FEARLESS ACT
Collette lured by terrifying role in ‘Hereditary’
With “Hereditary,” the buzzedabout horror movie that opened this weekend, Toni Collette has “the most difficult and the most demanding role” of a storied career.
After hits such as “Muriel's Wedding,” “The Sixth Sense,” “Little Miss Sunshine” and TV's “United States of Tara,” Collette, 45, embraced the complexity that defines “Hereditary” and her role as a tormented mother and wife.
As the film begins, Annie Graham (Collette) has just buried her mother. Her husband, Steve (Gabriel Byrne), teenage son Peter (Alex Wolff) and daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) notice something about her is different.
Soon after, Charlie dies in a car accident, one in which Peter was driving.
“It's a very frank look at a family in pain,” Collette said. “It's about part of the human condition, which is confronting great loss and how people try to deal with that, successfully and very unsuccessfully.
“It's also about what we inherit from our family. I mean, it's very extreme in this case, but I found it really fascinating that there could be a film that both existed as a horror film and also as something so honest.”
Annie is both a terror and terrorized — something not of this world has moved in — and Collette offers an operatic range of emotional extremes.
“That's really why I wanted to do this. I just thought, `Oh my God. How often do you get a chance to really go for it?' This woman is just so complicated.
“The film itself is very dense, the character is so unexpected in her own right because she's very contrary to many ideas of what you would imagine someone to be like.
“She's not your typical mother. She's not your typical artist. She's not a great wife. In fact, I think everything except her art is probably her doing what she feels is expected of her.
“There are just so many different layers about self-knowledge. She's really repressed and I don't blame her.
“There's so much toxic and unthinkable behavior within her family. This is a woman who lives with a certain amount of this ominous dread.”
As for what Annie demanded of her, Collette couldn't hide her exhilaration. “I'm telling you, when you're working with material this good, I felt that it was so clear.
“I knew what was required of me. I just knew that I had to do it. I had no choice: It's a very honest and emotional, extremely emotional, film.”