Rossum wears her makeover well in varied roles
Actress also has just released a CD collection
Emmy Rossum’s focused on leaving her past behind her as The Phantom of the Opera ingenue Christine Daaé. So far, it’s mission accomplished and she’s Shameless about it. That’s the name of the Showtime dramedy that features Rossum’s gritty character Fiona Gallagher. In Canada, it airs on The Movie Network and Movie Central.
The 26-year-old is about to add another dysfunctional rascal to her most-wanted list. She plays the siren witch Ridley in the film version of the first of four bestselling young adult fantasy novels by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, Beautiful Creatures.
Opening on Feb. 14, the movie is a cheeky rendition of the Twilight series minus werewolves and vampires and with the malefemale roles reversed.
In it, Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich) is a mortal American teen, who yearns to escape his dull life when a mysterious new girl arrives in the southern town of Gatlin.
Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) gets Ethan’s attention, but it turns out Lena’s on the verge of turning 16 and about to become either a good or bad witch based on her sweet or not-so-sweet inclination. Ethan’s caregiver and town librarian Amma (Viola Davis) suspects the potential relationship might cause problems.
And sure enough, Lena’s “claiming” transition gets complicated when Ethan starts falling for her. Their courtship makes her warlock uncle Macon (Jeremy Irons) uncomfortable just as Lena’s evil mother Sarafine (Emma Thompson) and her cousin and childhood friend Ridley (Rossum) show up with the dark side on their minds.
Lots of hocus-pocus special effects dominate the action and so do the characterizations.
Certainly, Ridley is a scene stealer, and that’s one of the reasons Rossum pursued the part after reading the first book in the popular series written by firsttime novelists Garcia and Stohl.
“And then I got the script, read it a couple months before it went into production, and I loved it and loved the role,” recalls Rossum.
She didn’t wait for the part to be offered. “It was very much something that I was targeting and that I really wanted. So I went in and auditioned and got it.”
The motivation had nothing to do with a career move, though. But she did feel up for the challenge of portraying the Ridley villain as a mean but campy glamour princess.
Writer-director Richard La- Gravenese told her to reference 1950s movie starlets, so she did.
“We definitely patterned the character on some old movie stars like Rita Hayworth in Gilda and there’s a moment where I’m dressed as kind of Marilyn Monroe in River of No Return,” she says. “There are allusions to old movie stars and that’s something that I was happy to embrace because that’s in my wheelhouse.”
It was especially gratifying for the actress to be dolled up after her Shameless portrayal. In fact, she filmed the series and Beautiful Creatures almost simultaneously.
“Very tumultuous for your mind to go back and forth and to de-wig and re-wig and de-wig and take your nails off and put your nails on,” says Rossum, smiling.
As fans of the Shameless series know, her Fiona is hardly a beautiful creature. Neither is her caregiver character Bec in the Hilary Swank movie You’re Not You, which will arrive in theatres later this year.
“She’s a bit of a train wreck,” says Rossum. “She’s a college dropout, an alcoholic, sleeping with a married man. And she’s drifting until she reads an ad in a paper to take care of a woman who is terminally ill.”
So much for Phantom typecasting as a delicate 17-year-old singing sensation. Still, her Shameless and Beautiful Creatures characters are in sharp contrast to her real persona.
“I’m good at making people believe that I’m good at things I’m not,” says Rossum. “I like to stretch and do different things, and it’s the most boring thing that every actor says, but it’s true. I like finding the humanity and emotional groundwork underneath a bad character.”
The good news is that she hasn’t completely abandoned her singing. She just released a CD collection of popular songs called Sentimental Journey, and she might have Beautiful Creatures to thank.
“I was down in New Orleans making (Beautiful Creatures) and there was a lot of jazz-style street music, and that was one of the things that was inspiring me, although I had all the songs picked out pretty much when I went down there,” she says of the album.
“I’d always wanted to make this kind of record, which is a cover of the music I grew up loving,” says Rossum, who had total control of the project.
Between seasons of Shameless she had a little extra money. “I thought I could buy a new car or I could make a record so I financed the record myself.”
Rossum also hired the musicians, rented studio time and had lots of suggestions regarding the musical approach.
“It was fun to be in the control seat and directing the project even though musically it’s the equivalent of an indie project,” she says, thinking about the sessions again. “It was fun but terrifying to be the one who called the shots.”