INT: Chloe Sevigny

Chloë Sevigny first gained notoriety with the KIDS, from
the disturbed mind of Larry Clark. After
that, she continued to take on interesting and challenging roles in
such films as GUMMO, BOY’S DON’T CRY and THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO.
Her controversial role in THE BROWN BUNNY continued to gain
notoriety but she still carried on with her unique career.
She has recently found success in the HBO Series “Big
Love” which has earned here a whole new audience.
But alongside Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey
Jr. she appears in the highly anticipated new film from David
Fincher, ZODIAC.
Although a secondary character in the film, she brings a
sense of realism and takes the audience along with her as her
frustration with her Zodiac obsessed husband begins to take a toll
on their marriage.

Ms. Sevigny recently stopped by The W Hotel in Westwood to
talk about her role and what it was like to work with David Fincher
and her costars. She is a
lovely woman who is far apart from the usual
Hollywood
actress. She is honest about
her career and I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve heard an
actress laugh as much as she did. She
is very open about her work in the film and how she feels about
working on her very first studio picture.
She also spoke about working on BIG LOVE with a surprising
take on how involved HBO is in the production of the series.
Read on for more.

Chloe
Sevigny

I’m
assuming you probably weren’t alive when this was actually
happening. How much did
you know ahead of time…?

Well,
my parents lived in

Marin

County

right before I was born and I was born in 74 so I guess they moved
right before it really started.
Or were things really happening then to as well?
The dates I’m a little rusty on… [Laughing]

Did
you know about it?

I
didn’t know about it.

Really?

No,
no, not until like… I was never one of those teenagers that were
fascinated with serial killers but I had lots of girlfriends who
were and they lent me their books and [Laughing] so I started
reading Robert Graysmith’s books and then I got too scared and I
had to put them down. But
I wanted to read a bit of the extent of his obsession and realize
what my husband was really getting into and how in depth he got into
it so, you know…

It’s
rare that in this kind of movie to get to play like meeting someone,
you really get to develop a character and develop a relationship
together. Did that surprise
you that is was such a non-thank-less role?

Was
it? I don’t know.
[Laughing] I always thought that my character, which I’m
fine with, was more to service Jake’s [Gyllenhaal] character.
To show how his obsession just, you know, the effect it had
on his home life and how his relationship fell apart and how all
other requirements he had in life he just kind of forgot about and
got completely consumed by Zodiac.
So I felt like I was helping to show that aspect.

Was
that not a reservation? I’ve
heard actors say before that they’re not particularly interested
in just being the wife or the girlfriend…

Right…
well for me, this was my first studio picture and it was David
Fincher and I haven’t always been selecting my movies by the
character. I never did
that, it was always the overall picture, the director, who else was
involved and I would just feel like we’re all just little pieces
of a puzzle. I’m not
so, ‘I need more lines here, more lines there.’ I’m happy if
I’m pleased with the script and the director and the work thus far
to just serve the purpose of the greater good of the movie.
I’m okay with that.

This
is your first studio picture?

It
is. Yeah, I think I’ve
had other pictures that have been like financed by, you know, Fox
Searchlight or… I’m not even sure to be honest actually.
Or if they were just picked up afterward and just distributed
by them. But this is my
first real…

Well
did you notice much difference?

Not
really. I mean…
trailer I guess, you know. I
hadn’t always had a trailer or um… time was really the big
difference, the amount of, the luxury of time and being able to do
as many takes as you want. I
guess everybody’s heard the stories of Fincher and how he does
sixty to eighty takes and my first day, my very first day, we shot
an exterior shot of Jake and I in the phone booth in the rain on a
street in San Francisco. And
it was like one shot with a page and a half of dialogue so there was
no inter cutting so it was very tricky, the technical, the camera
move and light and the rain and blah, blah, blah.

But
like ninety takes into it I started having a breakdown. [Laughing] I
come to New York and I’m totally jetlagged and it was like three
o’clock in the morning I didn’t know where I was, I couldn’t
make sense of the lines. He
kept like going after that, this one line over and over and he
wanted me to be drier and I’m like, I’m already so dry
[Laughing] how could I have more dry sense of humor than I already
have. So you know I went
home and cried. [Laughing]

And
then I had a couple of drinks and I felt better.
And the next day he called and apologized which I thought was
really nice. But nobody
warned me that that’s what he did to every actor that came to the
set. Every actor would
kind of have to go through this kind of shake down or whatever you
want to call it and… but it wasn’t only to fine tune performance
because he is so technically obsessed a lot of it was camera move or
lighting or background. It
wasn’t just performance always.

Is
that by choice that you haven’t done a studio picture before now?

I guess I just haven’t been offered one that I was
interested in. I’ve
had some offers but more commercial fare than this even, even more
fluff pieces or whatnot. And
I’ve mostly worked with auteurs, writer/directors in the
independent world and I guess it’s kind of what I always wanted to
stick to. And with
Fincher, I believe that he has a vision, we all know that he does
obviously and I really enjoyed his pictures and going into his world
and wanted to be a part of that so…

And
when you watch the movie and see stuff where you had done a lot of
takes do you understand what he was trying to get out of you by
doing all those things?

I
don’t think it was really a psychological thing.
Maybe with Jake more, he was trying to break him down a bit
more but with me I think it was more – I didn’t do quite as many
as Jake did – I think it was more technical things.
I enjoyed that, on most of my movies that I have done I get
maybe one, two or five at the most.
So to be able to try all these different things you really
like realized why these great performances come out of these big
studio pictures often because you get so much time.
The one scene I come with the divorce papers at the end, we
had to re-shoot.

So
we did it once and then we came back months later, you know, towards
the end of them wrapping the picture and we had to shoot it again
and the next day they were going to turn around and shoot Jake’s
coverage. We showed up
the next day and, ‘oh, your coverage was too dark’ so I had to
do the same scene three times. So
I guess in total I probably said those like three pages of dialogue
like almost four hundred times.
If you factor in all the different coverage, you know, the
establishing, the singles, the two shots, the blah, blah, blah,
blah, I probably said those three pages of dialogue like four
hundred times. [Laughing]

What
are your thoughts about why David Fincher isn’t here today,
rightly or wrongly it kind of sends the message that he may not have
a lot of faith in the movie.

Oh,
but he’s shooting. He’s
shooting “[The Curious Case of] Benjamin Button” and I think he
is gonna do, him and Jake, who is also shooting I think in
Morocco… I don’t know what he’s doing.
But I think they’re gonna have their press days in New
York.

Can
you talk about working with Jake; he seems like a very talented
actor, a really sweet guy. There’s
gotta be some deep dark secret to him.

He’s
an egomaniac. [Laughing] No, no, no, well, he’s an actor.
But no… [Laughing] He’s very… what I was surprised
about was how young he was actually.
He’s not as mature as maybe… you know, he’s
twenty-seven. He’s
young, you know, he’s been growing up kind of coddled by this
industry and his parents, whatever.
So he has a very young spirit to him, very boyish.
Where I thought he’d be a bit more… You know, he’s very
serious about his work and concentrates and you know I was very
impressed with his work ethic actually.
But he is very boyish.

What
do you think the commercial prospects as a big studio film?
What do you think the commercial prospects are and is that an
important…?

I
think they’re pretty huge. I
mean, I’ve heard people complain about the length.
But when you… the success of CSI [CRIME SCENE
INVESTIGATIONS] and all these other crime scene… I don’t know
the titles of them, I don’t watch those shows but I guess there
seems to be a huge market… NUMBERS,
right? Isn’t that
anther program? I think
people are really interested in the process of the investigation and
that’s kind of what our movie is about.
And people will be fascinated by [the] huge leaps and
developments that have come in such a short amount of time.
You know, even if these guys had a frickin’ fax machine it
would have been, you know [Laughing] not to mention all the other
crazy things that I don’t know the technical terms, sorry.

Did
doing your first studio picture, even though it’s Fincher, did it
make you go, maybe I can do another studio picture’ or…?

I
think so. You know if I
thought the film was challenging and/or subversive in a way.
And I think it would be important to me that it would be a
director that would have final cut or that I knew would…

So
it really needs to be someone with status because final cut is
not…

I
think so. Maybe I’d
like to do like a fluff piece, romantic comedy one day if I found
one that I thought was very clever or you know, funny.
I’m not opposed to studio, I mean it’s not like, ‘I’m
not doing studio. I’m
so purist’ or whatever, something like that ever, nothing had ever
come to me that I thought was right, or I’d never gotten the part
that I’d wanted to.

[ZODIAC]
is broken down into two themes; the crime scene theme, the crime
element theme, and there’s also the theme that your involved in,
the really kind of more like an art film theme, the obsession theme.
Which does strike me as being more of the kind of film that
you might work on because those scenes are smaller and they are much
more personal, much more emotional, perhaps more than the other
scenes; did you see that?

Yeah,
and that is what was interesting to me about the story and my part
in the movie as approaching crime or serial killer, something from
that angle and how it took over this poor guy’s life.

And
several… not just him.

Not
just him. Yeah.

At
least three of them were completely obsessed with and couldn’t
leave it alone.

Yeah.

The
ripple of the victim part around them, you’ve got the primary
victims and their family and then you’ve got the people who are
working on the case and it just kind of [works] out like that.

Yeah.

Your
character really brings that home.
You were talking about just to serve it but it really kind of
brings that back to us again about how she is… she’s smart, she
has so much going for her and yet here she is being neglected and
you ask why would he do that. Which
is why your character is as developed as it is.

Hmmmm…

Did
you have any contact with the [Robert] Graysmith’s ex-wife?

She
came to the set one day with one of her children, one of her
daughters and we chatted. She
was very spunky and she had a lot of sass.
[Laughing] So I tried to incorporate that a little bit into
it, you know… I wanted us to have a little, like a soft, nice
moment, more nice moments, more than me just coming down on him.
But David wanted it to steer more towards me always being
frustrated with him. I
thought that was a little one-notish.
[Laughter]

Are
you more confidant in your abilities as an actress now that you’ve
gone through something as trying as ninety takes with a demanding
director?

Um…
I guess so. I mean, I
think having experienced that I look forward to working more in that
kind of arrangement or working with someone that’s that obsessive.
Because I’m really obsessive with props and when I feel
like my director isn’t in control of the entire frame then my… I
kind of doubt him or her a little bit.
And what I liked about David is that I felt he was entirely
in control of everything and obsessive with the props that the guy
[would] take a ruler and measure how much was in the cup between
every take and just like I kind of got into his [frame of mind].
But he was very kind and a really sweet, kind face, he kind
of looked like a boxer, little flat nose and I thought he was very
charming.

But
in a way aren’t you getting when you work with a director like
that, your giving away a lot of your autonomy because he’s got
ninety takes to pick from, he could sort of shape your performance
whereas if you’ve got two or three takes…?

I’d
rather have more.

You’d
rather have more?

Yeah.
And then you just hope, hopefully you’ll work with a
director…

With
David Fincher you’d rather have more…

Yeah.
And Harris Savides, the DP whose the best in the business.
I think that anybody that loves film is gonna love this
movie. I mean, obviously
any cinephile likes Fincher for whatever reason but I think from the
production design to the costumes, every aspect of the movie is so
well realized that I think people will really enjoy it.

Could
you talk about Woody Allen, where does he fit in, in that group?

He…

He
kind of let’s actors go doesn’t he?

He
didn’t really direct me at all.
Like I remember reading a quote that Judy Davis said, how
many pictures did she make with him, maybe like three, and he maybe
said three words to her in total over the three pictures.
He didn’t really say that much to me either but some of the
other actresses, he was really directing them.
And I was like, ‘give me some notes’ [Laughing] going
through the motions or whatever but I really wanted to be like,
molded by him, but I was just a supporting character so…

Have
you seen any of SISTERS yet, the film you did with director Douglas
Buck?

I
haven’t. They sent me
a DVD because… I did a remake of Brian De Palma’s “Sisters”
a couple of years ago with this guy, or last year with this guy,
Douglas Buck who made shorts called “Family Portraits” which are
these three horror films that are mind-boggling.
He made them on a shoe-string budget and so anyways… He
sent me a DVD because they are going to South by Southwest but I
wanna wait and see it on a big screen.
So I haven’t seen it yet.

Who
is your sister?

Did
you see the original? I
play the reporter, the more unflattering part.
And Lou
Doillon plays the Margot Kidder, she’s the
daughter of Jane Birkin. And
Stephen Rea plays the “mad scientist” or whatever he is.

Did
you have the chance to see THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED?

I
haven’t but I heard that I’m all over it.
[Laughing] In
more ways than one. [Laughing]

That
film obviously has now changed sort of the… I know you had a
problem with, there was that one scene, I think it’ Hilary’s
[Swank] and your first love scene [from BOY’S DON’T CRY] and
what do you think of the changes that may come about or have come
about as a result?

I
mean, I’m not aware of any changes.
I still think that the M… what are they called?

MPAA.

M.P.
double A or whatever are too lenient on violence and really, too
tough on sex. I think
it’s kind of… you know. I
don’t know.

How
has the success of BIG LOVE impacted your movie career?
Are you having to pass on thing because of your schedule?

No.
We have to shoot six months a year in Hollywood or Los
Angeles which is hard for me because I’m a New Yorker.
But I haven’t… I mean I’ve read things that, ‘Oh God
that’s really great.’ ‘Oh, they’re really interested in
you.’ But of course, my commitment is to the show and it could go
for six seasons. We’re
at the end of season two and I’m starting to look for things to do
while on hiatus. But
last hiatus, I made three pictures, I made ZODIAC, I made a film
called LYING that went to Cannes this year and I made SISTERS.

And
I felt like it was too much. By
the time I got to SISTERS, I was so drained, I felt like I had
nothing left to give. And
it was [a] really low budget movie and I had to act, so practically
nothing for half the movie and it was so difficult.
It’s difficult to do horror.
To be, [Feigning shock] you know, really scared all the time.
I was like… ‘Wow’
these girls are amazing. I
kept feeling like I was Naomi Watts in THE RING.
[Laughing] Did
you like the film? Did
you see it?

I
haven’t seen it. But
of course I’m very familiar with the original.
I talked to him for about two hours so I feel like I’ve
seen it.

He’s…
yeah. He’s an
encyclopedia of knowledge of film.
He could really walk the walk and talk the talk so now I’m
just nervous about…

I
know. I can’t wait to
see it.

Yeah.
He referenced a lot of great things.

What’s
the gist of LYING, what is that about?

LYING
is about a bunch of girls that go away for the weekend Upstate New
York. It was in the
Director’s Fort Night at Cannes and it’s directed by a friend of
mine [M. Blash]. We made
it for like a hundred thousand dollars and it’s me and Jena Malone
and Leelee Sobiesky and Meryl Streep’s son, Henry something.

Gummer?

Yeah,
it was great. And my
character is a compulsive liar.
And I bring these girls up to this weekend like house,
getaway and I claim it’s mine and I just spew all these lies and
it’s just kind of more of, we really… it kind of meanders and
doesn’t really go that much of anywhere.
He was kind of more inspired by PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK, like
some of these girls, lying around in the fields and you know making
pretty images but it was more a study on lying.
You see her telling little white lies or big lies or lies to
entertain herself or lies to protect other people and all the
different kind of lies that you can say and why you do them.
It’s kind of interesting movie, if you like slow movies
with pretty girls in the sunshine.
[Laughing]

This
film is going to be at South by Southwest?

Yeah.

I
got a chance to see you in WHAT THE BUTLER SAW, any plans for more
theatre?

Did
you! I’d like to,
I’d like to. It’s
always a big commitment and know with the show and because HBO still
hasn’t decided if we are going to do a third season and we never
know how long they’re gonna give us as hiatus or not.
So, it might be tricky with timing but I’d love to do
something else. Actually
Scott Elliot has offered me numerous other parts and the timing has
always been off so… but I think he’s great and I’d love to do
theatre. I’d love to
do Broadway. Get a car
to bring you to theatre. I
saw Mark Ruffalo last year in, was it “Awake and Sing”?

Yes.

Did
you see it? He was
brilliant. It was a
great production.

How
is it working with HBO in general?

I
was really surprised because I thought… you think, ‘oh, they do
all this great work and it’s challenging’, the executives
control everything. I
was shocked. I thought
the creators would, you know, they’d give somebody notes and you
know.

Really?

Yeah.
They do give you a lot of money compared to other studios,
you have more time, you know. We
get ten days per episode, which, each episode’s an hour I think. “The
Sopranos” gets, I think twenty days.
As each season passes you get more days or whatever but…
the execs are really involved, that was the most surprising thing
for me. But it’s been
really challenging playing that part and really rewarding because
I’ve been doing things that I hadn’t thought I could do or done
before.

Do
you have any personal feeling about bigamy?

Polygamy?

Polygamy?

Or
bigamy? Um, I have
strong personal feelings that I think I’d like the show to address
more as far as these compounds and how repressed the young girls
are. And I feel like we
have an obligation to, I think, show more of the injustice.
I think next season they’re thinking of showing an aspect
of my character or one of her, I don’t know… something that she
has wrong her, I can’t really explain it any further that will
really bring a lot of light to the situation.
So I hope that we do more of that.

Has
the show generated a lot of opposition from the Mormon Church?

No.
They are mum. They
are mum. Because they
felt like the more they talked about it the more press it would
generate. And they are
completely right. So I
heard, though I have friends whose parents are LDS, and I heard that
they were [doing] like an internet, e-mail campaign saying don’t
watch it, don’t say anything but according to HBO our ratings went
[up]. [Laughing]

In
“Kids”, you were the one trained actress in “Kids” or…?

No, actually… I mean I’d gone to like summer theatre camp every year
growing up and I had always aspired to be an actress.
I was actually in some commercials when I was a kid.
And then my mother pulled because she thought the world was a
little too twisted and she wanted me to be a kid more.
And so they hired a professional actress, Mia Kirshner and
then two days before shooting they fired her and hired me, so…
that’s someone else’s misfortune.

Did
you, like Rosario [Dawson] and other people in that movie, did you
just kind of all of a sudden have an acting career?

Yeah.
Basically yeah, thanks to Harvey Weinstein.

Were
you skateboarding in a park and that’s where they found you?

No,
I was watching the skateboarders.

What’s
the proper pronunciation of your last name?

Seven-Knee.
Like the number seven, knee.

Thank
you very much.

Thank
you.

Let
me know what you think. Send
questions and comments to [email protected].