A star was born
Some excerpts of the Star’s first interviews with some of this year’s Oscar nominees
Revisiting our earliest interviews with these Oscar nominees,
There was a time Scarlett Johansson could have walked down Bloor Street without causing a scene.
The year was 2003, Johansson was 18 and it was her first stop at the Toronto International Film Festival. She was starring in two films that year, “Lost in Translation” and “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” which was making its world premiere at Roy Thomson Hall.
The actress from New York City was “totally unknown” to the general public. Some critics knew of her but, for the most part, she flew under the radar. Peter Howell, the Star’s movie critic for 23 years, who leaves the paper this month, knew just moments after meeting her that she would be a star.
“Some actors are born to be actors,” Howell says.
He was one of roughly 20 journalists who interviewed Johansson at a downtown hotel that day.
Howell distinctly remembers how incredibly composed she was.
“She had five years experience, but it was like she had 50 years experience,” he says. “I remember she was holding a Hello Kitty pillow and it seemed almost childish for her because she was so in command.”
Howell was certain Johansson would make it big in Hollywood, but he had to push hard to convince his editor at the time to put her on the cover of the Entertainment section in the Sunday Star — a critical page during the city’s signature festival.
“My editor said, ‘Well I’ve never heard of her.’ I said, ‘Well, I guarantee you when this is over, you’re gonna hear about her.’ ”
Today, Johansson is the highest paid actress in Hollywood and the eighth-highest-paid actor overall.
Howell’s interview with her started off with Johansson marvelling over meeting Neil Young.
“That just triggered it for me,” she said. “It was at the after-party for ‘Lost In Translation’ and he was in the corner of the restaurant at the bar. I was so nervous, I didn’t even want to go in. You do this for so long and you become sort of glazed over about people. But occasionally, once in a while, you meet those people who make you so nervous. It’s like, ‘Omigod! It’s Neil Young! Wow!’ ”
In the lead-up to the Oscars, we dug deep into the archives to find the Star’s first interviews with some of this year’s nominees.
From Leonardo DiCaprio’s pyromaniac impression to Tom Hanks’ quality dad jokes, this is your Oscars rewind:
Leonardo DiCaprio
Nominated for: Best Actor, “Once upon a Time … in Hollywood” Highlights from our 1993 interview
With a Best Actor Oscar win and six nominations under his belt, Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the most well-known and well-respected actors of his generation. But when the Star interviewed then 18-year-old DiCaprio in 1993, he was best known for appearing in the last season of the TV show “Growing Pains.”
“I was the homeless kid who moved in with the family, but it was only for the last year of the series,” he said. “Thank God I didn’t have to do it any longer than that,” he told Star film critic Rob Salem.
“With film, you get the chance to do really good work. You can get into the head of the character, really feel you’re into the moment of the scene. Acting, basically. As opposed to sitcom work, which is really just trying to be funny and cute.”
The interview was promoting his first major film role in “This Boy’s Life,” starring opposite Robert De Niro.
Salem asked DiCaprio if he was intimidated by De Niro. “No, not really. Of course I was nervous at first. But if I stayed terrified for too long, it would take away from the film.
“I was like the sixth kid (director Michael Caton-Jones) auditioned. But he didn’t believe he could find someone for the part that easily, so he went through another 400 kids. Then he came back to me and he auditioned me again and then, when it was down to like me and six or seven other kids, it was time to read with De Niro,” DiCaprio recalled.
“I walk in and the other kids are all sitting there, nervous and shaking and going over their lines. Just sitting there (chanting) ‘De Niro. De Niro. De Niro …’ And I just went in and read, and tried not to think about it.”
“I guess they liked that, that I really wasn’t nervous in front of him. That I stood up to him in the audition.”
DiCaprio may have De Niro (and this film) to thank for his long-standing relationship with director Martin Scorsese. While reading with potential cast members, De Niro called Scorsese about one talented kid in particular: you guessed it, DiCaprio.
Scorsese recalled the conversation with De Niro at the Tribeca Film Festival last year: “You said this kid, DiCaprio, is really good … and you don’t usually say that.”
Scorsese, De Niro and DiCaprio will work together this year in the crime drama “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
Laura Dern
Nominated for: Best Supporting Actress, “Marriage Story” Highlights from our 1993 interview
The Star’s Craig MacInnis spoke with 26-year-old Dern in1993 during the promotion for “Jurassic Park.” At the time, she was more well known in indie and art-house circles, having frequently worked with director David Lynch. She was also fresh off her first Oscar nomination for the 1991 film “Rambling Rose.”
You might think the conversation about female representation and equality in Hollywood is a new trend, but it was a topic Dern was passionate about nearly three decades ago.
“I hope that I’m as authentic as a character as the other characters, that it’s not ‘The Woman in Jeopardy,’ as separate from the men in jeopardy in the piece,” she said then.
“If it is, I’d be devastated because I’m a very liberal feminist.”
Dern felt that her character, as written by Michael Crichton in the bestselling novel on which the movie is based, was substantially less interesting.
“I’m hoping there are improvements in (the film version),” she said. “In some ways, she was stereotypical in the book in that she’s the ‘woman who happens to be strong and isn’t that great?’
“I think there are two dangers from a feminist perspective. There’s the 1950s version (of women in domestic servitude) and then there’s the other approach: ‘Hey, I can do a man’s job! I’m a woman!’
“To me, that’s just as inauthentic because you’ve got to be human first.”
Brad Pitt
Nominated for: Best Supporting Actor, “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood” Highlights from our 1992 interview
Reporter Catherine Dunphy described the then-28-year-old as “hair light brown and shoulder length and stubble shrouding his chin, Brad Pitt looks more like a benign Charles Manson than Hollywood icon.” An ironic comparison considering the subject matter of the film he’s nominated for this year.
Most of the Star’s 1992 interview is dedicated to questions about “A River Runs Through It” and comparisons between Pitt and the film’s director, Robert Redford. “It’s flattering, but I don’t think about it much,” he said, regarding his resemblance to a young Redford.
In preparation for the film, Pitt practised fly fishing on the roof of the film company’s Santa Monica offices — “I hooked myself on the back of the neck so many times” — and later went to a park where “a little kid grabbed the end of the line to let me know what it felt like to feel a fish,” he laughed. “Hey man, whatever it takes.”
One thing that hasn’t changed in the nearly 30 years since this interview is the media’s obsession with Pitt’s love life. At the time, he was living with actress Juliette Lewis and recalled a recent brush with the tabloids.
“The National Enquirer camped out on my house,” Pitt let out a long sigh. “It was some bulls--t story about me breaking up someone’s marriage, somebody I didn’t even know.”
Pitt poked fun at his dating life in his recent Golden Globes acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actor: “I wanted to bring my mom, but I couldn’t because any woman I stand next to they say I’m dating. It would just be awkward.”
Renée Zellweger
Nominated for: Best Actress, “Judy” Highlights from our 1997 interview
Renée Zellweger is nominated this year for her heartbreaking portrayal of Hollywood legend Judy Garland in “Judy.” The Star’s Judy Gerstel interviewed the actress back in 1997 when Zellweger was on the cusp of obtaining “it girl” status.
Zellweger grew up in a small town 60 kilometres west of Houston, the daughter of an engineer. She initially went to the University of Texas in Austin to study journalism and took a drama course as an option because she wanted to sleep in.
“It was scheduled for after 11 in the morning,” she explained. “That’s why I picked it. It could’ve been art history, just as long as it was after 11.” But the acting class reminded her that she had enjoyed drama at high school and she began getting work around Austin in commercials. She even got a bit part in Richard Linklater’s “Dazed And Confused.”
“And then I ended up getting this chainsaw massacre movie,” she explained. “As far as artistic integrity is concerned, it’s not really a concern when you live in Texas. You take what comes.”
But her “Dazed” co-star Matthew McConaughey had a script on set for a movie called “Love and a .45.” “I said, ‘Hmmm, what’s this?’ And I had a little look at it and thought, ‘Golly, I could do this.’ And he ended up not being in it and I ended up doing it.”
Zellweger landed the lead role (alongside Vancouver actor Gil Bellows) and received enough critical praise to convince her to move to Los Angeles.
“I packed up the little Honda, and we got our CDs and our Cheetohs, and we cruised across the country,” she said, the plural referring to her only significant other, Dylan the dog, so named because she fell asleep on a Rolling Stone magazine with a Bob Dylan cover.
Tom Hanks
Nominated for: Best Supporting Actor, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” Highlights from our 1985 interview
It’s hard to imagine a time when Tom Hanks wasn’t a household name. But in 1985, the 29-year-old Hanks had just begun his career in film with the recent success of romantic comedy “Splash.” Rob Salem interviewed Hanks during promotion for the film “The Man With One Red Shoe,” and Hanks had this to say on the subject of his new-found fame:
“I’m in a situation where I’m not huge, but I’m big. No brag. I’ve got people clamouring for me that I don’t even know. My name is bandied about in places I would never dream of. Cable TV shows talk about me. And I don’t even get cable. The opportunity is here for me to do what I like doing on scales that I’ve never been able to do it before.”
Later in the interview, Hanks was asked about his first screen credit in the low-budget slasher flick “He Knows You’re Alone.”
He recoiled as if struck in the face. “Oooo, that stung. My nose is bleeding. Those things come out of the closet, don’t they?”
“When I started making it, it was called ‘The Uninvited.’ Before that, it had been ‘Shriek.’ During the first cut, it was called ‘Blood Wedding’ and when MGM bought it, it was ‘He Knows You’re Alone.’ So actually I made four movies. I saw it in a theatre in Glendale and I swear to God, the entire audience was rooting for the killer.”
When asked if money had changed him, he responded with some of that trademark Hanksian charisma, “You know, they have to bring it over in a pickup truck. It usually comes in nickels.”
Charlize Theron
Nominated for: Best Actress, “Bombshell” Highlights from our 2004 interview
When the trailer for “Bombshell” was released last year, Charlize Theron’s transformation into Megyn Kelly garnered a lot of buzz. But that was nothing compared to her transformation into Aileen Wuornos back in 2003 for the film “Monster.” Theron gained 30 pounds and shaved her eyebrows for her role as the serial killer, and that’s all reporters wanted to talk about.
“Hollywood is all about make-believe,” Theron said. “But somehow, nobody has any clue how to imagine what somebody could look like if they went through the transformation. For some reason we have to walk into the room and be the person already.”
In other words, beauty may not be a liability, but it will only get you so far. “I hope that changes,” she said. “Where the physical aspect of it is not that important, where people will take chances the way Patty (Jenkins) did. She said, ‘I don’t see that woman. I see something else. I don’t just see the woman walking down the red carpet in the gown. I can see her through this.’ ”
Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach
Nominated for: Best Picture, “Marriage Story” and “Little Women” Highlights from our 2013 interview Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach had a pretty great 2019. The couple welcomed their first child last March and both have films in the Best Picture category. Peter Howell did a Q&A with them in 2013 while they were in Toronto promoting their film “Frances Ha.” Given that this is a contemporary story, why did you write Frances as a Luddite? She refers to a smartphone as a “phone that does email.” Baumbach: It wasn’t so deliberate, but neither of us are on Facebook or Twitter or anything. Gerwig: To be fair, I was on Facebook when it started, but I quickly got off of it. I just know myself and it’s a time suck, so I can’t do it. And I don’t find cellphones that interesting. I just feel like most life interactions don’t happen via text. Will you continue to work together? Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann prove how successful a filmmaking couple can be, especially when it comes to comedy. Gerwig: Yes! I feel like I’ve never had so much fun writing and making a movie with someone. So as long as that keeps being true, there’s no reason to not do it.
The couple recently signed to co-write Warner Bros’ live-action “Barbie” with Margot Robbie in the lead role. Gerwig is rumoured to be directing the film.
Quentin Tarantino
Nominated for: Best Director, “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood” Highlights from our 1992 interview
Craig MacInnis interviewed Quentin Tarantino at his first Toronto International Film Festival when he attended in 1992 for his directorial debut, “Reservoir Dogs.” Still bleary-eyed from a late night Midnight Madness screening the night before, Tarantino poured several coffees down his throat during a rambling morning press session.
He won the International Critics’ Award at TIFF that year, the first of many future accolades. Unsurprisingly, Tarantino’s views on violence in film haven’t changed a whole lot either.
“I love violence in movies,” he said. “I don’t have a problem with it. Violence is actually one of the more cinematic things you can do in a movie.”
What really burned him though was when a movie pulled up short of a logically violent conclusion just to spare its audience.
He felt “Patriot Games,” for instance, failed to uphold the film’s mandate.