Emily Mortimer Interview

C - Did the promise of playing a cold bloodied assassin worry you at all?

E – No, well it did worry me ‘cos I felt like I might be like a Sloane ranger on a motorbike and I was scared I wouldn’t be able to pull it off. But then you discover some previously un-foraged side of yourself, then actually you realise you can do it; you can be cool if you put your mind to it…

C - How did you feel about the finished film, with its Tarantino-esque style?

E – Yeah I think it’s a sort of vivacious chaos really and I think that it’s sort of irreverent in some way and kind of anarchic. The energy of it is completely mad, it’s very fast moving and very silly and I think there’s something very refreshing about it, ‘cos it feels very anarchic and not cow-towing to anything very much, and just being itself…

C - Any thoughts on the title change to 'Formula 51' for the US market?

E – Yeah, gawd knows why? Maybe it’s because some people consider that Britain is the “51st State” of America, and maybe some people would be upset about that. I don’t know…

C - The film is due out in the States in October, how well do you think the film will be received over there?

E – It’s so hard to predict how anything is gonna go down anywhere, you have no control over how things are received. I think anything with Sam Jackson in it anywhere, sort of gets to people to watch it, but I just don’t know what they’re going to make of it.

C – How did you enjoy working Sam Jackson - especially holding a gun to the man who played a ruthless killer in 'Pulp Fiction'?

E – It was quite intimidating, and I had a bit of a nasty moment holding my gun to him because he was actually really great and he was incredibly easy going in the end, but before I’d got to know him I was very intimidated, and also feeling very out of place, and not convincing as this leather clad assassin.
And it was the first scene I’d really had to shoot with him – it’s the one in the lift, and I’ve got the gun against his neck, and our noses are nearly touching and I’m having to threaten him with this gun, and he’s being very cool, and I’m trying to be very cool – the whole things going down.
Finally we get to the end of the scene, and the director shouts cut, and Sam carries on staring at me! And I thought OK, this is some sort of test that I’ve got to pass, or it’s some sort of game he’s playing and we’re gonna have a staring competition. So I stare at him and he stares at me and minutes seem to go by and he was teasing me. And I was thinking “You’re very good at this, you’re sort of a professional starer – I, on the other hand, am not very good at it – I feel a bit peculiar – I want my mum to come and pick me up!”
So I’m thinking “how can I get out of this now?” Thinking desperately of ways of bringing it all to an end, so I stared, looking at him and finally I thought “I know, I’ll laugh, I’ll giggle, and it’ll break the moment and we’ll be able to proceed”.
So I did, I finally worked up the courage to laugh, and as I did, not one, but two of the most enormous bubbles of snot came out of both of my nostrils and nearly pinged against his nose. At which point I just thought “Oh God, things can’t get any worse than this, I’ve got to go home.”
So I don’t think I left the greatest first impression, but he seemed to forgive me for it, and turned out to be really great, and good fun, and not the kind of person who minds having snot bubbles blown at them…

C - You also worked with another 'Pulp fiction' Luminary, Bruce Willis, in 'The Kid', how was he to work with?

E – He was also very easy, very gentlemanly and very nice to my mum – which is always nice – you know. He was great. He was incredibly professional actually, you think, “God, he’s got to the stage in his life where he can afford to be “Phoning-it-in” a bit”. But he certainly doesn’t. He’s always thinking and always working, and trying to make things better and very impressive.

C - You've recently appeared in 'Lovely And Amazing', which opens today in the UK, and it has got some great reviews in the States. Can you tell us a little about it?

E – It’s a film about a family of women living in LA, and their neuroses and obsessions. And that’s about it, it doesn’t really have a big dramatic plot, it’s just like a window into the lives of these four women. Brenda Blethyn’s my mother and Catherine Keener’s my sister…

C - As you said it also stars Brenda Blethyn, how was it working with another Brit on a project where you were both playing Americans? Did you ever find your accents slipping?

E – Well Brenda was partly responsible for getting me the job. We’d met on another film earlier that year in Malaysia called ‘The Sleeping Dictionary’, which hasn’t come out yet, and she was sitting by the pool in the jungle, reading this script of ‘Lovely And Amazing’. And she said “Ooh, you know there’s a part for you in it, you should get your agents on it”. In fact I should pay Brenda commission for that job; she really harangued my agents into getting me the audition, and told Nicole Holofcener about me. But we got very panicked that by the time we came to do the film we had become good mates and she’d got sort of paranoid, as had I, that after making this big thing about how we’d got to be in the film together, we’d get to the first day of shooting, and both just piss ourselves laughing at having to talk to each other in American accents.
But in fact it seemed to work out, and we actually don’t have that many scenes together because it follows all three sisters. Because the film takes the three different strands of the film, my story, Brenda’s story, and Catherine Keener’s story, so we don’t really overlap that much. So we didn’t have that many hours of saying (Affects American drawl) “Hi Mom” to each other. So there wasn’t that much opportunity to crack up.

C - So how did a girl who Studied English & Russian at Oxford get into this business?

E – I don’t know. An agent came to see a play I was in at Oxford, and took me on! And I got my first job quite quickly, in Catherine Cookson’s ‘The Glass Virgin’; I was “the glass virgin”! But the whole thing was pure chance really, that this agent had come to see the play, ‘cos their daughter was at Oxford, and they happened to be around watching the play.
I mean I’ve always acted, and as a kid I subjected my parents to hours of acting out adverts for them, and forcing them to be attentive. Even though I didn’t think it was what I was going to do, I’d sort of always done it. So I was probably always going to do it in some way, shape or form.

C - Your father is the writer John Mortimer, of the "Rumpole Of The Bailey" books. How much influence did his books being filmed have on your career choice?

E – Yeah, I guess so, it’s something I was aware of, you know I was always taken to the theatre a lot as a child, and had watched him, and been taken on to film sets with him, and met a lot of actors as a I was growing up and stuff. So it didn’t feel like such a huge leap into the unknown as it might otherwise have done.

C - There's one quote from you on IMDB "This is not meant to have happened to me at all. I am a Sloane, from the Chilterns." what did you mean by that?

E – Well I guess that’s true. I think I was saying that in reference to doing ‘Scream 3’. And I was screaming and running down corridors in a Hollywood mansion with big, big bouffant hair, too much make up and silicon boobs in my bra, and thinking “how great this is”. But it really shouldn’t have happened to me, and I am a Sloane Ranger from the Chilterns, and how did it come to pass, that I find myself in this situation? And that’s part of what’s great about the job that you suddenly find yourself running down a corridor of a Hollywood mansion screaming or in the middle of the jungle – or wherever – and it’s constantly surprising.

C – Did you enjoy your experience making ‘Scream 3’?

E – Yeah, I really did it was one of the best times I’ve had making a film, because it was great fun, and nobody takes it seriously at all. Everybody knows that it’s not rocket science or whatever, it’s a laugh and because by the time they got to the third one it was something that everybody who had worked on all three films all knew each other and just knows exactly what it is their meant to be doing. It was just this very smooth operation. It’s not nearly as tense making and anxious making as a lot of more serious things are.

C - What else have you got lined up for the future? I know you’ve mentioned ‘The Sleeping Dictionary’…

E – Yes, that should be coming out sometime soon and then ‘Young Adam’ I just did which is a film with Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinson and Peter Mullen and it’s set in Glasgow in the 50’s which is one of the more serious ones. And that’s coming out some time next year.
And then I’m going down the Amazon on a medical boat for charity in September, which is very exciting and which I am so looking forward to. I can’t believe its happening.

C - How did you feel about being cast as "the perfect girl" in 'Notting Hill'?

E – I felt great about it apart from I’d developed an allergic reaction to a suit I bought in a second-hand shop the week before, and come out in the most hideous rash that anybody had ever seen. And I had to go to the doctor to get an injection of steroids because I was going to be the “perfect girl” the following week. And I was, in fact, in the scene in the film I’ve still got my terrible rash and it’s just covered up with lots and lots of make up. So I was very happy to be playing the “perfect girl”, but it was actually an erroneous character description at the time that I did it. I was a most imperfect girl.

C - Now that you’re splitting your time between here and America, are you still adamant that you won’t give up smoking?

E – Never! - Well I don’t know. I’d like to give it up if I got pregnant, but if it was just down to me, no.
I’ll be a campaigner for the cause whether I give it up or not. I think everybody should smoke!