The United States of Toni

my guest is Australian actress Toni Collette you know who else you get an MA is Toni Colette's face her habit of taking on diverse roles and her talent for character transformations in all the films we seen you in you really transform yourself sometimes leave audience is unaware she's the same actress they've seen in other performances so I know I did with you for the first maybe third of the movie [Music] Toni Collette is something of a contradiction she's never been an awards favorite and though it's hard for some of us to believe she isn't really a household name either at the same time she is one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved actresses working today a fixture in the film industry for over 20 years she has demonstrated fluency in multiple genres accents and character types that few actors could match if any I mean we're talking about an actress who at age 11 faked appendicitis to the point that her doctor ordered her into surgery to have her appendix removed she was fine she's just that good her doctor may be also that bad it seemed like we were about to finally have a real toni collette appreciation moment after her much lauded performance in 2018 s hereditary and her closer to a Best Actress nomination than she'd ever been before she may have been snubbed but I think a closer look is still in order what is it about Toni Collette that makes her so great so beloved and yet so unrecognizable in this video I'll break down her journey from Australia to the United States the breadth of her filmography and the details that make her stand out Toni Colette's rise to stardom was Swift and focused at 16 she left high school to go to drama school which she then left to start a career on the stage so by 18 she started uncle vanya at the sydney opera house and by nineteen had earned the australian equivalent of a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her first film role in Spotswood in other words it wasn't really a question of if toni collette was going to be a huge star it was a question of when her second film made the answer obvious in Muriel's Wedding Tony plays Muriel Heslop an awkward directionless young woman who wants nothing more in life than to get married with the help of her friend Rhonda and a few Abba Tunes she escapes her emotionally abusive family and friends in her small town of porpoise spit and reinvents herself in the big city on paper Muriel doesn't seem like the kind of character audiences would love she's a liar and a thief she can be shallow and uncaring but it was precisely because of those flaws and quirks that audience is connected with her Muriel was as critic Andrew Sarris wrote a spectacular subversive heroine who felt more familiar than aspirational certainly more than a live scientist an alternative it girl a mysteriously seductive novelist or other female characters of the early 90s might have Collette recently told variety I think most people feel like an awkward outsider at some point in their lives I'm realizing audiences were generally comforted by Muriel it still makes them feel less alone and okay about feeling vulnerable and imperfect in a society that demands so much of us the director of the film PJ Hogan Oded murals magnetism - something else a lot of Muriel's likability has to do with Toni Collette she's radiant it's just equality Toni has the film received an enthusiastic response at the Conn Film Festival where of course they had an Abba cover band the success of Priscilla Queen of the desert and Strictly Ballroom had fostered an international appetite for Australian films producers eager to cash in on the trend began a bidding war for me reeling and who should pick it up for distribution but Miramax in 1995 Miramax was considered a good place for an emerging actress to find open doors its recent acquisition by Disney guaranteed a certain flow of cash and its films including Pulp Fiction and the piano had demonstrated a somewhat discerning taste for critically and financially successful films there was also Harvey Weinstein whose undeniable ability to identify and develop new talent made him a good person to know unfortunately as we know now the power that this skill set afforded him also made him a monster thankfully it seems Toni was spared darker sides of his personality and the collaborations were largely fruitful okay so then you come to America like it's a it's an Australian sensation then it becomes like a sleeper hit here or like or was it just a huge here like I don't know I don't know why though it's hard to tell from where I was sitting but I'm Harvey Weinstein sent me on a very extensive press tour and I suppose it was somewhat successful because it did become a little bit of a hit and then I was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and insane once that all happened kind of changed my life completely really it really did the press tour for me riyals wedding gave journalists an opportunity to talk about their favorite topic transformations tony had gained 45 pounds to play muriel so articles somewhat predictably made some bad puns detailed what she ate to gain the weight how she lost it and perhaps most importantly clarified that she wasn't actually curvy I've never read the words felt so much in my life the film and the tour proved lucrative for Miramax soon after the studio handled the distribution of Tony's next Australian film cozy and also presented opportunities for supporting roles in high-profile American films like Emma for example when Harvey apparently gave her the script and said pick any part you want it's yours of course please remember that this [ __ ] also harassed Gwyneth Paltrow in the process of casting that film so Miramax was not just a place for good business as her accomplishments mounted the film industry's most ancient instinct kicked in how do you categorize toni collette what type should she be what kind of roles she received several offers to play chunky awkward girls in the vein of Muriel including Bridget Jones by the way but she declined boxes didn't interest her she didn't want to repeat herself instead she sought out films that were totally confusing new challenging and avoided one-dimensional characterizations her resulting filmography is difficult to describe yet its inconsistencies and depth define her reputation as one of the most versatile actors working today critic Kenneth Turan wrote in the LA Times when you think about meeting actress Toni Collette it's now to think about which toni collette you're going to mean not because she's had a million different haircuts but because as journalist Ivor Davis wrote in 2002 she never looks the same from one movie to the next so what does that mean in practice how did toni collette cultivate such a rich array of exciting complicated characters I'm gonna break down her filmography on three levels genre role and voice scroll through toni collette IMDB and you'll rarely find two films of the same genre next to each other take our last five projects as examples dream horse and inspiring Welsh tale about racing probably the polar opposite of unbelievable a chilling crime series about rape and then there's knives out a light comic whodunit velvet buzzsaw a horror satire about art and finally wanderlust drama series about marriage she's done action drama horror rom-coms and while there isn't a straight-up musical in there she does sing from time to time remember she was director Rob Marshall's first choice to play Roxie Hart in the film adaptation of Chicago after a stunning audition the guests who wanted Renee a moment of silence please for the production that might have been should she just go full circle on this Abba thing and go for Mamma Mia 3 should she have been the Baker's wife okay I'll stop some of these films fit nicely into little genre boxes others are more difficult to categorize in 2006 critics struggled to define Little Miss Sunshine was it a comedy a drama D before settling on in the spirit of Harold and Maude more recently hereditary inspired a reexamination of horror as a genre jason cinnamon wrote in the New York Times that while evil clowns and serial killers at sorority houses still haunt young viewers we're in the midst of a Golden Age of grown-up horror hushed and character driven the mix of indie fair and blockbusters works ferociously on adult anxieties in an age of dislocation these aren't spaces one typically finds actresses with similar critical acclaim like Reese Witherspoon Amy Adams or Cate Blanchet it's difficult to muster a list of leading ladies with a similar fluency in multiple areas Nicole Kidman who has shown a willingness to mess around with genre seems at home in the hours of destroyer but is observably less comfortable in films like bewitched or the Stepford Wives which granted were not great for reasons other than her but that being said those actresses might not even be fair comparisons as leading ladies full-stop a film or TV show can rest on their performances or may even be developed for them specifically the stakes are very high Tony occupies a middle ground she can and has led many projects but it's just as likely that you'd see her in a supporting role along the lines of Allison Janney Octavia Spencer or Kathryn Hahn Cate Blanchet isn't showing up for ten minutes in an indie movie but Toni Collette has the freedom to say yes to experiment and pop up in places you'd least expect as she told Jezebel the roles I've taken in our roles that I've loved no matter the size of them and no matter the size of the screen one of the words that pops up a lot in articles about Toni Collette is chameleon tiny Calathes chameleon like acting skills of mine hair of bonafide stuff an apt description for an actress who can seamlessly shift identity from one role to another the most succinct example of this skill occurs in the United States of Tara which aired on Showtime from 2009 to 2011 the show follows a woman coping with dissociative identity disorder as she attempts to discover the trauma that triggered her illness I can't say whether or not it portrays D ID accurately but the show's version of the disorder asks Toni to alternate between at least five distinct characters often within the course of a single episode a Showtime networks entertainment president Robert Greenblatt told one paper upon the show's announcement when you're casting a show that requires an actress to not only play one complex character but in this case several the road begins and ends with toni collette we see her become Alice I brought my cake for the Brazilian kids buck I have buck and you sadly wait your who Oh tea nice boner and more in her review of the series in The New Yorker Nancy Franklin called Collette impressively convincing the three alters our broad stereotypes but Colette makes the moments of transitions surprisingly touching and sometimes subtly comic her ability to transform herself even extends to her physique when she's Tara her head seems delicate wedge-shaped when she's book its blocky and oblong chameleons indeed that physical aspect of her acting is important to note Toni Colette's face is extremely malleable and expressive the almost exaggerated scale of emotion she can display deepens the emotional cues of a scene she's not just smiling she's elated this dream sequence from hereditary is disturbing for many reasons but in part because of how intensely she can contort her face to show her pain this flexibility makes her incredibly easy to read as an actress of course those big emotional moments are simple for the audience to understand but her quieter moments show her flexibility just as clearly she often doesn't even need dialogue the team over at fan door actually made a wonderful video that uses the end of the way way back to illustrate how she Telegraph's emotion without uttering a single word I'll link it down below her physicality has convinced many of us that she can be anything but we can still find certain trends in her work Toni Collette plays a lot of moms and has been since the sixth sense when she was 25 by the way but still even within this broad category she manages to find multi-dimensional characters she doesn't play moms who stand in the doorframe and complained that dad isn't spending enough time at home her characters often have their own identifiable conflicts within the story that it emitted Lea can skew toward the frantic and distressed in glass land her alcoholism threatens her relationship with her son in a long way down she happens upon a new community that cures the isolation she felt as a caretaker these mothers often show up in ensemble pieces where each character is necessarily given reasonable leeway to develop these group efforts demonstrate her strengths well perhaps the best in her filmography so far ensembles require collaborative actors who can make their characters and motivations clear quickly she knows when to capture the audience's attention and show off her characters quirks but she also knows when to pull back and support the cast an Little Miss Sunshine is her brother sarcastically teases her husband she slyly smiles and turns toward the window she knows exactly why he's pestering and she thinks it's funny but she can't outwardly show it lest she cause another fight she isn't the focus of the scene at all but her work on the sidelines tells us everything we need to know the diversity of her roles has generated frequent comparisons to Meryl Streep one tangible point of comparison is their use of accents in my Meryl Streep video I point out that vocal affectations have helped establish her reputation for disappearing into her characters and that compared to her American peers she takes on a disproportionate number of roles that demand that skill now any Australian or British actor who works in the United States will inevitably be required to shed his or her native accent for a role at some point Nicole Kidman is usually American or British while Cate Blanchet has been standard American New England's British and sexy but by seeking out smaller roles Toni like Meryl has been able to take on a greater diversity of accents than a majority of her peers Philadelphian working-class Southern Californian English Irish and more many more quantity doesn't always equal quality but she still gets headlines like this and comments like this you've got such a great American accent that I didn't know that you were a secret Aussie despite having worked here for over two decades now at least from my American perspective I know she's at least got our accents down so what toni collette same kind of lurks she's not going viral because of something she did on social or because of some hilarious hijinks on Ellen instead there's a quiet some would say to quiet acknowledgement that she's one of the best it's difficult to believe that her only Oscar nomination came twenty years ago now for the sixth sense the closest she's come since then was for another horror film genre commonly overlooked in most Awards conversations awards are obviously not a good metric of success or skill and I don't think Toni Collette would care one way or the other but her unique filmography deserves some kudos every once in a while John early can't be the only one out there talking about it she has some good stuff coming out and then okay well whenever entertainment can exist again and in the meantime let's talk about it what's your favorite Toni Collette movie or show let me know in the comments thanks for watching and stay safe everyone [Music]

Channel: Be Kind Rewind

Views: 148,672

Rating: 4.9824576 out of 5

Keywords: Toni Collette

Id: -5SRVg9CQFM

Length: 16min 13sec (973 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/GrinitD]

She, along with Patricia Clarkson, are two of the most talented and versatile working actors in Hollywood and it kills me they don’t have Oscars

[u/Gmedic99]

I LOVE HER