Julia Ormond Interview

Hollywood first took notice of the classically beautiful and talented Julia Ormond when she appeared opposite Brad Pitt in a highly regarded supporting role in Legends of the Fall. The British actress who studied at Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art was recently seen in David Lynch’s film “Inland Empire,” as well as “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl: with Abigail Breslin. She can currently be seen in Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” with Benicio Del Toro and stars in the upcoming “Surveillance” alongside Bill Pullman.

MoviesOnline sat down with Julia to talk about her new film, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” directed by David Fincher from a screenplay by Eric Roth. Based on the 1920s short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards, the film stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett with Ormond, Taraji P. Henson, Tilda Swinton, Jason Flemyng, and Elias Koteas.

“Benjamin Button” is a fascinating tale of a not-so-ordinary man and the people and places he discovers along the way, the loves he finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time. Ormond’s character, Caroline, provides a modern day perspective on Benjamin Button’s remarkable journey traveling backwards through life as she reads the carefully preserved pages of her mother’s (Blanchett/Daisy) beloved diary. In the process, Caroline makes an unexpected discovery that reveals her unique place on that extraordinary landscape.

Julia Ormond is a fabulous person and we really appreciated her time. Here’s what she had to tell us about her role in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”:

MoviesOnline: What was your reaction to elements in the film which you didn’t get to see until it was all put together?

Julia: I saw it at two different points. It was wonderful. It was a very unique experience. David had finished filming everything other than the Caroline and Daisy section, so he was able to show me a cut of the film without me in it. Just from a ‘totally all about me’ perspective, this was such an interesting experience to be able to go see a film that you’re going to be in and then see a cut of it with you in it and how distorting it is with all the baggage you bring and the anxiety and all the rest of it.

Although I would have loved to have been involved with the New Orleans part of it and [to have] developed a rapport with the other actors and crew, it worked and was just right for the Caroline section of the story that’s revealed to her through the book.

MoviesOnline: Having the words on the page is one thing, but to be able to see how it was going to be portrayed must have been invaluable?

Julia: Yes. Ultimately, what David and I were striving for was to have a sense of pacing, of how those scenes would fit in to what came after it or what you come out of, to just remember the temperature of the scene so that you could work to get a good juxtaposition for the film. For me, it’s almost like a symphony when you have all these rich characters. I said to David, “I feel like I’m playing the triangle in this rich, sweeping orchestra. There are violins and then there’s the beautiful, delicate flute and then every now and then we come back to Caroline and she goes, “Ding.” Every time you come back, it’s “Ding.” I just had to suck it up and accept that the triangle has its role in the orchestra. It really informed what we were doing. It was very stark.

You get to the point of somebody’s death. For a lot of people, that experience happens in the restriction of a very basic room, a bed, nurses, people in and out. The claustrophobia of that and the finality of that is something that fed into trying to get the circumstances of it as real as possible. I like how it fits with the rest of the movie in terms of all the other trappings of life that fall away until you’re just left with the starkness of your relationship. 

MoviesOnline: Were you familiar with the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story at all?

Julia: No.
 
MoviesOnline: What did you think of this concept?

Julia: I thought it was really unique. I thought it was a unique story idea that someone is born with an affliction that means they live their life experience backwards, and I found it amazing how much that ends up saying to us about life and death and our life experiences. It was just extraordinary. It’s really one simple idea that just continues to deliver. I love how it says how life is so cyclical. It comes right back in a circle. If you’ve ever nursed somebody to death, they revert back to being a baby. My grandfather was 97 when he died and he was in a pattern of sleeping for three hours and then waking up and wanting to have a little bit of something. It was just like a baby. And, your mental capacity and memory deteriorates. There is something so beautiful. It feels like the story of the film goes around in a circle, instead of being a line.

I just really love the courage of it being a piece that has the love story within it, but it’s also so much about people who come and go in your life, and the experiences that affect you and shape you. I found that very powerful, when I was watching it, in terms of how that actually accumulates into quite a profound experience. Yet David and (screenwriter) Eric (Roth) were so disciplined about not delivering the predictable climactic scene that I think would have somehow lessened it. The choice of what is not said and the choice of the scenes that aren’t played [was so important]. In my character arc, I’m there for the moments leading up to her death, but then I’m gone when she actually dies, and you never get to see the moment where she comes back and discovers she’s dead, but hopefully, if it’s done right, you don’t actually need it.
 
MoviesOnline: Your character gets to experience that powerful realization about life in a much more compressed period of time. She gets all that information and emotion in this single scene with her mother, whereas the rest of the characters experience that over a period of 60 years. Was it interesting to play it that way?

Julia: When we were doing it, it felt like what was really happening was that, when Caroline initially gets that book and her mother wants to read it, my sense of it was that she fears it was somehow going to get in the way of her having an intimate experience with her mother and that she’s lost it, mentally. She wants to spend this time in denial, and she doesn’t want to talk through stuff that’s unresolved. She wants to focus on this scrapbook that this guy left her. But, it’s her death and it’s what she wants to do.

Ultimately, what happens is that the mother shares something that she has held secret from Caroline, for Caroline’s own good, and it turns into the exact intimate experience that they’re both seeking. When we filmed our stuff, it was very much about the mother-daughter relationship and how I would respond to hearing this news, and how would I respond to her asking for this, and just the fact that she’s fading away. It was just about the intimacy of being with someone, as they’re looking back.
 
MoviesOnline: How was it working with Cate? Did you talk about how you would approach that sequence?

Julia: Most of my preparation, to be honest, was with Eric Roth and David. We did a read-through. All of the cast came together to do a read-through initially, but most of my detailed prep was with them. David was able to talk about choices that Cate had made, and then we would discuss each scene as it came up. Before we set out to film it, we talked through a general sense of how everything would come together, and then, within each scene, we talked about the specifics that we wanted to bring into it.

I was one of the only actors in the film who didn’t have to sit through five hours of make-up. I don’t know how the others did it. They waved the turn-around time. They came in at three in the morning and would sit there for four or five hours to get the make-up done. And then, at the end of the day, I don’t know that it helped them feel older because they just had stuff on their face or their body. It’s the actor opposite you. I was the one that got the benefit of all of that.

Kate was great. She’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s very intelligent, she has no starry ego or hierarchy on set. It was a very sound and gratifying acting experience. And, I thought David was just phenomenal. I can’t think of another director that would have shouldered so much technical stuff and special effects. In your average film, maybe you would be dealing with some of that technical stuff, for maybe five days of filming, where the acting takes second place to it. He really delivered us a concrete platform from which he then wanted you to fly, and he was very specific about what he wanted. It was great.
 
MoviesOnline: This is one of two films you have this year with directors who have both monumental achievements and aspirations. Can you talk about what it was like working with Steven Soderbergh and Benicio del Toro on Che?

Julia: That was again another fabulous experience, but a very, very different directing style. The thing that was true about both of them was that, however small the part was, they both allowed me to talk it through. They were both passionate about going after the detail of it and making choices that are informed by exploring all the different possibilities. Very often, if you have a small role, you don’t get as much time with the director to talk that stuff through.

When you actually get in situ, Steven works incredibly quickly. David certainly works efficiently, but he’s not going to be rolling camera on you when you think you’re in your downtime, whereas Steven was just grabbing footage, left, right and center, and everybody was scrambling. You’d see the lighting department run by, going, “He’s shooting! He’s shooting!” He’s his own cinematographer and his own cameraman, so he just knows when he’s ready to start rolling.

They were both really special experiences for me. It’s wonderful to work with people who have not just developed their own style and have their own strengths, but who are really devoted to how we create character and how to do our best job to achieve that, on the day.
 
MoviesOnline: If you had the choice to age backwards, especially in this industry, would you want to?

Julia: No. When I look at the film, there is so much loneliness in it for him as a result of that. It poses an interesting question, but no. I wish I had known certain things when I was younger. I worried a lot, as a kid, about how I was going to cope and what I was going to do. I worried about not being able to deal with problems. It just seemed like there was so much that was unknown, that you would have to deal with in adulthood and the responsibility of adulthood. I wish I’d known to just take a chill pill and let it be what it would be and you’ll cope. It’s okay. I think I’m happy that it’s gone forward rather than backwards.

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” opens in theaters on December 25th.