, caught in a whirlwind, it's kind of a good thing in moviemaking.
It's part of what makes a neo-realist film, which is certainly what this is, and what Alice was.
What's the old expression? "Necessity is the mother of invention." And that's exactly what it was all about.
How was it filming on location, being a part of that world?
I love that part of acting, that you get to go to these places where the events actually take place. I shot in South Africa once, a movie called Lullaby, about a woman who arrives in Johannesburg at a moment's notice, just as I did, so my reality could be sewn into the performance of that character. It was very much the same being up in Plattsburgh, in that environment. We were all booked into a little Motel 6-type place, with little kitchenettes in them. And that became my "Ray's trailer home" while we were shooting. If we'd shot the entire thing on a soundstage, I'm not sure we'd have gotten the same effect.
Courtney is a first-time writer/director. What's that like for a veteran performer?
The greatest pleasure in working with a first-time filmmaker, and a I do a lot of it: student films, and so on, the great pleasure is you can really work with a first-time director, not so much for them. I had fun working for many directors. I would get up, right in the middle of this interview, and work for Tommy Lee Jones again. (laughs) But the real delight is the collaboration you get working with them, finding communication between the two of you, without pushing that too far over the line into what her job is to do, which is to direct. Because the only way to make a really good movie is to have a single visionary. And whatever relationship the director has with the writer, when it comes to the shooting game, the director is the captain of the ship, and must be followed by all on-deck.
Leo (L) with writer-director Courtney Hunt (R) on the Frozen River set.We discussed the neo-realist feel the film has. Was any of it improvised?
Absolutely none of it. It was a completely written script. For me as an actor, that's a much easier way to find realism: in a very tight script. I've done a fair amount of improv work, like the films I've done with Henry Jaglom. There's fun in it. There's a certain freedom in it. There's an absolute lack of accuracy in it that, for me, takes from the truth in the end. And if we all know what the truth is that we're going after, because it's there on the page, we can all look to it and know where we're trying to get to, and better serve our characters.
You and Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) are both character actors who've been working for 25 years and are finally getting a moment in the sun. We're seeing a time, like in the 1970s, where character actors are becoming stars again. How does it feel, after paying all those dues?
(inhales deeply) I'm taking in a big breath of that one! (laughs) It feels right, frankly, and I've known Richard for a long time, although we've never worked together. I've heard Richard say the same thing, too: At another time, I wouldn't have been ready. Things happen in life as they should. Somehow it's already there, and you have to find your path. So that's what going on and I feel very comfortable, and honored, and welcomed, and recognized. People keep trying to put the thought in my head of "Well it's about time, dammit!" but that just doesn't feel right. I know with Frozen River, every moment of my professional life came up to Plattsburgh so I could work with Courtney and help make that movie happen.
Going back even further, your path started at SUNY Purchase, with that amazing class of actors that included Stanley Tucci, Ving Rhames and many others.
We called each other "companies" because Purchase was orginally founded to be an American conservatory. Your mentor would take you through the four years of the program. Stan and Ving were in the group just above me. Steven Weber was in my group, another fine actor who does a lot of stage work around town named Preston Maybank was in my group. Edie Falco came a year or two later, Wesley Snipes. It was a very interesting, very serious, acting training program. It's training I still use, every day I go to work, right now here with you.
Leo (R) and Misty Upham (L) in Frozen River.Your resume has an incredibly diverse mixture of stage, TV and film.
That's something that would be worth spending a little time talking about. I realized in this last year, going from set-to-set, I have an incredibly unique and unusual career. I was at The Marrakesh International Film Festival. It's beautiful there! It's only eight years old, but you'd think it had been going on for a hundred. It had an international jury: Barry Levinson, actors from around the world, different directors, and as I looked at the jurors in the catalog, and their credits, I realized that I had more credits than any one of those jurors! It's very rare that any of us in the industry go from one thing to the other as much as I've been lucky to have done.
Let's talk about stage vs. film vs. television.
They're all very different. You're doing exactly the same thing, very differently. You're pretending to tell the truth, and in stage the main thing is the rehearsal process that we begin reading around a table, then eventually comes up from the table and finds its blocking, usually with a certain amount of 50/50 between the director and actors finding the staging of the play, working on it for the first week or two, then the third or fourth week of rehearsal before you get to your previews, really honing in on what those moments are in the path you're going to go out onstage and walk. We're so lucky in the theater because we get to come back Wednesday and try again, because Tuesday we surely didn't hit them all. (laughs) In film, there's always this discussion of rehearsal, but as actors know who their characters are, what they wear, how they live, what their relationships are with their scene partners, you can just have the actors play the scene with the camera running and capture something that nobody could have constructed beforehand. The capturing of an image that film does, that's what makes movies magic. Television is similar, but at a much faster pace. You have turn things around very quickly in television. So it's doing the same thing, but with very different tools and rhythms. Does that answer your question at all? (laughs)
You mentioned Tommy Lee Jones earlier. Is it a different experience working with an actor as a director? Is their understanding of the craft more intimate, which provides a kind of shorthand between the director and his or her cast?
I'll be honest here: I think it's a really stupid idea for an actor to director. Writers tend to be certain kinds of people. Actors tend to be certain kinds of people. Directors tend to be certain kinds of people. Dentists (laughs) tend to be certain kinds of people. I don't know if I'd want a dentist/gynecologist! (laughs)
Wow, that's an entirely different, and possibly very philosophical, conversation.
Not really! I'm an old school actor. I like a director who directs. I like a writer who writes. I like a conversation with both of them to find the truth of a piece. But, there's exceptions to the rule. Courtney Hunt wrote an amazing script and did an incredible job as a director. Mr. Jones, would say "Okay, you go over and you go over there, and you do that." Then, in a blink of an eye, this acerbic, brilliant director, would drop away, and there would be (the character of) little, stupid Pete. I actually think he'd have been happy to just direct Three Burials, but then I doubt they'd have given him the money to do it. So he was great to work with, a brilliant, brilliant director, but ordinarily I don't think it's so great when actors direct. It's just an opinion. I might be wrong.
When did you realize you were an actor? I saw in your biography that your father was an editor and a fisherman, which are two really interesting extremes, and your mother was a teacher and a social worker.
I didn't see it. I don't remember going to the movies until I was a teen and seeing Jaws. I'm not sure that was the first movie I ever saw, but that's the first one I remember seeing. I probably saw some Chaplin stuff with my family when I was little. What I really remember is working with Peter Schumann, who ran the Red Puppet Theater. Since the late '50s, Peter has done this amazing work with hand puppets, people as puppets wearing masks, giant puppets with several people operating them. Even as a child, I remembered you couldn't just operate the puppet, you had to be the puppet! Just pretend. And I knew that I was more comfortable doing that than any other thing.
On the IMDb I see that you have ten movies in pre, post, or some state of production coming up over the next year. Do you come up for air at all, or is this the way you like it?
No, thank God. I need very little air, and I'm very happy here under the water.
Trailer for Frozen River.
