STOLE HER HEART
Spacek draws from life for role in ‘Old Man and the Gun’
TORONTO — When Sissy Spacek talks about this week's “The Old Man and the Gun,” you feel like you're in America's heartland. Texas-born Spacek's accent and lifestyle speak of rural America, and her best actress Oscar (six Academy Award nominations) came as country legend Loretta Lynn in “Coal Miner's Daughter.”
Just like her widow Jewel in “Old Man,” Spacek, 68, lives on a horse farm (“We've only one horse left”) with her husband, production designer Jack Fisk. Their two daughters are grown and gone.
“Old Man and the Gun” is a “mostly true” account of senior citizen Forrest Tucker (Robert Redford), who in the early 1980s robbed Texasarea banks as one of the Over the Hill gang.
He never used his gun and was invariably described by his victims as “charming.”
However, when Spacek speaks about “Old Man” it's all about writer-director David Lowery.
She's been a fan since his 2013 debut, “Ain't Them Bodies Saints,” with Casey Affleck.
“I loved `Ain't Them Bodies Saints.' You know, it was a new voice. He's really an artist. I was in immediately when I read the first script.
“But a year passed from the first time he talked to me. Each time he'd write a new draft we'd talk about it.”
Jewel and Forrest meet when her car's broken down. Something sparks and they begin a courtship.
Spacek and Lowery collaborated on the film's one character, Jewel, who is a dramatic invention and didn't exist.
“I'd just talk to David about some of the things that I thought. She has her own place, her own life. Then this guy comes along and she thinks, Why not?
“He tells me he's a bank robber, like, `Sure, tell me another one.' He toys with her. There's a playfulness and a charm and she gets drawn into it.
“One of the things we talked about at first was she was going to go on the run with him.”
Spacek shook her head. “But she's not going to do that! She wants to sleep in her own bed. She's got all these animals.
“She's not going to throw what she's built away for this guy. If he wants to go do that, fine. She's not gonna stop him. But she's who she is.
“So we worked on her like that, together. And it was a beautiful thing.”
(“The Old Man and the Gun” opens Friday.)