Brittany Murphy Interview, The Dead Girl

 Posted by: Sheila Roberts

We had a chance to sit down and talk to Brittany Murphy about her brand new film The Dead Girl, as well as her upcoming career as a singer and her other ongoing projects. The new film from acclaimed writer/director Karen Moncrieff (BLUE CAR), is a quintet of stories about seemingly unrelated people whose lives converge around the murder of a young woman. "The Stranger” is about the woman (Toni Collette) who finds the body. The publicity generated by the discovery creates an opening for her to break away from her abusive mother’s (Piper Laurie) control and form an unlikely bond with the mysterious Rudy (Giovanni Ribisi).

"The Sister,” a forensics graduate student (Rose Byrne), is torn between her mother’s (Mary Steenburgen) pressure to hold onto hope for her abducted sister's return and her longing to move forward with her own life. When she examines the dead girl, she is convinced that she has found the body of her missing sister, finally releasing her from her burden.

"The Wife” (Mary Beth Hurt) is trapped in an intense hate/love relationship with her husband (Nick Searcy). A terrible discovery about his connection to the dead girl's murder forces her to confront what she though she knew about him—and herself.

"The Mother” (Marcia Gay Harden) searches for answers about her runaway daughter’s life and is confronted with a series of revelations that change the course of her own life. She gets help in her quest from another troubled young woman—the prostitute (Kerry Washington) who lived with her daughter.

"The Dead Girl” (Brittany Murphy) is a fireball: hyper, volatile, self-destructive and subject to hair-trigger bursts of uncontrollable rage. She also has an innocent and child-like side. She dreams about improving her life and becoming a good mother to her young daughter.

The characters in THE DEAD GIRL are linked not only by their connection to a brutal murder but also by the difficult hand that life has dealt them. The film scrutinizes their inner struggles to overcome or surrender to their misfortunes. As in BLUE CAR, Moncrieff creates multidimensional portraits of women as they seesaw emotionally through a tangle of conflicting desires and fears.

Brittany Murphy: How are you? Good to see you. Good to see everybody in here. This is like déjà vu day. I’ve seen you all before in other places.

Q: Did you have a good sleep after your flight from Tokyo?

Brittany: Uh no, not yet, but I will. I’ve had good sleeps but um I’d love a good 12 hour chunk but I’m really happy with what I’m doing with my life.

Q: What attracts an actress to a role where they know they’re going to be killed? What was there that you saw in this?

Brittany: What attracted me to the character or the film?

Q: The film. The fact that you are the dead girl.

Brittany: I didn’t look at it like that. When Karen asked me to… I was offered the role of Krista and knew the script was called The Dead Girl and I started reading it and I thought it would be a thriller, a psychological thriller. Upon reading it, I realized that I definitely, you know, I was sort of going, ‘Wait a minute. Who did it?’ and then forgot by the end of Act One even bothering or wondering or worrying or thinking about who did it and kept reading and in the truest sense of the statement, the journey did become my destination because these characters popped off the page and infiltrated me and one couldn’t help but read it and I felt like a voyeur passing different windows on a street.
 
And in one household you have a couple arguing, and in another you have a child crying, and another from every different background and from every different situation and they have one common thread. But you know I loved Krista. She is spectacular. She’s so spectacular. She has so much hope and so much light and she tries so hard and God loves a trier. And she really just wants to do her best in this life and in this world to make sure that her baby is taken care of and to be a great mom.
 
She unfortunately is afflicted with a bit of mental illness and bipolar which is not touched upon in the script but I know it’s in the notes somewhere. Her being bipolar and self-medicating herself definitely would confuse the path that she’s trying to get on so that’s why she’s living so mercurially in the second really, not even in the minute. But I thought that she was a lovely, exciting person to be able to play. I also wanted to… I knew that she was definitely, very specifically derived from a true person, a real person that passed away whose life didn’t get to be represented and I wanted to represent that person’s life for them and some other people.

Q: Did she show you any of that real person’s story?

Brittany: Yes, and the reason Karen asked me to play – I don’t know if this is a secret or not – I asked Karen why she thought of me for this and it was because of, I guess, prior performances before and a little part of me reminded her of the actual girl that she sat on jury for the death of and she saw footage on her. I can’t remember if it was an aesthetic or an emotional thing from another film or another character I’d played, but once I knew that, I couldn’t possibly…and also I heard Karen’s vision for her film along with this really stunning, unique script and it was something that I really couldn’t not be a part of. I feel really blessed to be amongst this great group of people.

Q: Did you jump on first?

Brittany: I was on third maybe. Second maybe. I know it was Toni, Giovanni, and then me.

Q: Did you go off and meet any of these girls?

Brittany: Uh, Giovanni, Toni, and me. That’s how it was. I’m sorry. I did do research and like any good journalist, I prefer to keep my research confidential. So the people that I did research with don’t … they would prefer to remain anonymous and I would like to respect their wishes. So…

Q: Oh, I don’t mean naming any names.

Brittany: I know.

Q: Did you go to any motels or…?

Brittany: I won’t name those either. I’m sorry but (using a teasing voice) a good journalist never gives away their sources, for crying out loud. (laughter) No, but I did speak with… along with research for the profession that Krista was in, I did speak with quite a few…well two drug counselors to break down the chemical imbalances that she has along with a doctor and then a real brilliant man and then was able to speak to recovered and reformed users of the drugs that Krista uses.

Q: Kerry Washington said that she actually went driving around the streets of Los Angeles and chatted with some of the girls.

Brittany: Yes, I know.

Q: She decided that maybe it was a mistake.

Brittany: She thought what?

Q: In hindsight maybe it was a bit of a risk.

Brittany: Why?

Q: I should say so.

Brittany: She was fine.

Q: How did you find the experience of talking to some of these women? Did you find it sad?

Brittany: They were just like us, just very – I don’t want to be redundant and repeat anything that Kerry said. They were awesome people. There were some really incredible people and I feel grateful to the people that shared bits and pieces of their life with me.

Q: So what do you do for fun? How do you spend your money?

Brittany: Well, that’s a non sequitur, man! (laughter) What does fun have to do with spending money? It never does. The most joy that I could possibly get in life is being around my eight nieces and nephews and my family. I love it and I live with my mom and my uncle and from time to time with my nieces and nephews and cousins and things. I really love being around my family. It makes me happy.

Q: Well, I have a better non sequitur then because if you love being around your family, you’ll love Happy Feet.

Brittany: Yes, they will.

Q: Was that good?

Brittany: That’s very good, although I do want to mention that I have a domestic day of press that is scheduled for Happy Feet. I was in Tokyo when you guys were here so I’d love it if you can make it. If you can’t, I thoroughly understand, but if they could give you the information when I leave, I would love to talk about Happy Feet.

Q: Yeah, that’d be great.Good because we hadn’t heard about it.

Brittany: I would adore it. I hope that there’s nothing…they could schedule it so that we can do that. I would really like that.

Q: We missed you at the press conference.

Brittany: Yeah, I really… We ran over two days and there was nothing I could do. It was supposed to be four days. As a producer and star of the movie, I still got it down to…I still made it here for the half of the last day of foreign but I was very bummed out because… Finish you question, please. If you can’t make it that day, just in case.

Q: No, I will. But I’ll transfer to another question. I’ll sort of slide in something else because one of the things is like I’ve actually seen you in a bunch of things this year. I saw Love and Other Disasters. That was fun. A film that I loved. I thought it was great.

Brittany: You did? Well thank you!

Q: Yeah, yeah. I wrote about it and I hope that someone picks it up soon because it was so…I went to the premiere that night.

Brittany: You wrote about it on what?

Q: On MSN.

Brittany: Thank you.

Q: You’re welcome.

Brittany: It would be really great if somebody picked it up because… It was great. It was so much fun.

Q: My question is you’re in all sorts of things. You’ve got a very serious movie like The Dead Girl. You’ve got Happy Feet. You had the Paul Oakenfold single and then even on something like Happy Feet, you’re singing too. How do you juggle all that? Like so many actresses can’t branch out beyond just romantic comedy and you …?

Brittany: Well, I’ve never pigeon holed myself into any specific person or being or a career plan except for an overall dream that encompasses entertaining people. So, you know, that’s not something that I find… That’s something that I don’t feel I’ve reached the tip of the iceberg as far as the different mediums I like to entertain people in. So I’m really looking forward to that and to me it’s such a joy.
 
Singing is such a joy. I was never formally trained in acting and never formally trained in singing and I’ve been singing since I was born, since as long as I can remember and as a child anything from an Italian aria to an old blues song. So I sing in character for Happy Feet and probably there was a time when I was 14 when I could have veered off in two different directions and done one or the other, acting or music, and I chose acting and continued writing and doing music for myself and kept that very dear to me so there’ll be a time when I share it with others when it feels right.

Q: Do you think you’ll release an album?

Brittany: Oh yeah, definitely in my lifetime.

Q: Are you talking about doing this?

Brittany: Most definitely. I don’t know when but I will.

Q: What style of music would you most like to do?

Brittany: It has to be a little bit more further executed to describe that. I grew up … I’ll tell you my first concert was Run-D.M.C. and The Fat Boys (laughter). Yeah. I was five. I wore one earring. I felt so cool. My second was the Rat Pack Reunion Tour at Garden State Art Center when Dean fell out and Liza stepped in. My third was Al Jarreau. So I grew up with a lot of jazz, tons and tons of jazz, and black classical Nina Simone to Alabilly to Chet Baker, Thelonious Monk, you name it, every kind of jazz imaginable. Miles.

Q: Do you play guitar at all?

Brittany: I can play any instrument if you give me 20 minutes…

Q: Wow.

Brittany: …and tell me the song pretty much. I’m better at playing by ear instruments like I picked a trumpet up a couple years ago and played that but … They were all worried about my lip in the store. (laughs)

Q: Where does that gift come from? Does someone in you family have a musical (inaudible)?

Brittany: Yeah, yeah, my father’s side actually who I didn’t grow up with at all. It’s quite a large testament to genetics. That whole side of the family, besides my mom, having exquisite taste in music and having it around me all the time and being around it and expressing myself through it all the time growing up. My father’s side there’s a lot of opera singers and jazz musicians. It’s opera and jazz.

Q: What do you listen to? Like what artists?

Brittany: Me? I mean probably…

Q: You said the old stuff. Anything current?

Brittany: Current. Currently I’ve been in Tokyo. OK? So I…music is so important to me. My Ipod was stolen. I haven’t been able to have time to be able to fill in a new one so I had a big stack of CD’s I was packing and I had to go to work and someone was just going to put them in a suitcase and then I had this little itsy bitsy one little box CD case that was the ‘no’ pile. Well, instead, someone put the little ‘no’ pile in (laughter) and it was alright.
 
So then a friend of mine before they left working knew that I was going crazy without my music so went out and got me some CD’s that they liked and some CD’s they know I would like. I love… I was listening to in Tokyo most recently… I can’t go too modern but Death Row’s Greatest Hits is great because it’s got everything from No Vasoline on it to it’s just such a great battle track. I love Naz as well. He’s a great battle rapper to Lottie Dottie but that’s hip hop. Eminem is always a burst of energy. I love his second album the best, Marshall Mathers’ LP. Also Encore and then we were listening to Gwen Stefani a lot and a lot of Serenina Billy so I do veer older when I …

Q: You said you produced Ramen Girl and you starred in it as well?

Brittany: Correct.

Q: Can you give us a little background on the movie? What it’s about?

Brittany: It’s about a girl who goes to…she drops out of law school to move to Tokyo, Japan to be with her boyfriend a few years that then has to go to…he’s in computer programming. He then has to go to Osaka which is not terribly far but a couple hours away on a business trip and says he doesn’t know when he’s coming back and the apartment’s paid up. She’s then stuck there and she decides to stay. She’s sent plane tickets home by her overbearing parents. So she meets some folks, a couple people, one an American girl who is working as a hostess and a British guy and they’re sort of this unique breed of people that for lack of a better term are lost in translation there but they just don’t really have … they’re aimless wanderers. And she sort of falls into being an aimless wanderer for a moment.
 
Then she sees this red lantern across the street when she’s chain smoking on her patio and it’s this little ramen shop and she goes in and obviously she doesn’t speak Japanese and she decides to ask the man who runs the place to be her sensei and to teach her the art of ramen (laughs) which is a really ancient art. It actually originated in China but it’s an ancient Japanese art form and you see how the intricacies of Japanese culture truly do affect this girl and she utilizes it for the good in her life and instead of how some other people that ended up there choose not to be a part of it or to be partiers, she takes this culture and embraces it and then is able to move on with it. It’s really a Japanese film, half of it’s in Japanese. I’m the only person speaking English the entire three-quarters of the film.

Q: You’re very close to your mother. You mentioned that.

Brittany: Yeah.

Q: What was the most valuable thing that she taught you?

Brittany: To have a sense of humor about life, to not take myself too seriously, through example being a strong, independent woman. There’s a great Maya Angelou quote, ‘I am woman phenomenally. Phenomenal woman that is me.’ And I think of my mom when I hear that and if I could be a third of the woman that she is and have a third of the strength that she has, then I will have done good by this life.

Q: And what are you doing for Christmas?

Brittany: I’m going to be spending it very joyfully and cheerfully with my family.

Q: Any traditions?

Brittany: Many. (laughter) Thank you very much…which I’d love to speak about but I can’t because there’s a premiere tonight. Thank you so much.
 
Thanks to Brittany Murphy for taking the time to answer questions. Be sure to checkout her film which opens in limited release Dec 29th.

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