Whatever. Who even cares about her? We've got Ryan to look at. He's so BA- I mean, he gave himself a tattoo. How sexy is that?
LH: Do you spend a lot of time online?
MW: I actively stay away from reading about myself. But I am a slave to my computer. I don’t think that’s good—would Tolstoy even have written Anna Karenina if there were an Internet? I hate myself when I e-mail. E-mail is like a dopamine hit—you wait for it and then you get it. I gave up my computer during my last movie, Meek’s Cutoff, which is a period piece about a woman on the Oregon Trail. I took to letter writing. My girlfriends got some great letters. But when it ended I was back on e-mail. I’m an addict.
LH: In Blue Valentine, out December 31, you and Ryan Gosling have an extremely raw and very naked sex scene.
MW: We never rehearsed anything, and those were really dark days. We shot the beginning of our relationship first, and it was fun and alive. Then we did the sex scenes and it was…toxic. Ryan and I had stopped relating to each other as Ryan and Michelle. Those scenes took forever. I had a long drive from set to home each night, and I would roll down all the windows and turn up the music as loud as I could and hang my head out the window like a dog and scream. It was my escape.
MW: I actively stay away from reading about myself. But I am a slave to my computer. I don’t think that’s good—would Tolstoy even have written Anna Karenina if there were an Internet? I hate myself when I e-mail. E-mail is like a dopamine hit—you wait for it and then you get it. I gave up my computer during my last movie, Meek’s Cutoff, which is a period piece about a woman on the Oregon Trail. I took to letter writing. My girlfriends got some great letters. But when it ended I was back on e-mail. I’m an addict.
LH: In Blue Valentine, out December 31, you and Ryan Gosling have an extremely raw and very naked sex scene.
MW: We never rehearsed anything, and those were really dark days. We shot the beginning of our relationship first, and it was fun and alive. Then we did the sex scenes and it was…toxic. Ryan and I had stopped relating to each other as Ryan and Michelle. Those scenes took forever. I had a long drive from set to home each night, and I would roll down all the windows and turn up the music as loud as I could and hang my head out the window like a dog and scream. It was my escape.
LH:Did you get nervous during those scenes?
MW: When I work I’m not nervous. Work is this fabulous free zone. There’s no judgment. My problems arrive when I’m not working. At a photo shoot, for instance, I feel like a sham. I feel like they’re trying to cover up what’s wrong with me. It’s probably not true, but just my dirty mind at work.
Now Ryan gets to talk...
MW: When I work I’m not nervous. Work is this fabulous free zone. There’s no judgment. My problems arrive when I’m not working. At a photo shoot, for instance, I feel like a sham. I feel like they’re trying to cover up what’s wrong with me. It’s probably not true, but just my dirty mind at work.
Now Ryan gets to talk...
LH: Ryan, you’re from Canada, but you seem distinctly American. You don’t have a Canadian accent.
Ryan Gosling: As a kid I decided that a Canadian accent doesn’t sound tough. I thought guys should sound like Marlon Brando. So now I have a phony accent that I can’t shake, so it’s not phony anymore. I’m going for the Madonna thing, the Lady Gaga thing—a phony accent that becomes your trademark.
LH: And you have interesting tattoos—they look like you got them in prison.
RG: I like when they look bad, but no one will do bad tattoos. So I did one myself. That’s why it’s bad. I’m waiting to get old—I think old guys with tattoos look good.
Ryan Gosling: As a kid I decided that a Canadian accent doesn’t sound tough. I thought guys should sound like Marlon Brando. So now I have a phony accent that I can’t shake, so it’s not phony anymore. I’m going for the Madonna thing, the Lady Gaga thing—a phony accent that becomes your trademark.
LH: And you have interesting tattoos—they look like you got them in prison.
RG: I like when they look bad, but no one will do bad tattoos. So I did one myself. That’s why it’s bad. I’m waiting to get old—I think old guys with tattoos look good.
H: Did you like being a Mouseketeer?
RG: I wasn’t happy on the show, but I was happy to not be going to school, to be working. More than the show, Disney World made a big impression on me. I still go to Disneyland as much as I can. The Haunted Mansion is my favorite ride. I first rode it when I was 12 or 13, and when I came around the corner and all those ghosts were dancing, it made death look like it would be fun. The Mouseketeers didn’t end up using me very much, which felt awful, but the park had a big impact on me. Disney had this dream, and you could experience it. I loved the attention to detail. There’s a lesson in that.
LH: Your latest movie, Blue Valentine, is an intense depiction of a romance. The movie is extraordinarily intimate—it almost feels like a documentary. Was it difficult to make?
RG: It took forever; for four years Blue Valentine would be ready to go, and then the film would fall apart again due to financing or timing. It was always me and Michelle [Williams]—I think Michelle was involved for five or six years. Finally, the planets aligned and we shot it last summer in Pennsylvania. The director, Derek Cianfrance, had us living as these characters. If, for instance, today was a fighting day, we would just pick fights with each other all day. Once, I fell asleep in the middle of a take, and we filmed through it. After I woke up, Michelle said, “We did the scene, and we filmed you sleeping on the couch.”
LH: How about the sex scene? The couple is fighting, and it’s the angriest, most realistic sex scene I’ve seen in a film in years.
RG: You mean the trying-not-to-have-sex sex scene? It was hard…a lot of times actors can trick people into thinking something is happening when it’s not happening, and we had to call ourselves out on anything that didn’t feel honest. Actors become very professional and proficient about watching out for each other’s light and not stepping on each other’s lines. All of these things are artificial, and you have to strip that away if you’re going to achieve a sense of intimacy. In real life sex is messy, and we wanted to get at that wonderful messiness.
To read the rest, click here.
RG: I wasn’t happy on the show, but I was happy to not be going to school, to be working. More than the show, Disney World made a big impression on me. I still go to Disneyland as much as I can. The Haunted Mansion is my favorite ride. I first rode it when I was 12 or 13, and when I came around the corner and all those ghosts were dancing, it made death look like it would be fun. The Mouseketeers didn’t end up using me very much, which felt awful, but the park had a big impact on me. Disney had this dream, and you could experience it. I loved the attention to detail. There’s a lesson in that.
LH: Your latest movie, Blue Valentine, is an intense depiction of a romance. The movie is extraordinarily intimate—it almost feels like a documentary. Was it difficult to make?
RG: It took forever; for four years Blue Valentine would be ready to go, and then the film would fall apart again due to financing or timing. It was always me and Michelle [Williams]—I think Michelle was involved for five or six years. Finally, the planets aligned and we shot it last summer in Pennsylvania. The director, Derek Cianfrance, had us living as these characters. If, for instance, today was a fighting day, we would just pick fights with each other all day. Once, I fell asleep in the middle of a take, and we filmed through it. After I woke up, Michelle said, “We did the scene, and we filmed you sleeping on the couch.”
LH: How about the sex scene? The couple is fighting, and it’s the angriest, most realistic sex scene I’ve seen in a film in years.
RG: You mean the trying-not-to-have-sex sex scene? It was hard…a lot of times actors can trick people into thinking something is happening when it’s not happening, and we had to call ourselves out on anything that didn’t feel honest. Actors become very professional and proficient about watching out for each other’s light and not stepping on each other’s lines. All of these things are artificial, and you have to strip that away if you’re going to achieve a sense of intimacy. In real life sex is messy, and we wanted to get at that wonderful messiness.
To read the rest, click here.
-CE
Photos courtesy of W
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