Patricia Clarkson Captivates at Festival
The Hamptons International Film Festival’s “A Conversation With Patricia Clarkson” on Friday delivered more than advertised. The actress, whose film “Learning to Drive” was one of the festival’s Spotlight Films, provided her Bay Street Theater audience with a riveting, hourlong performance filled with humor, insight, self-revelation, and a bounty of anecdotes and observations culled from almost 30 years as an actress, all elicited with finesse by the film critic Thelma Adams.
Directed by Isabel Coixet, “Learning of Drive” is the story of Wendy Shields (Ms. Clarkson), a literary critic whose husband unexpectedly leaves her after 20 years, and Darwan (Ben Kingsley), a Sikh driving instructor and part-time cab driver, who is reluctantly facing an arranged marriage to a woman from his native village in India.
For Wendy, conquering her fear of driving becomes a metaphor for achieving independence, and she resists both through much of the film. A chance encounter brings her into contact with Darwan, who convinces her to let him teach her.
The film was a long time coming to fruition. “I was attached to it for at least eight years, dog years, I think,” Ms. Clarkson said. “It’s a beautiful film based on a gorgeous Katha Pollitt short story that was published in The New Yorker, and Sarah Kernochan wrote a wonderful script.” She and the producer Dana Friedman were like “two dogs with a bone,” convinced the film could and should be made.
Asked why the part of Wendy was special, Ms. Clarkson said, “I’ve been fortunate to play many beautiful characters on film in supporting parts and a few leading parts, but what I always want as an actress is the part that requires the greatest emotions, the greatest stretch, that requires a new breadth. Wendy demanded every bit and more. It’s one of those parts that, as a woman, we long for. Unfortunately, they’re few and far between.”
Ms. Clarkson talked about her first film role as the wife of Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) in Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables.” Just out of Yale School of Drama, she went to read for Lynn Stalmaster, one of the industry’s pre-eminent casting directors. “I went in looking kind of glamorous. He told me to leave, remove my makeup, get rid of my fancy dress and hairdo, and then come back.”
She returned in a borrowed gingham dress, no makeup, and her 1980s big hair “that barely fit through the doorway.” She made a joke about her appearance to Mr. De Palma. “We started laughing about it, and he wound up reading with me. Brian was amazing. I’d never been on a set before, and there I was in a movie with Kevin Costner and Robert De Niro. The first day Brian asked me to do 30 takes to see where I hit my stride, whether I reached it early or late. He learned I was early, and that by the 30th take I’m just not there anymore.”
Later in her career she worked with Woody Allen on “Vicki Cristina Barcelona” and “Whatever Works.” “Woody’s quite tough. He doesn’t direct you often. He lets you be, which I find quite amazing and freeing. He’s not going to step in and nitpick. But you do have to be 1,000-percent prepared. He’s very quick, he does not suffer fools, he wants to shoot it, he wants you to get it right, and he wants you to be really good.” She said that she and Larry David almost had breakdowns during “Whatever Works” because they had so many lines and knew they couldn’t stop. “You have to be present with your other actors. It’s like theater in that Woody uses long, wide shots.”
Martin Scorcese, whom she worked for on “Shutter Island,” was a different type of director. “He’s moment-to-moment, he’s feral, he’s brilliant.” She wasn’t given a script to read at first. “They just said, ‘It’s you and Leo [DiCaprio] in a cave.’ ” She paused, then repeated, breathlessly, “Just me and Leo in a cave. I can do this.” She said Mr. Scorcese genuinely loves actors, and “he still has fresh eyes and a fresh heart.”
Acting is one of the few professions in which you can keep growing, Ms. Clarkson said. “At 54, I do better than I did things when I was 30. Acting is a muscle, you get stronger.” That doesn’t make it less daunting. “As you age, it’s always frightening when you’re doing scenes or characters that require the darkest parts of you, but if it isn’t frightening, you’re not doing it the right way, and you should get out of the business. It’s like that great Tom Waits lyric, ‘If I exorcise my devils, well the angels might leave too.’ ”
Mr. Clarkson began rehearsals on Monday with Bradley Cooper and Alessandro Nivola for “The Elephant Man,” a revival of the Bernard Pomerance play that will have its first preview at the Booth Theater Nov. 7. “I haven’t been on Broadway in a long time. I’m a theater-trained actress, so it’s part of my DNA, but it’s daunting.” Mr. Pomerance’s daughter was in the Bay Street audience.
She is also attached to a film project to play Tallulah Bankhead. “What fool wouldn’t want to play Tallulah Bankhead?” she asked, deploying, not for the first time, a particularly husky Southern accent. Reflecting on her career, she said, “Now I have more options than I used to. I can pick and choose. I try to read everything that comes my way, but I’m looking for a part that’s going to take me to a place I haven’t been or take me to a new height, or a director I long to work with. For the most part I look at the script as a whole. Because as great as your role might be, you’re part of a whole.”