Clarkson takes the wheel for film
“It was life and art coming together.”
Patricia Clarkson says she’s amazed how many people she knows in New York City who have never learned to drive.
Even the Academy Awardnominated Clarkson, 55, has fallen rusty behind the wheel since relocating to New York years ago.
So it’s not a far-fetched twist that her middle-aged Manhattan character in the film Learning to
Drive has lessons that prove lifechanging — and lead to a warm friendship with her Sikh instructor, played by Ben Kingsley.
That relationship is at the heart of director Isabel Coixet’s comedy, in theaters Aug. 21.
“When you are learning to drive, you have to be present; you have to pay attention,” Clarkson says. “All of these things are new to my character.
“What’s beautiful is that it is not a movie about a middle-aged woman trying to find herself, but one trying to find others.”
The comedy begins when Clarkson’s character, Wendy, a book critic, has a relationship-ending fight with her unfaithful husband in the back seat of a cab driven by Kingsley’s Darwan.
When Darwan, who also is a driving instructor, tracks her down to return a manuscript she accidentally left in the taxi, Wendy decides to take lessons to aid her new quest for independence.
She gets to know the soft-spoken Darwan, a man dealing with his own life changes while planning an arranged marriage.
“There are a lot of intimate moments in the car,” Clarkson says. “Slowly, they open up to one another about their lives.”
The pairing reunites Clarkson and Kingsley, who starred as lovers in Coixet’s 2008 drama Elegy.
Kingsley, who won a best-actor Oscar for 1982’s Gandhi, says the Sikh community in Queens embraced the film and allowed scenes to be shot in its temples.
Each day, the movie’s Sikh adviser would place the turban on Kingsley’s head, which helped the actor find his peaceful character.
And Clarkson had to relearn her driving skills, which led to some exciting moments.
“That’s really me driving over the bridge,” she says. “We had a couple of close calls. It was life and art coming together.”