PATRICIA ARQUETTE
WINNING AN OSCAR WAS WEIRD BECAUSE PEOPLE WOULD LOOK AT YOU LIKE SUDDENLY YOU HAD A DIFFERENT VALUE IN THEIR EYES
From David Lynch to Martin Scorsese, Patricia Arquette has worked with some of film’s most distinctive directors. But she also saw opportunity on the small screen just before TV’s new ‘Golden Age’, and she’s now shining in a new binge-worthy drama. Total Film meets a risk-taking talent not afraid to make her voice heard.
Idon’t think you can really play someone,” muses Patricia Arquette. “I couldn’t even play myself. It would always be a fiction. Human beings are too complicated.” Arquette is on thoughtful form when TF meets her in London’s Soho Hotel on a drizzly May morning. If our chat gets off to a serious start, it’s because she’s in town to talk about The Act, a miniseries gifting her a transformational turn. In the show – which has already aired in the US and is now available to stream via StarzPlay in the UK – Arquette plays Dee Dee Blanchard, a real woman whose murder in 2015 unearthed some unsettling facts.
Blanchard – who suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy – tricked everyone (including medical professionals) into believing her daughter Gypsy had cancer. The Act picks up as Gypsy (Joey King) starts to realise she might not actually be unwell. “It was the weirdest character to play,” says Arquette.
Today, the 51-year-old star looks nothing like the figure on the poster that’s displayed beside her. Relaxing on a pale
blue sofa, she looks sharp in a pale check suit, her face framed by a blunt blonde fringe and thick cat-eye glasses. And even though the topics of our conversation are sometimes heavy, Arquette remains approachable, candid, warm. Maybe it’s her unmistakeable breathy cadence – even though she’s softly spoken, you’ll know the accent that’s been a fixture of cult film and TV since the ’90s.
Coming from a family of actors – her father, Lewis, and siblings Rosanna, Richmond, Alexis and David – Arquette started her career in earnest with small TV roles and a part in A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, before starring in Sean Penn’s directorial debut The Indian Runner in 1991. For the remainder of the decade she’d work with some of the industry’s most distinctive directors – Tim Burton (Ed Wood), David O. Russell (Flirting With Disaster), David Lynch (Lost Highway), Martin Scorsese (Bringing Out The Dead) – but no role had so great an impact as her defining turn as Alabama in True Romance. The Tony Scott-directed, Quentin Tarantino-scripted, lovers-on-the-lam crime thriller was an instant era-definer, and Alabama an immediate ’90s icon.
While her film career stuttered at the turn of the millennium, Arquette made the smart move of embracing TV before the new ‘Golden Age’ sent film actors racing to the small screen. A long-running leading role on Medium bolstered her TV CV, while in the background she was making one of the most ambitious (and best) films of this decade: Richard Linklater’s 12-yearspanning Boyhood, for which she’d win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2015.
Arquette has also just been heard in Toy Story 4: surprisingly, her first proper voiceacting gig. “It’s the tiniest, tiniest part,” she beams. “I was like, ‘I don’t care!’” Throughout her career, her voice has been distinctive in a way that goes far beyond her accent: Arquette remains a vocal champion for a number of issues, using her Oscar speech to call out gender inequality, and as she gears up to start work on her directorial debut, she’s showing no desire to be silenced.
To start with The Act, how did you find your way into the character of Dee Dee? Her mental-health issues can make her behaviour seem shocking on screen.
I did some research on what psychologists and psychiatrists say about Munchausen by proxy. But I found that was very broad strokes. Oftentimes, these people were sick when they were younger, and they got a lot of attention from that. And I started to look at the part of the person that feels a bit invisible, like a non-person. So they do all these things to earn value in the world. To me, that’s a bit like co-dependency. I started to look at this toxic level of codependency. Then I found some amazing videos – some were really disturbing, actual footage of parents smothering or poisoning their kids – that had been taken in hospitals. I was surprised there was no difference in the parents’ faces, from the moment before they did it to the moment after, and during. It was really a weird experience playing her.
Did you have material from the real Dee Dee you could draw on?
Very little video footage. I know there must be more, but at that point, the family was doing their own project. So I didn’t really have access to any more. And the problem that I was encountering was, the “Dee Dee” at that point had been coloured by everyone deciding that Dee Dee was already a monster. So I wasn’t getting any authentic experiences of who Dee Dee was without this judgement of her on top.
Is the experience of making a TV show very different to making a film?
It depends on the show. [Ben Stiller-directed miniseries] Escape At Dannemora was like making a film – a very long film. [laughs] But the time we got to explore things, the time we had to shoot scenes, the level of detail and everything was more like a film. [The Act] was shot more like a TV schedule. There are some things that, as an actress, I think are helpful. You learn a lot of immediacy. But then there are things I miss about taking a long time, too.
You come from an acting dynasty. Did your career ever feel inevitable?
Our great-grandparents were actors, and my grandfather. So there were a lot of pictures of him with my dad, and them making skits, and wearing fake moustaches and costumes. That was a part of our play life, and really part of how our dad showed us he loved us. So we grew up doing that. When I became a teenager, that insecurity that teens have started to make it seem impossible. How would I ever push past my shyness? I thought, “Well, I want to be a brave person. Who knows what could be, if I don’t try?” I didn’t want to stand in my own way.
I NEVER GOT OVER MY FAN-AWE WHILE WORKING WITH MARTIN SCORSESE
Did anything in those early days make you think it might work out as a career?
I was pretty terrified the whole way. I was terrified when I got a job, it was like, “Oh, shit.” Matching different angles, hitting marks… Everything was this huge, terrifying thing to incorporate in an organic way, and to move fast. I was trying to face my fears, it seemed, for years.
Was there a point you got past the fear?
I still get scared sometimes. But even early on, there would be moments where the fear would go away. You’d be in a scene, and suddenly you’re moving through these feelings and thoughts, and your character’s having new thoughts and revelations. And that’s where it gets like, “Oh, wow. That’s the feeling.” That’s an addictive feeling. It’s fleeting, but exciting.
You worked with amazing directors early on…
I’ve always tended to like more artistic material, and loved great filmmakers. So that was always something I really wanted to do, to learn from great people. Also my agent and manager – who’ve been my agent and manager for 30 years – have really good taste in film.
Would you choose the filmmakers over the commercial prospects?
Yeah, all the time. A lot of times, my agent would say, “Well, as an agent, this movie will be successful. As a film lover, I like this one.” It’s always about those decisions.
Some of your ’90s films have really stood the test of time, but weren’t big hits. Did that bother you at the time?
It bothered me a lot with True Romance. It bothered me a lot with The Indian Runner. And then I started getting more used to it. But I thought it was really stupid, and frustrating. But I had to learn that no matter how good a project is, at a certain point it’s out of your hands. What’s happening in the world at the time? What weekend does it come out? What is it opposite? How much money did they put into PR? All of these things. Who’s the head of the studio by the time the movie comes out? Do they feel invested in it? Do they care? There are so many variables. I mean, True Romance was considered a flop, but I love all those movies. And Flirting With Disaster and a bunch of others.
Do you look back fondly on Alabama from
True Romance?
Oh, yeah, that was so fun. Tony Scott, I think, was so pivotal to me. Such a pivotal teacher as an actor. He really, really supported all my choices, and taught me, as a girl, that my choices had value. Because every time I’d have an idea, he went, “That’s great! Alabama’s got an idea. Let’s do this.” And then Christian
[Slater] would have an idea, and he’d say, “No, Christian.” Christian was like, “Why do you always pick her ideas?!”
Did you sense that the film would become so well loved over the years?
Yeah. I loved it, and I loved making it, and I knew that it was special and beautiful, and I was glad that people loved it the way that they have. And then with other films, like Flirting With Disaster, sometimes people would be cranky on the set or complain. “Are you kidding? You’re going to be so glad you’re in this movie. We’re going to look back on how wonderful this was.”
How does the experience of working with a distinctive director compare to the experience of watching their films? Is making a David Lynch film a very Lynchian experience?
Well, it’s an eccentric experience, I think, in a really wonderful way. All their processes are really different. I don’t know if I ever got over my fan-awe the whole time I was working with Martin Scorsese. David Lynch? We were shooting one scene, going down a hallway, and he was like, “Oh, God, that was great. Solid gold!” And then the crew was like, “No, David, that wasn’t good for us. She got blurry a little bit.” “Oh, great. We’ll print it! Let’s see what that looks like.” Sometimes, certain scenes he would direct while listening to music in one ear, because he wanted it to have a musical quality, almost like a metronome. That earlier stuff with Fred [Bill Pullman], that’s more of a somnambulistic kind of meter. He was very structured and yet he was excited by mistakes and surprises.
IT’S SNOBBY AND WEIRD TO THINK YOU CAN’T DO GOOD ACTING ON TV
Is he as hard to read as his films can be?
Well, he’s very specific about everything, but he will not tell you what anything is. I went crazy. “Am I a ghost? Am I another person? Am I a split personality? Am I a figment of his imagination?” “What do you think, Patricia?” I liked how, even though visually he’s incredibly specific, he would not tie you down in that way.
Did you feel nervous when you moved into TV with It wasn’t really something film actors did back then.
Medium? Well, it definitely was a big deal. People were like, “No, you can’t do TV.” And I was like, “Hold on, my grandparents, my great-grandparents were doing vaudeville. Doing network TV is as close to affordable entertainment as I can do, and I like that idea.” And I don’t know why we can’t do good acting on this medium. It’s snobby and weird. So I did want to challenge that early on, at that sort of time when George Clooney was trying to get out of TV and into movies. People weren’t going into TV. But I also was seeing this demise of film. It was already starting to become, “It has to be a giant movie.” The smaller movies were starting to go. More bankers were coming in to be decision-makers, and they were making decisions by spreadsheets, not according to who would be best. Suddenly, I was seeing directors who weren’t able to cast who they wanted. Everything was dictated. Even big directors. I found it really frustrating. So I think there’s been strategic choices that I’ve made along the way that I knew would be about longevity in my career, and I do think I consciously made that choice, because I knew TV was going to be a very important place.
It’s insane to think that Medium ran from 2005-2011, but filming on Boyhood started before that and finished after.
It was so funny, because I’d be doing TV, and people would be like, “Do you miss film?” And I’d be like, “I’m still doing film.” [laughs] So that was in my back pocket. I knew, “Yeah, I’m doing TV, and I’m also doing an art movie – a really important art movie – at the same time.” So it was my secret weapon, and such an incredible experience.
You really feel the sense of time in that film. How did it feel to watch it?
It was so weird, because Rick [Linklater] was like, “You might want to just watch it alone. It’s kind of intense.” I was like, “I’m actually going to wait and see it with an audience.” Which was really weird. So I was with my boyfriend. We’d just gotten together. We’re at Sundance. Nobody knows if they’re going to like it or not. It was the most surreal thing, watching all of this flashing through, because of the memories of us making this movie over so many years. But also, “Oh, that’s the year I got divorced. Oh, right, that’s the year Ethan [Hawke] got divorced. Oh, that’s when Rick has his other [child].” So it was like watching my own memory of shooting the movie. I had never been part of a movie where people came up to me afterwards a couple of times and said, “You know what?
We’ve been talking about having kids for a long time, and we weren’t sure. And then after this movie, we looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s do it.’”
You went on to win an Oscar, alongside other awards, for Boyhood. How did you find the awards circuit?
So fucking weird. It was really the weirdest thing in the world. I mean, it’s like a gauntlet. It really is like a strategy. There are all these different people that work for different films, and there are certain parties they send you to, and other things you have to go to. But it’s endless. By the end, I was like, “I just want to lay down and cry. I don’t know what’s going on any more. I’m so confused.” But also, here was this little movie. These producers took such a big chance by trusting this movie. They could have lost so much money. Nobody makes movies like that any more where they just throw it all in there, and there’s total trust. So it was frustrating to me that Rick didn’t get recognised more, and Ethan… you know, the film. But I was also very grateful for the whole thing. They were like, “No! You’re representing the whole movie!” Still, I think Ethan is one of the greatest American actors.
Did winning an Oscar affect the offers you were getting?
It was weird because people would look at you like suddenly you had a different value in their eyes. It’s like, “Whoa, people are weird, man.” I got offered some stuff. I wouldn’t say it was terribly different than stuff I’d been offered before. I didn’t think it made a gigantic difference in that way.
And you used your speech to call for gender equality. Is it true you felt some negative effects from that?
I definitely think I was poking the bear because, look, when you say to people, to companies, to everybody – not just in acting, but across the board – “Hey, pay half your workforce a little better,” they don’t really like it. And yet there are women in those companies that loved that. So I think it upset some people, and other people were like, “I love you so much.” I didn’t care anyway at that point. I was like, “This must be said. This can’t continue.” But I wasn’t talking specifically about entertainment. It was only later that I started to dig down and think about that.
Meryl Streep’s reaction to the speech has become a meme…
That was very cool. I think I saw her in a blur. It was very terrifying, the whole thing. I wanted to vomit the whole time,