OLIVIA WILLIAMS: The Hollywood Interview

[Olivia Williams and Paul Bettany in The Heart of Me.]

Note: This article originally appeared in the April 2003 issue of Venice Magazine. I remember that they had poor Olivia doing the interviews in some very cluttered office at the publicist's. She was sitting behind the big desk when I walked in and acted as if this were a job interview. Then she jokingly asked for my resume. The Heart of Me is a pretty bleak film, so that's about as fun as it all got that afternoon.

Olivia Williams opens her Heartby Terry Keefe

Blessed with a face that could have been made from porcelain and an elegant British voice that is like a pleasant melody to the ears, actress Olivia Williams has often been cast playing women who are so perfect and irreplaceable that their romantic interests would understandably do anything for them. In The Sixth Sense [1999], her deceased husband Bruce Willis so wants to be with her just a little longer that he lingers around the material world for an extra year as a confused ghost. Jason Schwartzman's high school student Max Fischer gets so obsessed with her teacher character, Miss Rosemary Cross, in Rushmore [1998] that he soon finds himself in a romantic duel for her affections with a devious Bill Murray. In The Man From Elysian Fields [2001], reluctant male prostitute Andy Garcia becomes not-so-reluctant after experiencing a few nights with the lonely millionaire's wife that Williams plays. But with her newest film, The Heart of Me, Williams shows us something we've yet to really see in her canon of work: a darker and more selfish current running beneath the pristine surface. The film showcases a real breakthrough role for Williams who creates a character full of surprises.

The Heart of Me opens on the London of 1934, a bleak time if there ever was one. The first World War has been over for some time but the second one lingers on the horizon. Williams portrays a stiff and proper society woman named Madeleine who is married to the wealthy Ricky (the always great Paul Bettany). When Madeleine's father dies, she and Ricky take in her eccentric bohemian sister Dinah (Helena Bonham Carter). Soon Ricky and Dinah are drawn to each other like star-crossed magnets and find themselves in a disastrous affair. Madeleine wants it to stop of course, but not so much because she loves Ricky as because she wants her life to maintain its status quo. At first glance, it seems obvious where this story is headed: Madeleine is the evil wife who prevents true love from blossoming. But what is so defining about the film, directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan and deftly adapted by screenwriter Lucinda Coxon from the Rosamond Lehmann novel The Echoing Grove, is that there are no “good” or “bad” characters in the story. Madeleine takes some devious steps to disrupt the romance, but you will also come away from the film feeling great sympathy for her. The illicit lovers Ricky and Dinah will commit some despicable acts as well, ensuring that you won't necessarily be rooting for their love to succeed. Symbolic of the way the film views humanity is the bracelet that Ricky makes for Dinah - it’s engraved with a line from her favorite Blake poem which reads, "And throughout all eternity, I forgive you, you forgive me." By film's end, all the characters may not have quite forgiven each other, but we the audience will have. Or at the very least, we understand why they did what they did.

Williams was born in London and educated at Cambridge University, where after graduating she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Her first American feature role was opposite Kevin Costner in The Postman [1997]. She has also appeared in the films The Body [2000], Born Romantic [2000], and Dead Babies [2000]. She'll next be seen in director P.J. Hogan's take on Peter Pan, as well as the historical drama To Kill a King.

Do you think Madeleine forgives Dinah in the end?

Olivia Williams: [thinks deeply before answering] I think she finds peace. Forgiveness though, I don't think you can really [laughs]. That's coming more from me than Madeleine. That's Olivia speaking. I think Madeleine's line "A man might well remember the woman he loved" is her sort of accepting defeat. That's as much as you're going to get [from her]. But it's enough to mean that she and Dinah can live in peace together.

Something that makes the film great is that it doesn't judge either Madeleine or Dinah.

That's why I took the film. I had very little interest in playing this character when I read the first half of the script. You know, the cold woman who behaves with a very restrained, almost martyr-like response to being betrayed. But then she says the interesting line to Ricky, "Dinah's ultimately cold. You’ll discover it in the end." It's like she’s saying, "I may look cold, but just wait until you get close to my sister. She's actually the devil here. At least you know where you are with me. With Dinah, you never know where you are." And then later, when you're thinking, "Poor Madeleine, she's lost everything. She's so upset," she pulls this hideous trick of bringing Ricky home from the hospital to her house and locking him in the study, where he's not allowed to leave, and pretending that Dinah's gone off with some French bloke. Ricky's not there of his own free will and isn't in possession of all the facts. So you hate her again and I like that. It was a fun, meaty, and unexpected thing to play.

You seem very sweet in person. How do you get into character to play someone like Madeleine?
[laughs] There is quite a bit of Madeleine in me, in that I'm impatient with people who refuse to behave in a way that's appropriate to the situation. I think that people who behave histrionically when they shouldn't should learn to restrain themselves. [laughs] So that's quite a lot of Madeleine in me. But I also think there's quite a lot of Dinah [in me]. I had wanted to play Dinah originally because she was less like the stereotypes that I've played in the past. And I feel like I have a bohemian, feely-touchy, physical person in me as well. But then the Madeleine complexity won me over in the end. I liked her layers of damage and pain. They were actually more interesting to play for me. But no, I'm very fluffy - I'm not like Madeleine at all! [laughs] I'm in fact the younger sister [in my family], I'm the attention-seeker. My older sister's a lawyer and I was the younger child singing into a hairbrush, standing on the table, or sitting on my mummy's knee going "I love you, mummy!" And my sister standing there, I'm sure she was thinking that I was a vile thing that needed to be restrained. I'm surprised she didn't thump me more often than she did. I must have been very insufferable. So when I first read the script, I identified much more with Dinah being the attention-seeking younger child. But I definitely drew on my sister's experience to play Madeleine. Not that I fled with my sister's husband [laughs]. The comparisons [to the film] start at around age 11 or 12 when we chose to grow up. Dinah and Madeleine didn't.

The screenwriter Lucinda Coxon said something which really sums up the melancholy that hangs over the film. She said, "In the 1930s, it was commonplace that people of this generation would lose their parents in one war and their children in the next." That must have been one difficult period to live through.

My character [in the film] was very much influenced by my grandmother. She was the right age. She was born in 1901 and died 90 years later. She had lived through that. My grandfather had survived the first World War but she spoke of how a generation was wiped out. And how that ensured, just in sheer demographics, that there weren't enough blokes to go around. Enough men went off to war and never came back, that it left many women unmarried from that time. And playing the loss of a son to a war, again one of my very first boyfriends was a French boy. And he was 19. They have national service in France. He died in Lebanon. His mom and I became very close. I was young, I was 15. I had no idea what it meant to lose a child of that age. But I can remember the huge and inconceivable grief. That she felt that it was all in the wrong order. That she felt that she had no right to be alive, that she was meant to die before her child. That was hugely influential on the scene when Madeleine talks about the loss of her son. And the fact that she doesn't really talk about him as an adult, that she talks about him as a child, you know? [She talks about] when he was a little boy and afraid at night. I haven't been through any of these things so as an actor you have to use your observation and your empathy.

What was the relationship between you and Helena on the set? Did you try to stay away from each other to stop from becoming too chummy?

No, it was great. We were actually at school together [Note: at the Southampton High School for Girls], so we had kind of a shared history. I didn't know her at school. She was in a different class and was headed for being sort of extraordinary, even at that age.

Did everybody at the school know this?
Oh definitely. I remember her poetry was extraordinary. It was always in the school magazine. And we all knew she was going to be extraordinary, we just didn't know at what. So meeting up again and playing sisters, it was ideal because we didn't have to invent that common history. We had all the kind of parallels that sisters would have had, being at the same school and the same humor and remembering the same nightmare history teacher. Or the uniform we had to wear. So we had this common thing. The intervening Hollywood years just sort of disappeared and we were back to being Southampton school girls. That was very useful in the sisterly thing. And I think we made good sisters. We were as similar and different as sisters can be.

Did you and Helena do any theatrical productions together in high school?

No, we were in different years so I just sort of admired her from afar. I was a pretty insignificant nobody [laughs] and she was an extraordinary person who had a sort of cult following.

I did a profile last year on Paul Bettany for Gangster No. 1. Ricky in this film is obviously a completely different role but I barely recognized him from one film to the other. He has quite a range.

What a great actor. You have it right there. You don't see a glimpse of the total murdering nutcase that he played [in Gangster No. 1]. He's a consummate actor. He and I were friends from a movie, it was called Dead Babies in England and Mood Swingers here. We met and got on very well. I showed him The Heart of Me because I wanted his opinion as a friend. I thought it was wonderful but I wasn't sure if my judgment was off because I'm over-obsessed with good writing. The script was very literate and literary. And that doesn't necessarily make a good film. He's got a much better sense of film than I have. So I showed it to him and he really liked it. But there was another guy attached to play his role. When he dropped out, I said, "Paul, do you think you would do it?" And I never thought he would but he was interested because it was so outside his regular casting. The director loved him but the producer was like, "Who is this guy? We need names." And I thought, "You don't understand. You're getting this man in the millisecond before he becomes too expensive for you." I think he had just turned down Red Dragon and they were saying, "Who is this guy?" I was like, "You're mad. Take him now or you're going to regret it." [laughs] He's a funny, charismatic, very bright bloke, and yet he managed to play this confused, morally beaten-up young husband. It's such a great performance.

You had a prominent role in The Man From Elysian Fields which was also one of James Coburn's last films. What was that experience like?

It was wonderful. You'd never know that he wasn't long for this world. He was full of energy and was funny and charming and stubborn and brilliant. What an honor. I remember my dad waking me up and bringing me downstairs to watch The Magnificent Seven on the telly when I was little. I couldn't believe it, here I was playing his wife, it was so surreal. It was one of those jobs that came at the last minute. They asked me with about 3 days left in pre-production. I flew out into this wonderful pre-existing situation. The script appealed to me. And then married to James Coburn and shagging Andy Garcia - how bad can life be? [laughs] I'll take it!

How was director Wes Anderson to work with on Rushmore?
He's wonderful also. He's a very precise man. His writing is so good that the emotional stuff kind of just jumps out of it without you having to push. You need nothing more than the lines. I love his writing and I think he's genius. [That set] was surreal. I had my first movie job that summer on The Postman. Then I came back to do ADR and post-production on The Postman and got Rushmore. Suddenly, I'm in Houston, Texas with a 16-year old boy and Bill Murray! [laughs] It was surreal but eminently enjoyable. Bill Murray was charming and generous and funny. And Jason really was Max Fischer. And Wes would appear occasionally in the hotel looking harassed. And we'd watch movies and talk about them. And then Brian Cox shows up, to add to the surreal. He's such a guru from my childhood. We were all sitting around the fire at the hotel. And I've got Bill Murray, the kid, and Brian Cox. It was a very confusing time but immensely good fun [laughs].

How were you cast in your first big role, that being The Postman?

From a really dreadful audition video. My agent rang and said "Do you want to go on tape?" and I was like "Is there any point? I’ve done this before and paid 10 quid for a taxi ride and never hear from anyone again.” So I rode my bike there and read the thing and a month later, God bless him, Kevin Costner rang me up and asked me to come over to America and be in his movie.

Speaking of your bike, I read on the Internet Movie Database that you insist on riding your bike to and from the set every day. True?
[nods] There's this absurd situation on a movie set where your trailer's here and the set is here and the lunch tent is here. And you're not allowed to get yourself from these three places. You have to be taken. You can be very hungry here and the food is there and you have to wait until a man with a microphone finds you. Then he sends a message to the driver, the driver drives from over here, where he's eating lunch, and then drives you 10 feet. So I got myself a bicycle. And I didn't know at the time that it was irregular. I was like, "Then the driver guy can eat his lunch and I don't have to wait." And what I didn't realize is that the car is an instrument of control. You need to be escorted everywhere in case you suddenly wander off into the wilderness and fall down a hole and the movie has to come to an end because you've broken your ankle. I thought I was saving everyone a lot of hassle. But when I got on the bike, my hair extensions got tangled in the wind [laughs]. So I learned the hard way. But I do try to cycle everywhere I can. I cycle to rehearsals in London. It's my control issue. It's like, "No, I want to be in control of wherever I go." And I hate environmental damage. So I ride a bike when I can. Here [in Los Angeles] it's weird because people have bicycles, but they're purely recreational. They're not a way to get from A to B. They're a way to lose weight. The irony of the gym where somebody says, "I couldn't exercise today because I had no electricity, so my running machine didn't work." I'm like, "No, the running machine should be wired up so it's like a dynamo system - when you pedal the bike the lights come on!" How do you get into a situation where you use electricity to ride a bicycle?! In my future home, my children will be out pedaling away so I can watch myself on the television [laughs]. That's my ecological dream. No, I like cycling when I can but it has as much to do with my own control issues as it does with saving the planet.