Julia Roberts & Patricia Arquette - Actors on Actors - Full Conversation

[Music] well Julie I'm so excited to be here with you and I have so many questions for you I'm so scared / thrilled Oh to be with you I think that's the appropriate emotional combination yeah I think it's a great combination I mean if you're like I really don't want to be here not very I have a funny story okay so many many many years ago one of my early auditions was for a movie called 3000 oh yeah okay so most people don't know but 3,000 was what the original pretty woman script was yes and that movie was very dark mm-hmm and the ending was really heavy threw her out of the car threw the money on top of her as memory serves and just sort of drove away leaving her in some dirty alley right so it really read like kind of a dark gritty art movie when you first read it it was obviously that yes incarnation of it I got that job I got the part in 3000 right and / it's so fascinating I love that you're asking me this question because it relates to some of the questions that I have for you but I had no business being in a movie like that really and I get the part the studio that had it this small movie company folded over the weekend and by Monday I didn't have a job so the script there was one producer that stayed with the script and then it went to Disney and I thought went to Disney are they gonna animate it like how does this become a Disney movie and then when Garry Marshall came on and I think because he's a great human being he met me just because I had once had the job and he felt it would only be fair to at least meet me since I had this job for three days and then lost it and they changed the whole thing and and it really became more something that is in my wheelhouse than what it originally was that's so amazing that's such a cool wild story I'm so excited to hear that second part of it I never knew any of that yeah but I also always had a fantasy of recasting you in 3000 the original script and you could even do it now I couldn't I couldn't do it that I couldn't do it now I'm thank God it fell apart I would I mean even in pretty woman like if I just had to be in a slip I'd be covered in hives I would just be so uncomfortable mm-hmm I mean I you know I had I was like breaking out and like hives in a cold sweat watching escape at dawn tomorrow yeah yeah I can't at night I would I just don't even know I think what am I saying just before action in the bushes like that like what radda you what do you how do you do that what do you you got to talk to your so for me I'm I'm completely the opposite in my personal life like I remember when I was four years old we had a swim thing with our school and all the girls were changing and I was upstairs hiding behind a chair to change and this older girls like what are you doing hiding back there were all girls and we're all putting on our bathing suits so I was born really modest I was like I don't want anyone to see me naked I would have been in the chair next to you I take vows in the dark off him really in real life I'm really uptight and yet I've played several parts that are very sexually more free than I am and comfortable some of the characters use sexuality as a survival mechanism some use it to get love or feel alive some use it as a bargaining chip for power and to move on so for me when I was looking at this the sex scenes in escape of Dannemora it was like I'm gonna gain all this weight it's gonna be the first time I'm ever not going to use body makeup because I want to have the conversation first of all I believe this lady has a she's more comfortable sexuality than I am and I want to play a part that's not me and move away from myself and I want to have the conversation who's allowed to be sexual who's allowed to be sexual on film what kind of body types are acceptable who's sexy and who gets to decide who's sexy all of those kind of things that I don't think we ever get to really talk about or think about or well you are hot as a pistol and very very compelling and but I just would think and then do you break for lunch after that or like what you know where is everybody like these are that I think about the mechanics of it because coming from I can understand it and I'm fascinated by it as a character study and I I thought that you were so brilliant in that show as I expected you to be so that's what you've done for me with your career is you've just created this expectation that I know if you're in something it will be of a great masterful quality that you've put a lot of thought into it and that's why I'm but I do think about the mechanics like yeah how do you get on the set how do you get off the set had it who's standing there what if you don't like someone yeah that's in this little sewing well part of it what I have found in these different parts that I've played that have been more sexual there's always this kind of coven of women there from the wardrobe department and makeup people and they're there with robes and they're like covering you immediately and they're they're like girl I'm here they don't even say anything but they're like yeah and so you heal this strength from women and then early on even male allies were like good ones were like yeah we're not gonna have any monitors around the set yeah I mean I had to do this one part with David Lynch and I I was gonna have to walk around totally naked in the scene and I was so uptight and I we had all the conversations with the crew like everyone who doesn't have to be here don't be here and we're not gonna have monitors and editor and so I said and maybe this is inappropriate maybe I could get sued for this someday now but I said okay I'm about to take we're gonna roll I'm gonna take off my rope if I turn around and I see you and I know you don't need to be on this set I'm gonna come punch you in the face oh well done I all of a said about 40 people with scattered into the desert so I mean I've also threatened violence okay and I would believe if you said if I see you I'm gonna punch you in the face I believe that you would punch him in the face I probably would have heard someone in the face because they know if they don't need to be there yeah and they're just imposing themselves on something that's vulnerable and hard for you to get past but I think part of my survival mechanism is also talking about the other actor about what's emotionally going on for these people right now our characters right so you just kind of keep bringing it back to this isn't me and you this is our character and what are we want to show as part of their personalities or their relationship it's so complex it's very weird but I have more questions okay I know you have your paper and I have to say something about people with paper it annoys me and you're the only one that gets away with it in my heart I don't know why because you're a great speech Giver first of all Oh your speeches are always great and then you have some little caboose that you bring in just before you walk off and and by the way there's also this I want you all to think about it is so incredible thank you I love when you do that oh thanks and why did you leave that job I quit what my mother got hurt and I had to come home and take care of her so you quit the job in Tampa because your mom got hurt now you work here at this restaurant well you know it's it's what I could get I had to come back home and cuz you yes all right so early on you broke a lot of Records and people started talking about your pay and you were the highest-paid actor in Hollywood there was a lot of conversation about that in the years that passed then that kind of rolled back and went away again but how did that feel first of all to have that conversation happen to be there in that moment from your own work breaking that kind of glass ceiling there and did it feel like pressure it never felt like pressure it felt I mean all the salaries in in those days where there was just a lot of money to be spent making films which there really just isn't that kind of money now being spent on films it all seemed kind of ridiculous in a comical way I thought okay sure this is this is ridiculous but I'll be part of this party and I feel like there are so many particularly someone like Barbra Streisand I think of that you know I'm just walking in the path that she has hacked out with a machete so to be a little part of you know the gardener that's picking some weeds that have come up since these incredible women before me have really made a path for all of us to be artists in our own right and to be able to pick and choose the things that we want to do and the the way that we want to express ourselves as as artists it was nice to feel that I had a little puzzle piece to that but I didn't feel a pressure because I've been paid less and done just as you know active a job as I did when I when we were all being ridiculously overpaid well here's I wanted to get to that because you went from doing these gigantic movies getting paid an enormous amount of money and then started taking little movies that you're basically getting scale or actors minimum wage on right so that one must have been a conscious choice you where you were you feeling as an actor like I want some different kind of material or well I think the big moment in my career for me was when I had done a lot of films in a row because that's how it happens right you're you're sitting around waiting for someone to give you something good to read and then all of a sudden you read for good things or five good things right and I think it was after I did sleeping with the enemy maybe mm-hmm and I'm still at that point in my early 20s and I saw some really great actors that I admired what they were doing and I would think oh she's great and she's great and then and then there were a few movies that I thought why is she in that movie that's she's better than that narrative and and I realized there's a kind of sense of in the business at that time of of movement is what keeps you relevant or you just have to keep going and and I don't know I just had this instinct to stop doing anything if it didn't feel like that passionate hmm I mean what does it take you to say yes to a project because for me it's a it's just a feeling I have when I turn the last page of the script I know it's something that I want to do or not do sometimes it's actually a fight within me sometimes I'm I don't want to play that part and then I have to examine like why am I afraid of playing that part why am I having that kind of reaction to that part if I say to myself this is a really good story and it's really well-written I don't want to play that part then I then I have to dig deeper is it because that part is under written and a bad part or is it because I'll have to look at stuff in my own self overcome I don't know maybe biases I have or or fears that I have personally that I'll have to push through but generally I read something I have to really like the story or feel engaged in some kind of way that that it makes sense that I want to see it and then it's who's involved in it who's the director and I have come to a point in my career right now I want young people to come up and I want young directors to have opportunities but I also feel like I want people like also that have a lot of skill set mm-hmm because I want to be learning from people not that I can't from young directors but I also feel like sometimes it's frustrating to watch the steep learning curve you need some experience yeah I'm sort of feeling like that at this moment in my career like I really want people it was so fun working on escape at Dannemora working with Benicio del Toro and Paul Dano and and Ben Stiller I felt like they were all coming as really seasoned artists who really knew their craft in a deep way and I felt like I learned so much from each actor and the project I just did the act was different because Joey King actually has a lot of experience acting she's been acting since she was a kid but I also got to see her that youth hmm that discovery that openness and it was so great working with her so I love working with other actors I feel like they're my greatest teachers my my actors I work with you know my co-stars but I do want to be with people that are another game and the people inside you need to be good at angles - are you talking about and they're the angles that get bent then you know that is so on your new show homecoming which is a really interesting I feel like emotional departure your character in a way a lot of people see you often times as much nicer you know you have this beautiful sense of humor and joy about you and and and way of breaking the moment with this humor but I think people appreciate but this character is really kind of darker how is it working on homecoming how do you feel about this character and everyone knew that you're working with on this project it was such a it was really it was a dream job pretty much from start to finish I mean if if someone asked me to kind of just be with that same group over and over and over yeah I wouldn't hesitate because there was just something about it's what you're talking about - about having experience but you also want youth in innovation and and just a new kind of point of view and I felt like we had all those things in abundance and you know as a collective it was really extraordinary and I for me to come into a television show the first sort of production type email I got I thought why do I not understand what this is telling me I see a lot of information and I don't really know what it is thirty years of call sheets and production emails how do I not understand was it it's just different nomenclature I don't know it was just you know talking about blocks and then scripts were sort of you know a scene would be 26e and then there'd be 26 you know H and I didn't know what anything was but then they ended up hiring as a first ad this incredible man Peter Cohn who had been the first ad on the Pelican brief well a movie that I did with the incredible Alan Pakula so I went in and had a quick lesson and the lingo of TV yes Sonics but we filmed it like a movie in two parts now is that what you did on medium because you were on that show a really long time the medium would often be written the night before pages sometimes I didn't ever get a full script it was crazy making it seem like that kind of an actor I was like who's the bad guy what's happening sometimes they'd be writing scenes and we'd get him the night before and I'd say we got to tweak this one I like I already played that moment and this other scene you gave me before so you were having to keep track well what was cool about it is sort of like in real life you think you're going to dentist on Tuesday but it turns out you have a car accident and your grandma dies and 15 things happen between now and Tuesday are they all bad also you win the lottery you know and to think oh they did it so come Tuesday you're not going the dentist you're going to get your lottery check I feel like talk show coming on so yeah I just jumped in into it like in life we don't know what's really around the corner we think we do but we're actually figuring it out as we go along so that was a weird process I had to develop for that and was there a different director for every episode sometimes we had repeat directors but in general we had a different yes seems like the hardest part to me it was hard because at least maybe your directors if they cared to could read you're the director of the tenth episode could read all mine or watch cuts of the first nine by the time they'd the direct the tenth right of your episode right that would be expected right so for us sometimes they wouldn't watch you know a hundred episodes so they'd have an idea they'd come in and you'd go be kind did that on this other one or or we did it two episodes ago but they haven't been cut yet right so you haven't seen him yet so it was it's a real machine that moves so fast Wow and how many years it wasn't like shooting a movie like you guys did you have more time or we had time and we also had a strange alchemy that things I mean going into the first week and I think so much credit has to go to Sam s male who was our director of the entire show he's just such a smart guy and he's so interesting and interested and he has very clear ideas and the first three days I think of shooting of course you know I'm so nervous and want to do everything right and make a great first impression on everybody and we come in and Stephan and I and we're a letter-perfect and we are you know everything is just and we wrapped the day's work before lunch on the first day of shooting oh and it was like well okay well that's beginner's luck okay that's and then by Wednesday you know the you p.m. comes to us and says so listen you know we we have to work an eight-hour day like so we have to start rescheduling this but there was something about this group that we just we knew our goals collectively and we knew how to get there and how to encourage each other in a way that there was a momentum that I thought was kind of extraordinary and you're working with great actors and the great actors I mean Stephan James so I didn't know prior to this he was one of the men that I read with to get the part and it was one of those things where when you're on this side of an audition and you see people walk in and within 20 seconds my stomach's in a knot and I'm like wow I just remember how awful it was to walk into a room of eight people sitting there and now I'm one of those eight people and you've been there for two and a half minutes and I know this never gonna work mm-hmm and I don't know how to get out of it you know it's so painful and stressful and Stephane happened to be the last man that came in and he walked out of the room and I just remember turning to everybody and I said well our work is done here he was just so there's just something so great about him he has gravity but he has so much joy and effervescence and was on time ready to go every day he's so talented and Shea Whigham who's incredible in the show and my friend Dermot Mulroney who I love there Sam brought in because he loves my best friend's wedding and he just wanted us to be together again that's and yes it was great it was really great what do I inspire you to do just make a fresh start you know leave the past behind like you're doing but together I was back here at the break room and I said who's got a question for Julia Robert what is it kind of a coffee cooler kind of a questionnaire and I thought why don't I just tweet that out if you're not have one question for Julia Roberts what are you do you really do that yes I did okay so I did madam and by the way she's got her phone in case you won the soccer game soccer scores I'm going to check my Twitter responses while I check the score I don't think it went well uh-oh let's say so one of the questions that people had for you because who is going to sit on the throne at the end of Game of Thrones do you watch Game of Thrones I'm going to say Barack Obama for 500 I have no I've never watched the game of Thrones but someone just told me a couple of days ago oh you look like what I said it earlier and I forgotten you look like one of the stark the wildlings wow I look like a wildling oh and I just I just went with that I didn't know what it meant well is my my hair is super curly I mean this is this has been professionally done for the occasion but I was at the beach and so my hair was was telling its own stories and like a wildling who will be on the throne do you what's your guess you know I think there may be several Thrones really seven several people I think they might parcel off lands to different people but I don't know now Arya and that Baratheon boy I don't know what's good well tonight is the night isn't it is one of them yeah there's only three left or four Wow at the end of an era somebody asked what now do you know any of these people that are asking these questions no I do all the millions of people that follow you on twitter that have participated in this yes okay you're a loved woman deal with it deal with it woman okay so now it should be on the throne oh my gosh oh my gosh you better do your alerts that would be hilarious I mean Saturday Night Live like it's gonna be this one this one they all died in Julia Roberts all by myself with no one to rule over god that's how I feel when all the kids go to school oh really nobody cares what needs to happen now somebody was asking what's your favorite classic film oh well I think my favorite comedy would be Philadelphia Story and my favorite drama would be now Voyager mmm Eddie Davis yeah um what about you what do you like classic movies modern movies what's yours onra I like all of it I mean I do tend to like darker material I guess part of but I see that it says yeah a dark dark type of attitude person well two of the performances of by women that made me want to act or Jessica Lange and Francis and general ones and woman under the influence yeah but my favorite fellas FW Murnau's sunrise from 1927 you're gonna flex I like that thank you yeah you are no sunshine and kittens I'm not I like that I'm not yeah kind of tough around the edges but actually I'm pretty silly I see that too mm-hmm silly and tough beyond those aubergine glasses I see you're silly I don't like scary things I don't like to be scared I don't watch Game of Thrones because I've had a lot of friends say you can't handle it very for you too scary maybe too much sex is there a lot of sex there's a lot of sex got a sex and loitering swords dealing with massacres maybe oh then it's for sure not for me there's zombies there's dragons and zombies ok dragons I can get my arms around but zombies that's a whole different well now there's a zombie dragon so I don't know that what is happening a lot is going on over there you are also called America's Sweetheart so he's not very Barbara Walters why yes I did I do have a secret a secret wish to be a talk show host someday I am living out my fantasy here exactly so you were called America's Sweetheart mm-hmm so how did that feel that it did it feel limiting did it feel exciting well let us not forget it wasn't what I didn't feel like it was you know the like the beauty pageant sash America's Sweethearts it was the name of a movie I was in and so it just seemed an easy like oh okay let's just mm-hmm stitch those two things together so it you know it was really neither here nor there I have found and you may agree or disagree and I know you will I could I'm very unemotional about stuff like that it doesn't I don't feel that I have to then live up to something or that it's some kind of pressure understanding of me I feel that it shows in fact a greater sense of protection between me as a person and and me as an actor because you know coping skill like so do you feel that your celebrity or whoever you are in people's mind or people think you are in society is different than your true self in your real life I think it used to be completely different and now I think it's me it's just different but also I you know I've never been a person that that attracted the kind of I think of it as like musician energy where people see a musician in the grocery store and you would just kind of go like I don't I get this kind of energy like you cut your hair it looks cute like oh my god Thanks it'll grow back but that's you know but I think cuz people think of me more as like their neighbor or my daughter looks just like you or you know those are the kinds of things that people come up and and approach me with as opposed to it energy that's more than I can handle wow that's that's awesome what kind of Pete what do people say when they come up to you well sometimes they say you look a lot like Patricia Arquette but she's taller than you oh I get that sometimes um I'm usually just people are nice they say me my me my daughter always watch you and watched you on medium or you really freak me out on the act or thank you for making me think of people like Tilly in a different way from escape at Dannemora usually they're just nice people saying nice things you know I don't really get mean people I guess luckily people I guess just keep that to themselves or I don't know what I don't think they do it people don't keep that to themselves so I think you're getting the genuine emotion now what when I when you think of that acting what do you love about acting I think all of it just all of the kind of circus funny nutty the hours the you know that you work so hard to not live in a trailer so that you can then find a job where you live in a trailer there's an irony to that yeah that amuses me I'm just super amused by all of it and I love the camaraderie and I love that it's this incredible team effort mm-hmm I love all that yeah it's kind of a circus life yeah and there's a lot of humor on sets and you meet really cool people yes they're so good at what they do I mean I always really depend a lot on the prop person props are important I was super prop heavy in homecoming I've never been so I've always been kind of propolis and I realized I was making that for a lot of Lost Time what were your props I had in any given scene I would be well first of all we had all these really long takes right get up from my office and I would be on the phone and get my car keys and grab a bag and you know hopefully something to you know balance in my other free hand and lock a door and go down some stairs and then go through a thing and you know go from my phone to my headset maybe or it was just always you know some thing get out to the car and then I have to open the car and load up the car and get into the car your seat belt off and get the seat belt on and not hit a sandbag that's marking where the car is gonna go you know yeah it was um it was humorous and it entertained Sam to no end just you know how about a glass of juice while you're it was amusing but it's interesting props really do for me and that in particular it was just it was everything was just another layer of texture and another something I don't know do you typically approach characters like do you have one process that you go through with with each job is there kind of a structure to it or do you use different approaches for different characters I think it's always different and I think the I don't know I'm curious about you because for me I feel like there's always one piece of the puzzle that reveals itself to me early on and it can be something like you know what my hair is supposed to look like or just something and then I feel like once that first piece reveals itself to me that other things kind of come in steady stream usually I mean I've been in I've been working on things before where it's like up to the last minute like the piece hasn't fit yet I'm freaking out right now you know how am I going to find the piece sometimes it's a piece of clothing you put on in a wardrobe fitting or or a little sound in a rehearsal that comes out in your voice like mm-hmm like that's the girl okay now I know who that is do you like rehearsal stuff like that do you like a lot of rehearsal like real rehearsal experimentation rehearsal really I don't like just reading the script over and over again that doesn't do anything for me and we could do that on a Skype call you know I mean we could talk it through oh sure there's there's a place for that but to really explore a scene like okay this is what we have written but what does this scene really about and what if what if we try this scene okay we're not filming it right now so why don't we just try seeing where we dig deeper into this thing it's a part of this kiss relationship I don't think we are looking at yet in this script so why don't we do a you know a kind of improvisation around that maybe we'll never use that in the movie but it might inform us in some way that was a big rescue too from pain that part of it was fun fun let's just keep talking about you can we talk about true romance yes yes we can was that an intense crazy experience that movie is so wonderful and crazy and there's 107 incredible people in it did you love making it I loved oh I'm sorry I loved making it was so fun and I knew it was so fun when I did that when I did flirting with disaster I kept saying to people if people would ever complain I'd say you are not going to complain about this movie because you're gonna be so happy you were in this movie and this is so incredible to work with all these people and you know some of those great actors are gone and Tony Scott's gone yeah you know I mean Dennis Hopper James Gandolfini Crispin a lot of people that are gone from that movie it's such a great movie you're so great in it oh think there's just it's funny and I mean I can't remember what I had for lunch two days ago but I can picture you like in that car looking and smiling out the back window like I watched that movie this morning which I promise I did not okay um I remember seeing mystic pizza and being really excited because also I feel like as a girl I didn't really get to grow up watching a lot of girls on film and friendships and sisterhood and talking about falling in love and relationships and girls working mmm you know on your first job I have goosebumps right now and you guys were all so charming and you're so wonderful in that and it felt like you were a little going through things I hadn't quite gone through quite yet I was so excited to go through them and I felt like I was living vicariously through you and I just really loved that movie really I loved that - that was a fun we actually just had a little reunion of the mystic pizza folk not that many years ago for Entertainment Weekly and it was so fun to see everybody and now we're all grown up and have kids and and aren't these sort of like baby adults with you know nothing but time on our hands and now it's like a thousand things going at once yeah it's nice to see everybody I have a terrible addition you do yeah so I went to audition once cuz it's really hard you know the audition process I was always horrible at it yeah and I always looked at auditions like they were unfinished work did you did you start off to have to interrupt in LA or in New York so when you're auditioning is this like it's la la okay I was in LA and I was a terrible audition or to begin with and I had this audition for this movie and it was like a girl band or something so okay cool it was for this Italian girl drummer in the band she's kind of tough so I put this oh my gosh this temporary rinse in my hair that was very dark that's why I did it for mystic pizza IVA told you but you are very successful because I went to the audition and all of a sudden they said okay so let's do the dance part and there's like 30 girls and I'm like what dance part I thought it was a band they're like yeah but they're also dancing so all of a sudden I'm Dyslexic it's like one two three kick and all these people are like dancers I'm bumping into people are kicking girls I think you're trying to take them out one by one oh it's a nightmare and now I'm sweating and the fake hair dye is pouring down my white tank top and I look miserable all over my face I'm sweaty I'm a horror shop and then the directors like well okay let's do the acting part of the audition and I was just in this flop sweat nightmare the scene from Carrie with blackness I just looked bizarre so yeah and you did not get that part I did not get that all right I mean I would have given myself a second shot just like kid you got you got some gunk are you going you got to try again but that's a yeah that we both died our hair but you were successful I I had a success out of it but I did have about two two cans of of colored mousse that I got it Langston's drugstore my hair was out to imagine stiff as a board and I remember in the audition with Adam who ended up playing my boyfriend and we were both auditioning and and it's the scene and he's like Oh Daisy and I could just come back here his skin just being cut doesn't want to cross my over moussed hair and then yeah leaving the subway coming out after the audition and I had on my white blouse and walking from the subway in the rain with two cans of dark mousse just running down all of me okay that's really surreal yeah here we are knock on wood we've had good success in our careers and we have these crazy audition dripping dye hair stories and now we're just rad51 year olds with naturally blonde hair that's right [Laughter] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Variety

Views: 411,020

Rating: 4.882967 out of 5

Keywords: Variety, Variety Studio, Julia Roberts, Patricia Arquette, Actors On Actors, Julia Roberts Homecoming, Julia Roberts Interview, Julia Roberts TV, Julia Roberts Movies, Actress, Actors, Patricia Arquette The Act, The Act, Patricia Arquette Interview, Escape at Dannemora, Escape at Dannemora Patricia Arquette

Id: BFnhAqrZ3eM

Length: 40min 38sec (2438 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 04 2019