Marvel flexes acting muscles
Actress relishes challenge roles of authority present
Elizabeth Marvel knows how to command attention — which is why she’s one of the few women to have reached the country’s highest office, at least on television.
In “House of Cards,” she ran for president as special prosecutor Heather Dunbar, but fell short. In “Homeland,” she was President Elizabeth Keane — “That made my mother so happy,” Marvel says of the promotion — but gave up the office at the end of the most recent season.
And in Oskar Eustis’ Public Theater production of “Julius Caesar” in New York’s Central Park — the version where Caesar wore a Donald Trump-style wig and a pro-Trump audience member stormed the stage in protest — she took on the traditionally male role of Marc Antony.
Though she has played quirkier characters, including a doomed hair salon owner in FX’s “Fargo,” and was almost unrecognizable in “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)” as the painfully repressed sister Jean, her “Homeland” and “House of Cards” roles have cemented her image as a woman accustomed to wielding authority, which she says she started to cultivate when she studied at the Juilliard School.
“That emerged very early, and it exists in me,” she says. “I never felt insecure or afraid of my power. Also, it’s all pretend, so it never intimidated me.”
Marvel’s newest film, Nicole Holofcener’s “The Land of Steady Habits,” is very much a supporting role, neither mouse nor power woman, but a suburban mom whose son forms a bond with the story’s protagonist (Ben Mendelsohn), a man struggling with his decision to leave his family.
Still, although the part may not be her most challenging, it allowed her to work with Holofcener, a director she admires, and her husband, Bill Camp, who co-stars in the Netflix film.
Camp and Marvel will also appear together next year as a married couple in director Rashid Johnson’s adaptation of the Richard Wright novel “Native Son.” And she’ll have a recurring role in the forthcoming Netflix series “Unbelievable,” a true story about two detectives whose rape investigations intersect with a girl who recanted her testimony about a sexual assault.
All three roles give her the chance to flex different acting muscles.
At 48, she’s known as an actress who can move effortlessly from TV to films to the stage, where she’s appeared as Regan in Shakespeare’s “King Lear” and Blanche DuBois in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” while also winning praise in new plays like “Fifty Words” and “Other Desert Cities.”
Meeting Marvel off-screen, she declares that she’s much goofier and sillier than the formidable characters she’s most known for portraying.
“I long to be unleashed in the realm of comedy,” Marvel says.
The following is an edited transcript of the conversation.
Q: How did this quieter role in “Land of Steady Habits” come about?
A: I do a lot of women with gravitas who are power hitters.
A lot of people need to see something different before they understand what an actor can do. I think Noah Baumbach’s “The Meyerowitz Stories” helped with this. Playing Jean in that movie, I was so excited to be allowed to create something so different, with an internal landscape instead of an external one.
Normally, I own the room, but Jean was constantly trying to take up less space instead of more. It was such a pleasure, when a director asks me to do what I don’t automatically know how to do.
Q: “Land of Steady Habits” had the added appeal of costarring your husband, Bill Camp. Was that fun?
A: He’s pretty much my favorite actor in the world, and we love each other’s company, so we had a great time.
When we were young, we did a lot of theater together, and we are still often asked to do plays together, but we can’t, because we have a son, and it’s too much of a commitment. But with films, we can just take him with us.
Q: Do you give each other notes?
A: Not a lot. He’s really good and makes really good choices, but there are times we give each other a look that says, “Too much?” or “Not enough.”
We have a shorthand. It’s also lovely when you have the normal nerves of landing on a new set to have someone immediately in your corner.
Q: You’re also going to be seen in “Unbelievable,” with Toni Collette, Merritt Wever and Kaitlyn Dever.
A: I was thinking about how many incredible women I’ve worked with this past year. Nicole Holofcener, Lisa Cholodenko directing “Unbelievable,” SuzanLori Parks, who wrote the script for “Native Son” — but there were also women DPs (cinematographers) and more women on the teams throughout.
The landscape has changed in just the last year.
Women are getting called off the bench and getting put in the game, they’ve been there and they’re ready. It does change the feel on the set. There’s a consciousness that’s different.
Q: You mentioned the skills you’ve developed. Was there a moment when you felt it all clicked?
A: I was really lucky — Michael Langham was my mentor at Juilliard and he took me straight to the Stratford Festival in Canada and cast me in the lead role in “Measure for Measure.” He told me, “If you really want to be a stage actor, you need to do this for five years.” And that’s what I did.
I was perpetually in rehearsal for one show while acting in another, because I had to have two paychecks to survive. It was intense. I was kind of out of my mind. It was a different time; you could hustle in New York City, have a roommate and have a bathtub in your kitchen and live on chili. Now you have to have parents who can pay for it.
When I realized I love this, but I need to make some bank, I did get cast on “The District” and went to LA. I didn’t do a ton, but I talked to the camera department and asked them 5 million questions. It was my camera college. When I finished that show, I really understood the scale and the difference from theater and what the camera sees.
Q: Having a son gives you and Bill less time for theater, but you did star in the “Julius Caesar” in Central Park last summer where Caesar resembled Donald Trump. Is Shakespeare special to you?
A: Shakespeare will get me out of the house. That’s my great love. There’s no feeling like when you’re riding the verse. It’s like the high I’ve heard surfers talk about when they get on a massive wave.
Nothing equals it.