Gretchen Mol - interview with actress Gretchen Mol - Interview

Introducing an actress to croon over, spoon over, and moon over

With a face like a tournament rose dipped in whipped cream, Gretchen Mol is destined to bring vast numbers of strong men to their knees. There may not be a mom perfectly gorgeous woman on the planet - you couldn't find a flaw on her with an electron microscope. This pearl-like Prussian dish, with the Jesus H. Christ cheekbones and laser-blue cat eyes, has been sneaking up on us slowly, in small roles in films like The Funeral, Donnie Brasco, and The Last Time I Committed Suicide. With The Road to Graceland and Music From Another Room coming out soon, she is just about due to supernova. Honestly, is any other working actress so worth looking at?

MICHAEL ATKINSON: Where did you come from?

GRETCHEN MOL: I'm from Deep River, Connecticut. I began thinking I would do musical theater because in high school that was really the only sort of curriculum they had as far as getting onstage and doing anything that anybody would see. So that's what I did. And I sang and I danced and, y'know, it was fun, and then I came to New York and got into the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. But I didn't have what everybody around me seemed to have.

MA: Like what?

GM: I started not liking musicals. I started hating the lollipop music and the happy-go-lucky aspect of it all. "Laaaaaaa!!" Y'know what I mean? And I grew up with a mother who was a painter, so she's very introverted, and a brother who was behind a Super 8 camera all the time. I'm the most outgoing of all of us, and I still wasn't that outgoing.

MA: You first starred in your mother's photographs and your brother's movies - what kind of roles did he give you as a kid?

GM: I always played the girl in trouble, running around the house, and my brother would have his friends come over, and suddenly I'd be married to one of them and some other friend would come out of the woods with a cardboard knife and start killing my husband and blood would be everywhere. That kind of stuff. I was exposed to gore early.

MA: The movie roles you've had so far have been mostly chippies and gangsters' molls. Do you mind that?

GM: I don't know. It's hard to see them all lumped together. Of course I will probably be getting girlfriend roles. That's what you do at first: You do the girlfriends in these testosterone-related movies. Donnie Brasco was great, but the energy on the set made it kinda hard to get in there and have an opinion.

MA: You spent most of The Funeral crying.

GM: Yeah. Thank God. I could cry. [laughs]

MA: And you had some heavy-duty masculine eccentricity on the set there: Abel Ferraro [director], Christopher Walken, Chris Penn . . .

GM: I guess it was a pretty extraordinary experience. But I didn't know it at the time because it was only my second film. I was surrounded by chaos and screaming and everybody threatening to quit and people drank. It was crazy - it was really crazy. And we were shooting at night, so that made it almost crazier. Everyone was daylight-deprived or something.

MA: Next came The Last Time l Committed Suicide, with Keanu Reeves. Were you trampy like that when you were sixteen?

GM.' No! [laughs] Not at all. Cherry Mary was really fun because she just had a lust for life. Anyway, I don't think she'd been around the block a million times. I think she was probably always a little devil at home, but I don't think she, y'know, had been doing it since she was twelve. I think the Neal Cassady character sort of brought it out of her.

MA: Did you get to do time on Planet Keanu?

GM: No. I never actually met him until the screening, and then we just exchanged hellos.

MA: OK. Tell me about Graceland.

GM: Johnathon Schaech and I play newlyweds. We are on our way to see my parents and . . . well, I can't really tell.

MA: It's a secret?

GM: I don't want to tell too much about it. The bottom line is, Johnathon's character ends up meeting this Elvis impersonator, played by Harvey Keitel, who sort of shows him the light. He's sort of on a mission to turn Johnathon around.

MA: And what about you?

GM: Well, I'm sort of - I'm there "in spirit."

MA: Forget it. Let's talk about the Woody Allen movie you've just done.

GM: OK. I play the girlfriend of Leonardo DiCaprio, he's like a hot young actor and I'm his babe. And you know what that entails - not much.!

MA: Did you end up talking just like Woody, like everyone in his movies always does?

GM: No! [laughs] I can't get him down. You can hear him in the writing, I think.

MA: Now, most of the films you've been in so far have been "independent." They should come up with a new label, really, because independent ain't it.

GM: Right. "Smaller films" or "films that haven't been seen by many."

MA: Is that deliberate on your part, or are you waiting for the big break?

GM: It's not deliberate. I think because I've maintained my residence in New York, those kinds of films have been more accessible. It's not like I have a master plan or anything. But I have read scripts for huge Disney films or whatever, and people have said, "Why don't you fly out and screen-test?" But so far I've thought, I have no desire to do this film.

MA: What's your favorite thing you've had to do as an actress?

GM: Oh, God. Well, in the Woody Allen film, there's a scene where Leonardo and I are having a huge fight in the bedroom, and it's like a huge ripping-the-clothes-to-shreds thing. He had more fun than I did, I think, because he was literally able to break lamps and all of that, but it was still so decadent. There was food ali over the place. Woody said, "We just want to do one take." So in that take we just had to go all out, and I was screaming and my face was bright red, and afterwards I looked down and I had salsa all over me. I don't know how it got there. It's going to look like puke because the film's in black and white. I think that was probably the most fun because I could get it all out. I'd never been able to do that before.

MA: Now you know how Johnny Depp felt. It's fun to trash luxury hotels.

GM: Yeah! Everybody should do it!

MA: Are love scenes fun?

GM: I wouldn't say that. I haven't had to do too many, or many explicit ones. Everybody feels weird, and everybody is trying to tiptoe around and make you think they're not there. The last time I did a love scene, I couldn't keep a straight face.

MA: Are you single?

GM: No.

MA: Which do you prefer, sex or sleep?

GM: What kind of question is that? It depends on the night. I prefer a mixture of both. How's that?

MA: Fine. What's the one question about your sex life that you wouldn't want me to ask?

GM: Any! It's so personal. I think it's sort of disrespectful to the partner you're having sex with to talk about it. Sorry, I'm not very fun, am I?

MA: No. Do you want to be famous?

GM: Of course. I mean, why not? Hopefully, I'll just get to be part of good films and work with good people, and that's how it will develop. I think it would be fun, y'know?

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