Sometimes, even when an actor isn't in many scenes, they resonate throughout the film; this is particularly true for Laura Dern, who plays Reese Witherspoon's mother in Jean-Marc Vallée's "Wild." Perhaps most fitting because she's technically a spirit, Dern's character floats in and out of the movie through Witherspoon's flashbacks and visions.
As always, Dern is a pleasure to behold, at times sweet and sensitive and at other times a dreamer, trying to instill those same qualities in her daughter. In "Wild," she's definitely not the biggest role, but she certainly is an omnipresent one.
Moviefone Canada caught up with Dern at the Toronto Film Festival, where we spoke about playing a mother to Witherspoon, the poignancy of "Wild," and lifting the mood on-set.
Moviefone Canada: This film has very strong female characters. Having been in the industry for a while, have you seen any changes in the past few years in regards to available roles for women?
Laura Dern: It's interesting, for all of us movie lovers. We know it existed before, but the only sad news is we keep having to circle back to the times of Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwick. We had it in the '30s and '40s, then lost it in the '50s, then regained it in the '60s and '70s. People were lined up for "Klute" and "An Unmarried Woman" -- we fell in love with those women with no judgement. Clearly, we're getting it back. The good news/bad news is that it took commerce to get it back.
I look forward to the day when a film that has female leads is a human story that a lot of people get something out of, rather than look at it as a "woman's" movie. A lot of the male journalists that I've spoken to about "Wild" tell me that they've lost their father and how much they relate to Cheryl's [Witherspoon's] journey. Hopefully this movie can be an equalizer, and this story can be for everybody.
I've played a lot of strong female roles in my career, but I've never been in a movie where, at the end, the main character (who's a woman) has no man, no job, no money, no family, and it's a happy ending. And that is such a paradigm shift. In most women's movies, it's like, "Oh! She found him!" at the end. [Laughs]
Did you enjoy working with Jean-Marc?
He's incredible. He's so amazing. He's a gentle giant, so deep and passionate, so determined to get what he wants. He's so honest about his own family story, about his mother [who passed away from cancer three years ago], everything he's walked through, why he needed to make this film. We all cried together, pretty much every day. He's such an amazing filmmaker.
I understand you improvised a lot of your appearances in the movie -- in collaboration with Jean-Marc, of course.
Yes, yes! All of that was ad-libbed. It's one thing as an actor to get the opportunity to do that, to find things and invent things, but it's another for a filmmaker to say things like, "Reese isn't ready yet, let's go shoot with Laura for five minutes!" He was always coming up with stuff.
He's a really great editor, too, who gets in the editing room and makes a movie. The way he weaves memory, also in a non-linear way. People love movies that have a clear beginning, middle and end, and that's not the way memory comes to us. He played with that so beautifully, and cut together a majority of everything I did with the kids in the movie. You can really feel her mother with her throughout this entire film. It's really something.
The mother-children story is the real love of this movie.
We never see that either! It is our original love, for better or for worse, which has defined all of our relationships! [Laughs]
You recently worked on another big book adaptation -- "The Fault in our Stars." Was "Wild" as much of a collaborative effort with Cheryl [Strayed, the book's author]?
It really was. With "TFIOS," John Green was on set every single day and has become a close friend. In the case of Cheryl, it was the same. The only difference was that Green was creating characters out of his imagination, but this is Cheryl's life. There was a responsibility I felt towards her; I never wanted to betray her story.
How much of your character and story came from the book, and how much of it was your's and Jean-Marc's creation?
If I didn't spend as much time with Cheryl as I did and didn't comb over the book -- the same with Jean-Marc -- it would not have been fair to do what we did. But we did it from her memory, we did it from the feelings she was sharing. I hope the film captures all the fun and the cuddles, and all this love she was giving us in these intimate moments while her life was falling apart. You just want everything to feel that level of love and gratitude she seemed to find in things.
"Wild" opens in theatres on December 5.
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