Tod Lippy: Did you come directly to New York after you got your MFA at Yale?

Frances McDormand: Yep.

What brought you here, the theater?

Yeah. I expected to be a classical theater actor; that’s the way I’d been trained. Of course, it’s impossible to do that in this country. “Wake up, young child.” I mean, Cherry Jones has proven that you can; there are certain actors who’ve proven it. But you have to ply your trade in small cities around the country and not make any money, and that’s the way it goes. And I quickly learned that I had to pay back my school loans.

Was Yale’s curriculum more theater-intensive?

Twenty years ago, yeah. I’m not really sure what it is now. I think that they’ve started to be a little more responsive to training actors in the business of being actors. I mean, when I left there I had no idea what an agent was for. I was really naive. Craft only, basically. We had only had one class at school that involved cameras. I don’t know if it was Super 8 or 16 millimeter or video, but that was the only experience we had doing scenes on tape. We never talked about film, we never talked about television, we never talked about auditions.

Once you’d arrived here, how did the city strike you?

It was really exciting. Actually, my first job after school was in Trinidad, acting in a play that the poet Derek Walcott had written, so I came back to New York at the end of summer, in August, with, you know, a piece of batik fabric wrapped around me, wearing sandals. I remember I took the D train down to my agent’s in midtown in this outfit. I walked in, and the first thing he said was, “You cannot ride the subway like that!” It was like, “I’m back from the islands!” [Laughs.] I moved in with the man I was seeing, who was living in the Bronx. We lived up near Bainbridge Avenue, near Montefiore Hospital. And then I got a job as cashier at Richoux of London, which was a restaurant in the basement of the Citicorp building—they had shepherd’s pie, afternoon tea, that kind of stuff—I had to wear a little doily on my head and a brown polyester skirt. I worked there until I went to Austin for Blood Simple.

That wasn’t very long, then.

No, that was September.

From what I understand, Holly Hunter was up for the role of Abby originally. Weren’t you two roommates around that time?

She lived right down the street from us, two blocks away. She and my roommate Vito both auditioned for Blood Simple. I hadn’t read the script, but I’d helped them learn their lines. Joel and Ethan were very interested in Holly—they offered it to her—but she’d just gotten her first really big theater job, in Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart, so she said, “Wait. I have a six-month contract and then I’ll be free.” But they couldn’t wait. They needed to do it in September. So they kept looking, lucky for me. I finally got in for an audition. Four or five months after that, Holly and I both changed our living situations at the same time, and I moved in with her.

You’ve claimed that you had absolutely “no clue” about film acting when you were shooting Blood Simple.

No. None. I didn’t even know how to read a script.

What was your audition like?

Well, the casting agent had told my agent that they were interested in a “Debra Winger type.” They always do that. It’s the same thing as “This is a cross between Porky’s and Apocalypse Now!” Because of limited imagination, and expedience.
   So the night before the audition I watched An Officer and a Gentleman on tape, which I loved, in fact. [Laughs.] But I’m not Debra Winger. And there were the love scenes, and the nudity in the movie—“Oh my God, I’m nothing like her!” So I went into the audition with a “Fuck you, you’re not gonna cast me” attitude. But then I walked in to discover these two chain-smoking geeks my own age. Huge ashtray on the table. I thought, “This is great,” because I chain-smoked myself. I also remember asking Joel some question about motivation, and he proceeded to give me a twenty-minute dramaturgical essay about how they’d written the scene. He didn’t know how to talk to actors.
   Anyway, they asked me to come back in the afternoon to read with John Getz, who they cast as Ray. I said, “What time?” “3.30.” I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t.” Because at 4:00 my boyfriend had his first soap opera—he had five lines—and I told them I had to watch him. And it was great, because it was true. Anyway, finally they asked me if I could come back after the soap opera, and I said, “Well, yeah, OK.”
   Up to that point, they’d only given me sides, so I took the script to a friend’s house and read it. First of all, there’s hardly any dialogue in it, and everything’s “POV” this, “POV” that. I didn’t know what “POV” was. And they describe all the camera moves, which I read as a stage direction, which of course you skip in a play—you’re not supposed to cry when the playwright tells you to cry, you’re supposed to feel it—so I didn’t know what it was about. Of course, every once in a while I’d read, you know, “Stabs him in the hand on the windowsill,” that kind of thing.

How was your experience on the set?

The set was great. A lot of really long-lasting relationships were formed, not just Joel and I. There are so many people who worked on Blood Simple who Joel and Ethan still work with, or who will come in and out. It also informed the way so many of us now work, or how we choose our work. I am interested in working with film directors, people who know technically how to make a movie. I mean, it would be nice if they know how to work with actors, but that’s not essential. I’d much rather they know how to use a lens. And on that film, everybody was there because of the script. And then the added plus of getting to know Joel and Ethan and thinking, “Hey, they might actually know what they’re doing.” They were putting across an air of confidence.

Even though it was shot in Texas, would it be stretching it to call that shoot a very “New York independent” kind of production experience?

I think it’s too general. But I do have to say one specific thing about Joel and Ethan’s films—they cast a lot of theater actors, because their work is dramatic, not just visual—it’s consistent the way a playscript is. And they depend on character actors/theater people that you only find on the East Coast, or in places like Minneapolis, where there’s a company. Theater in Los Angeles is different. You can get it a little bit in San Francisco or Seattle, but L.A. is not the same thing. It’s a transient hobby, not a profession. I mean, Holly is involved in a theater company in L.A. that she established with some other actors. They’ve done good professional work because they’re committed to it, but she can, financially. That’s the problem with theater there. People leave, and you worry whether you’re going to have the same cast all the way through a production.
   It’s a different set of ethics. That’s what I think is different about the two places. You have to live differently in New York.

You once said about acting that “if you work constantly you’re living in a fantasy world and you have nothing else to offer but fantasy.” Do you think New York offers a more resonant kind of reality check?

Definitely. I find it stifling to only talk to people who do exactly the same thing I do. Now, I’m an actor, and I love to get together with other actors and talk jargon. If you’re rehearsing something in the theater, for instance, and a bunch of actors go out to dinner, you can actually keep on rehearsing—you can intellectually keep working through a scene. But generally, you don’t have to hang out with people who do the same thing here. In fact, you’re forced to hang out and meet other people who don’t, every day. So you’re jarred out of the complacency of whatever field you’re in, and you just simply have to articulate your thought differently from other people because you can’t fall back on cliches. I think that’s really important. In New York, you can’t escape reality.
   Also, in the acting profession, just working in film is way too seductive a lifestyle. You know, somebody gives you a call sheet, tells you when to wake up, where to go, when to eat. Every single time I do it, I have to adjust. When I start working, I’m like, “Get away from me! I’m gonna get my own coffee. Leave me alone, for God’s sake!” And then a couple weeks into it, I’m like, “Excuse me, could I just ask you one more little favor...” And then after the job’s over it takes me a couple more weeks to adjust back. “Where’d I put my coffee? What time is it?!”

I wanted to back up for one second and ask you about your auditioning experience. You must have been doing a lot of it during your first few years in New York. Could you talk about that a little bit?

I conducted the first ten years of my auditioning life in total defiance, with my jaw locked every time I went in for something.

Was that a protective measure?

Definitely. When l first moved to New York, my agent would get me meetings with casting people. I met this one woman, I don’t remember her name. She’d been around for a long time, and met with me as a favor to the head of the agency. I came in, sat down, probably looking exactly like I look now—no make­up (less wrinkles), chipped tooth, etc. She looked me over and said: “Here’s the thing: you would be perfect as a pioneer woman. Unfortunately, they’re no longer doing Westerns. You’re gonna have trouble.” I left her office mumbling to myself, “I’m a pioneer woman...they aren’t doing pioneer movies any more...gonna have trouble...”
   This was the early eighties, and I’d just been told I would be perfect for Little House on the Prairie. So anyway, I spent the majority of my time trying to figure it all out. I was always walking into auditions either falling off high-heeled shoes or carrying along prosthetic breasts—

You’ve talked before about your “breast roles” and “non-breast roles”—

Yeah, they’ve become a tool for me. I mean, I would get scripts where the description of the woman character was, you know, “big, beautiful breasts.” “The breasts emerge through the door before she does.” [Laughs.] I’d see that in a script and go, “Well, hah! So they think I have breasts, do they? I’ll show ’em.” But I never wore them to an audition—that would really be lying—I would just take them along with me. I remember I went into one audition for one of those “big, beautiful breast” roles, and the star of the movie, who I’d only seen in the movies, was going to be there. So I wore these big tall trashy shoes and I was at least a foot taller than him. Miscalculation.

Did you ever go out to L.A. for auditions, pilot season, that kind of thing?

No. Right after Blood Simple, Joel and Ethan went out there to try to sell it, and I drove out from Minneapolis, where I was doing a play, to basically hang out. We all got a house together with Sam Raimi in Silver Lake. And then I got a job on Hill Street Blues, a recurring character, for six episodes. So I stayed out there and finished that and then came back.

I know you lived in Santa Monica during the filming of The Big Lebowski; did you do any work out there then?

Actually, I was busy being a stylist for myself because of all of the award things. I had planned to hang out with our son in L.A. while they were filming. But then we started going to all of these events. It was the only time I’d see Joel. He’d put on a tuxedo, and I would put on a gown, and we’d go to awards ceremonies. It was amazing. So I spent a lot of my time finding the right shoes for the dress, that kind of thing. It was extraordinary.

A huge percentage of the press I found on you dates from around this period.

Well, that’s for two reasons. One was the phenomenon of what happened with Fargo. It found a broad audience that nobody expected, so it kind of became some­thing that nobody could ignore. But also, that year I had done four different movies, and I made the decision to work with a publicist. I wanted people to see these movies. Only one of them was going to get any kind of publicity—Primal Fear, a studio movie. But I felt that if people were going to see me in that, then I wanted them to see me in Fargo, Palookaville and Lone Star, too. I mean, I like my work in Primal Fear, but I wanted to put it in perspective. Also, I knew that our son was on his way, and I wasn’t going to be able to do four movies in a year for a while.
   So I got involved with the publicity machine. I sat down and “strategized,” and talked about what I wanted to do, and how much I was willing to do, and what it was going to “mean” in terms of when I stopped doing it. Fargo was never a part of it. I mean, I was going to spend a lot of time talking about Fargo, but that was not the one I thought audiences were going to see, nor the one that I thought journalists were going to be interested in. It kind of flipped around on all of us, though, which was fascinating.

During your acceptance speech for the Best Actress Oscar, you made the statement that casting decisions should be based on “qualifications as opposed to market value.” Did you get any flak for that?

I don’t think I have. Nobody’s ever said anything to my face. [Laughs.] Let me tell you something about that situation. I’d watched the Oscars on television for years, and it just doesn’t work as a theatrical event. Never. Because they don’t know how to do theater. It’s not TV; it’s theater—it’s a huge house with a very specific audience with a massive stage that’s empty. I figured if ended up having to go up on that stage, then I was going to use it as a theatrical moment. If I was given that time to use, I wanted to use it for my own devices. Also, I hadn’t worked for six months, so I was raring to go. I did have a script, because I thought about what I was going to say, and if you’re going to have that amount of time in front of that kind of audience—

Over a billion people...

No, I mean the several thousand people in the house. Really, it’s not about television; it’s about that group of people. About being in front of a group of, well, not peers, except for all of the people we were sitting around. We were off to the side, in, like, the hooters’ corner. It was Joel and me, Ethan and Trish, and Bill Macy, Felicity Huffman behind us. And Holly and Janusz were over in, like, the “senior high school” section, with Nic Cage and Patricia Arquette. We were in the junior high section.
   Anyway, that statement was to honor what was clearly true about the five of us who had been nominated in that category, because the pickings were so slim for we women to choose from. I knew, even though I didn’t know any of those other women personally, that they have gone through the same exact things I had been going through for eighteen years. “Big beautiful breasts.” Too tall, too thin, too short. “Of course, we have to cast the male lead before we can cast the female part,” etc. Playing roles that were only in relationship to the men in the story—basically all the bullshit that goes along with being a female in that profession.
   But I felt that that’s what people were responding to in the character of Marge. There’s the movie, there’s the script, there’s my work in the movie, but beyond that, there’s this character that steps outside all of it, and people get her. People always forget that she doesn’t come in until almost halfway through the movie. It’s not a huge part. So I guess what I was trying to say in that speech was that I appreciated Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner’s support of the story, and Joel and Ethan’s decision to cast me. Not that they were necessarily interested in equality for women, or creating only roles like Marge for actresses to play. Of course, if they asked for a lot more money, the way the business works people are going to say, “OK, we’ll give you the money. Now hire somebody people are going to fucking recognize.” But that’s the business of it.

But your involvement in a couple of indie projects, post-Fargo, has actually brought money in.

Not necessarily that much money. At least one, though, yeah—right after the Oscars, with a friend of ours. I helped him raise the money, but it was only three million dollars, which is basically peanuts. I’ve found since, though, that it really hasn’t changed that much; people can’t really get too far with me being in the movie. But I can offer something else. A goal that I always felt I could realistically achieve in my profession was the respect of my peers. So someone can say “Fran McDormand’s read it, likes it.” and then someone will at least read the script, or they’ll want to work with me, or maybe it’s just, “Oh, I like her work, that means that’s what this project is about.”
   But on the other hand, it’s starting to backfire. I’ve had to learn to be much more forcefully protective of that, because actors have come up to me and said, “I did this because you were going to do it. Why didn’t you do it?!” And I never said I was going to do it; I just said I liked the script. Then it’s like, “Wait! That’s not my goal. I don’t want to fuck people around.” And that’s a drag, because if anything, throughout the years I’ve erred on the side of...Joel’s always giving me shit, saying, “Oh, is this one another choice for integrity?” But it’s the only thing I can count on.

How do you make the decision to work with newer directors, particularly if there’s no body of work from which to judge?

It’s really specific every time. The largest thing recently I’ve done with a director whose work I didn’t know was Madeline, with Daisy Mayer. I hadn’t seen her first film, Party Girl, but I met with her, and the way she talked about the books—the way she wanted to use them as her bible, essentially—and the way she described the auditions with the little girls, I just trusted her. I looked at her and thought, “This chick knows what she’s doing.” And she really did.

So trust obviously plays an important role.

I feel that it’s about judging character. Like working on Palookaville. All I knew about Alan Taylor was that I’d seen his short—a producer friend of mine, Maggie Renzi, someone I really respect, had given it to me way before I ever heard about Palookaville. So when the name came up again, I remembered him. Also, it was a part—a prostitute—that studios, or whatever you want to call it, the more “conventional” film world, would never have considered me for. And it was only one day! It was great. You know, our meal was take-out food in the basement of a house next door, I helped pull cable out from underneath my chair—at the time, I really needed to do that. I can’t remember what I was shooting right before, but it was like when I worked on Darkman with Sam Raimi, and then did Ken Loach’s Hidden Agenda right afterward—it was a really great antidote to being “the girl” in an action movie.

Do you find that the roles you choose—whether consciously or unconsciously—create some sort of linearity, or “narrative,” to your acting life?

Well, last year, I did two plays: I played Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, and Merope, the mother, in a new reworking of Oedipus. Those two things felt like the culmination of twenty years of work, and also the springboard for the next twenty.
   And they followed my playing Marge in Fargo. I mean, I didn’t fall completely flat on my face with Blanche—my nose was scraped a little on the very tip—

You think so?

Yeah. It was a little bit like being in drag for me. Though I feel like I pulled it off, it was in the same way the best Streisand impersonator can pull it off—you’re still aware of the fact that your hands are too big. I was really aware of myself doing it. That’s not to say I wasn’t aware of myself with Marge—I was—but there was something very contained about it. And there was an ease to it. The same thing with Oedipus, which was written by a friend of mine from drama school, who is Pedro’s godfather. I mean, we’ve known each other really intimately for twenty years. There was an ease to it.
   But that’s not to say it’s only there when the roles have been specifically written for me; it just seems to me that, more often than not, transitional work happens for me in the theater, and then whatever film work I do afterward benefits from that, or is at least informed by it.

Like playing the abused wife in Mississippi Burning right after playing Stella on Broadway?

Exactly. That’s why I’m really interested in seeing the last two films I did after those two plays. With Wonder Boys, the work I did with Curtis Hanson was a job for me, in the best sense of the word. I went in, I didn’t beat my head against the wall—I had too many other things to deal with. I was quitting smoking at the time, and I was raising my son. So I was trying to negotiate being out of town without him, with him, back and forth. I just wanted to see what I could do if I just went to work, did my job and went home. I don’t know if it works. And then I feel like so much of the work I did on Cameron Crowe’s movie really is directly related to—although technically on the other extreme from—Merope in Oedipus, because the latter is an hour-and-a-half, full-blown Greek drama hurricane monologue about motherhood, and the role I played in Cameron’s movie is that of Cameron’s real-life mother, basically. A homage to a woman he adores, and who is really a formidable character. But it’s a movie, and it’s a comedy. We’ll see.

So obviously, in film, you’re really not sure of how your work is going until you see a final cut.

Yeah. Don’t know. Can’t necessarily trust my instincts on that.

With theater, do you know during a performance, or immediately after?

Well, that’s a weird one, because of how exciting it is to be working with a live audience. How that completes a circuit, which is something different every night. It’s much more tenuous. Also, it’s not necessarily a healthy thing for me—or any actor—to talk too critically about performances when you’re doing them. You just simply go back in there with too much information every night. It’s much easier to talk about it critically later. Whereas with movies; it’s always later. I don’t have that much ego attached to it. There aren’t the same immediate concerns.

Do you read reviews when you’re on stage?

I do now. It depends.

Aren’t you ever inclined to modify a performance?

Sometimes, yeah. Not even modifying; you just become too aware of it. Even if they say, “Love the way she delivers that line.” Then you can never say it again; your timing will always be off from that moment forward. The line will never be the same, because there’s that beep beep in your head—you have to step over that rock every time.

What’s your opinion of actors who sign on to a particular project with the proviso that they will have some input on the script?

I’m suspicious of it. I don’t think there are many people who simply have the talent and experience to do that. I’m really suspicious of actors directing movies; I’m really suspicious of actors even producing movies. Mostly because I have no affinity for it, or interest in it. The last thing I want to do is to sit around developing scripts. The earliest I want to get involved is talking to designers. I really enjoy talking about my character’s environment and wardrobe, stuff like that.

I remember your saying for Marge that you knew exactly what kind of make­up she would wear—a blue eye shadow she would have used since Brainerd High School—and that she’d have broken blood-vessels in her face because of constant exposure to the cold.

It’s a process of work for me. When I’m not working, I am a voracious reader of women’s magazines. I love them. It’s my research. So in talking to John Blake about Marge’s makeup, for instance—you know, broken blood vessels also happen to make you look really good. [Laughs.] They can be strategically placed in a very attractive way—it’s better than blush, know what I mean? It’s a really specific texture. John can do “glamour” well, but he’s even better at special effects. And special-effect makeup is much better for me than glamour makeup.
   But in terms of my research, those magazines are about body image and fantasy—about what’s being sold at any particular time. Women are being sold exteriors—“We can be anything you want us to be.” What’s the package? Which mold am I going to pour it into? And I can’t fit hardly any of the ones that are in those women’s magazines. They don’t show me, they don’t represent me.

You and 99 percent of the population.

Exactly. That’s what’s interesting to me about someone like Kate Winslet, who I adore, because she’s completely inside her body. And her body type is not in those magazines except for when she’s in them. So along with the interesting choices she’s making in her film roles as a professional, by also appearing in these magazines she’s reaching an audience that needs to hear from her. She’s going to be able to affect twenty-year-old women in a positive way. I need to hear from her!

You’ve occasionally done what you called earlier “girl” roles, like, for instance, the part of Julie Hastings in Darkman. Doesn’t that feel slightly problematic to you, considering where you’re coming from?

No. Because I’m not on a mission. And I don’t think Kate Winslet should be on any kind of mission, either. She should do whatever she wants to do. It’s just nice to see somebody doing that—regardless of their reasons—and changing something.
   With Darkman, by the way, I really missed an opportunity. I could’ve had more fun, the same way Sigourney Weaver had fun in Alien and Kathleen Turner had fun in Romancing the Stone. I was taking it too seriously, and also, Sam kind of cast me because he wanted to answer the criticism of not ever having three-dimensional female characters in his stories. It didn’t work, though, because I didn’t find the dimension of positive silliness that has to go along with the “damsel-in-distress” role.
   Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be doing any more action movies, unless I can do, like, the Judi Dench thing with the Bond movies. I wouldn’t have to pull out the breasts for a role like that. Or maybe I would. I could come back as Pussy Galore in her later years. “That’s Ms. Pussy to you.”

On the frontier.

Yeah. [Laughs.] Pioneer Pussy.

You mentioned that, after Darkman, you took the role of the human rights activist in Ken Loach’s Hidden Agenda. What went into that decision? It was interesting that you once again ended up playing opposite Brad Dourif (who played the husband of your character in Mississippi Burning).

That was weird. I had no idea Brad was doing it. But it was much more about working with Ken. Ken had never told me whether he’d seen Mississippi Burning, but I’m assuming he did.
   I have to be honest, I’d never heard of Ken Loach. I read the script while we were shooting Darkman, and thought it was really kind of inaccessible. I said to Liam [Neeson], “Have you ever heard of this Ken Loach guy?” He almost genuflected. He said, “Do anything you can to work with him.” He told me to see Kes, which I rented, and I thought it was extraordinary. I met with Ken; he came to L.A. while I was out there shooting the film. When he goes to L.A. he walks everywhere. He asked me to come get him, because he didn't have a car. I picked him up in my rental car—it was one of those with the automatic safety belts that slide up when you close the door, and he freaked. “Well, that’s very fascist, isn’t it!” I thought, “I love you. What do you want me to do? I’m there.
   I think the situation for Ken at the time was: “You want some money? You want to make this political movie about Northern Ireland? How about putting a couple of American actors in there?” My character was originally supposed to be from Germany, and a lot of her background revolved around her guilt as a German. Anyway, he put together a group of international actors, and he took us to Northern Ireland for a week before we started filming to interview different people he had selected from the Catholic community—people who’d been interned, or had family members interned, who’d been searched. We only talked to one RUC guy, also someone Ken chose. And then, the first thing we shot was a press conference with real English and Irish press.

That opens the film. It felt very spontaneous, with everyone jumping on every­one else’s lines...

Yeah. There were journalists there who had been covering Northern Ireland. And their questions were really being directed at Ken as much as us. “I have a question—what the fuck do you know about this?!” He basically taught us what he wanted us to know. He manipulated that situation, because I didn’t know enough about the political situation in Northern Ireland to defend my own opinion. I chose to serve Ken’s storytelling.

That reminds me of something you said about Altman, another improvisation-based director, being a “master manipulator” in the sense that he made you feel like a collaborator in the process—

You know what it is? It’s something that I’ve been describing in talking about both him and Ken. This whole idea of improvisation, and films that are generated on the “reality” of an emotional moment with an actor—it’s something that I’m seeing in a lot of younger filmmakers’ work now, and I think that it’s being abused, or there’s a reverence for it that’s ill-placed. They look at Altman’s work, or Loach’s work, and think, “Brilliant improvisation. I can do that; I’ll just get some great actors together. Give ’em a blueprint and let ’em go.” But you know, never once on either of those sets did I hear a camera operator say, “We’ve just rolled out.” You know? These directors knew exactly what they were doing. Improvisational, yes. But they knew the ten different things that could happen, because they’d already thought about it. They were just waiting to see which one came up. They were in control.

Could you talk about your experiences on Mick Jackson’s Chattahoochee?

I learned a big lesson with Chattahoochee, which relates to what I was saying earlier: Never make assumptions about what the final outcome of the movie is. The script I read—the movie I shot—was a dark comedy. And then it turned out to be a very earnest film about a mental-health situation. And I don’t think Mick Jackson’s intention was for it to be an earnest film. Anyway, I didn’t fit; nothing I did fitted into that movie. That’s why to this day I refuse to talk about a movie until I’ve seen it. It’s not fair. And it’s more respectful to the filmmaker.
   I took that role for two very specific reasons. One was that my breasts were a big part of that job, because there is a specific flashback scene for Gary Oldman’s character when he’s in prison—he’s remembering having sex with his wife (my character) and being smothered by her breasts. She thought she was sexually titillating him, and she was actually smothering him. So that fact that she had large breasts was integrally important to the development of his character, I thought in a really great way.
   Mick had seen Raising Arizona—my first use of the prosthetics—so when I went in to audition, it was like, “I’m sorry. As you can see, I’m flat-chested. But I know I can play this part. I love this part.” I had to find out how he was planning to shoot that particular scene, because if he didn’t need these breasts literally coming off of my body [mimes pulling out prostheses], “We’ve got these to play with!” [Laughs.] So to speak. And he cast me, because his intention in that scene was always to have these disembodied breasts, which would amp up the horror of him being smothered. So we got a “breast double.” I was much more concerned about the poor woman’s situation than she was: I insisted on meeting her, and being there on the set the day she worked. She didn’t care; she was like, “Whatever,” doing her math homework in between the shots. But it was a victory for me to be cast in that role. And I’ve always been really—not grateful, but I really respect Mick for making that decision.
   The other reason was having the opportunity to work with Gary. We were both theater-trained, and I’d seen his work in Sid and Nancy—I was ready to meet that challenge of working with Gary Oldman. I felt like I was ready to be a worthy adversary. I remember at the end of one scene my character breaks down, sobbing, and the dynamic of it was that this would be his character’s parting image of his wife. Anyway, before we shot the scene, we were just sitting around talking, and he mentioned some film he’d recently done where, in an over-the-shoulder shot, when the camera was on the other actor, he was doing a really amazing job, but the minute the set-up changed and the camera was on Gary, the other actor wasn’t emotionally connected. He said he felt like he was working with a stand-in.
   Well, I took that to heart, and was determined to give him as much as I could. I wanted to prove to him that I was not that kind of actor, and that I respected his work. By the end of the day, I was a wreck! My eyes were swollen, I could hardly talk. I learned a big lesson from that. He was not saying to me, “You have to fucking cry every time.” He was simply relating an anecdote about something I’d never really experienced before in film.

Many of the directors you’ve worked with have commented on your ability to listen, and react, to other actors. To be “in the moment.”

What I found out in Blood Simple was that it had to be about where you were right then and there, and the people you were with at that moment. Unlike theater, I couldn’t depend on a month-long rehearsal process to establish an emotional or psychological road map. For instance, the whole sequence of events that happens after my character thinks the husband has killed Ray, the lover, and I think I’m being chased. In the middle of it, I go into the bathroom to hide. So that day, you know, I’m hanging out, having a cigarette, a cup of coffee, and suddenly I realize, “Oh fuck. I have to be hysterical!” And not only that; they were shooting it from all these different angles, so I had to be hysterical all day. “What am I gonna do, what am I gonna do?!” And I remembered a student play I’d done during my last year of drama school. During rehearsal, the director had had one of the other actors hold me from behind until she felt I was at the necessary emotional pitch, and then she’d say, “OK. Let her go.” It pissed me off so much that I couldn’t get away, and I became hysterical.
   So suddenly I’m looking around the set at all these guys who were exactly like Joel and Ethan—wimpy, geeky guys, like Barry Sonnenfeld. But then there was Tom Prophet. A forty-five-year-old grip from Austin, Texas. Big old gray handlebar mustache, biceps the size of a ham. I went up to him: “OK, Tom. I know this is going to sound really weird, OK? But listen: I need you to just stand here and hold me, OK, until Joel says ‘action.’ I’m going to fight real hard to get away, but don’t let me go until Joel says ‘action,’ OK?”
   We did the first take and I said “Thank you very much” to Tom and crawled under a table on the set, huddling there waiting for the next setup. I could hear Joel saying, “Does anybody know where Fran is?” Jean Black, the makeup woman, whispered, “She’s under that table.” And this is why I’m married to the man today: He got down, crawled under the table, said, “So, Fran, here’s the next scene we’re doing. I’ll come get you when we’re ready.” Didn’t ask me why I was under the table, didn’t ask me if I was OK. A few minutes later Jean kind of scooted this box of Kleenex under the table. I spent the entire day there.
   Anyway, from that point on I decided that I wasn’t going to do that every time. It was stupid. And so now, truly, the best thing for me to do, particularly if l have to be in a place of emotional vulnerability for a scene in a film, is to stand in for myself on the mark, while everybody around me is setting up the shot. The isolation of that is enough to make me feel—not exactly vulnerable, but it fine-tunes things. It’s also very theatrical. That’s a pretty grand gesture, to make people deal with the fact that I’m there. I mean, even the guy setting up the light probably knows what the upcoming scene’s about, so if you’re standing there, and they’re having to work around you, everyone kind of knows what’s going on. “Isn’t this the scene where he dies? What’s she doing out here?” It’s all about what’s gonna happen right then. Not about sitting under the table crying, or remembering your dog dying, or any of that. You’re right there.

It seems very other-directed.

Yeah, because it’s not an isolated medium. You can’t act by yourself. And you can always tell in someone’s performance if they’re listening to the other actor or doing it alone. Even in a fashion photo, the best models think. They’re thinking, and there’s something in their eyes. You can’t fake that, just like you can’t fake listening.

Do you need to be empathetic to be an actor?

Well, it doesn’t hurt. But it’s got its limits. Because in the end it’s also about self-preservation, and protecting yourself, because I don’t want anybody to negatively manipulate me. I mean, I want a director to manipulate me, so well in fact that I don’t even think about it until the next day, but I don’t want anybody fucking around with me; manipulating me to the point of nastiness, which people can do. So I want to know how to do it for myself.

How did you get involved with The Butcher’s Wife?

After Mississippi Burning, all I ever got offered were Southern white-trash parts. And only dramatic stuff. I’d had it—I couldn’t answer one more question in an audition about not being from the South. So I’m grateful that I got to do The Butcher’s Wife, because I really wanted to do a comedy. But it was so ill-fated. It was a movie that was supposed to take place in New York, and we shot the whole thing on a back lot in Hollywood. There was nothing, nothing New York about it.
   I was supposed to be a lesbian boutique owner in SoHo—I was psyched. This was, like, mid-eighties—it was about wearing black clothes, having long stringy blond hair, black eyeliner, talking out the side of my mouth—basically, just being really cool “New York downtown”—this was when SoHo was still cool. But when I get there, I find out the costume designer has a deal with Cerutti, so she’s getting all of these pastel plaid power suits free for me to wear. Very masculine-looking, eighties, big-shoulder-pad things. Well, the point for me of playing a lesbian boutique owner in SoHo was to not be a dyke. She’s not a dyke. Anyway, at some point, l just threw up my hands and went to work. In the end, though, I shot myself in the foot, because the point was to prove that I could do comedy, but I took it so seriously that there was no joy, no lightness to the character. She was just a bitch, because that’s what I felt like.
   l believe that if you talked with a majority of the people I’ve worked with in the last twenty years, hopefully at least 95 percent would say that I’m really professional and easy to get along with, and they like working with me. The costume designer from Butcher’s Wife, however, is one of the five percent who, if you mentioned my name to her, would say, “The most horrible experience I’ve ever had in my life. That woman doesn’t know shit.” I made her life hell, because I had a hook for that character, and a real specific way that I could do it, and when it was taken away from me my confidence was shattered. I didn’t know how to play the part in a Cerutti suit. So I made it impossible for her to put me in a Cerutti suit. But also, what my vanity was doing, since my confidence was shot, was making me think things like, “OK. This character wouldn’t care what she looked like. Yes she would! She’d wear a Cerutti suit. No, she wouldn’t, she’s a boutique owner! She knows her butt’s big, she would wear something that didn’t make her butt look big! But she’s a lesbian, so maybe she doesn’t care about her body image. Of course she cares about her body image!” And on and on. It was a battle with my own vanity and my insecurity about my own body. And one of the reasons I wanted to play this character was because she wouldn’t have that insecurity. She’d wear black because it was the minimalizer. Anyway, it’s always about the subjugation of vanity.
   You know, for all of these characters, Joel is always saying to me, “I don’t think she has to be that unattractive...” It was the same thing with Marge.

Speaking of Fargo one more time, I wanted to get very specific for a moment, and talk about the enormous resonance of your delivery of the “I just don’t understand” line in the police car near the end of the film...

Something that informed that moment was my mother; she says things like that. You know, five minutes can’t go by without her giving you a list of the people who’ve died. I was on the phone with her the other day and she said, “Well, you know, we’ve got this young girl. They got married, then he left her for somebody else…” She just starts right in on this mini-scandal in the community, and her judgment on it. Lasts for about five or six lines—“Uh, where are you going with this, Mom?” We don’t talk that often, but she’ll always say, “What haven’t I told you? What can I tell you?” And it’s always about death, destruction, drama—offered like a little cup of tea to soothe you, so that a connection has been made. And I think that’s what Joel was hearing in Marge—gotta do your job, file the report, everything has to be completed, and then: “Oh my, that was ugly!”
   I actually have to answer something related to that. I allowed something to happen that I have to sort of redeem myself for. Shall I?

Please.

When we were shooting Fargo, I had a blast. I really enjoyed it. But I always felt—and I even said this to Joel and Ethan at one point—that Gaear and Carl, rather than Marge, were actually the “good guys” in the story. And in Joel and Ethan’s kind of warped way, they are. We all adored those characters, It was great watching Steve and Peter work together, and they got really tight doing the shooting. They were great to be around, and there was a real propulsion to their characters. At the end of the shoot, when the costume designer sold wardrobe stuff, all the guys on the crew wanted their things.
   Anyway, all of us were always, well, not making jokes about Marge, but Joel and Ethan would say “cut” at the end of a scene and the crew would just start laughing. And I would also crack myself up a lot. Stuffing White Castle hamburgers in my mouth, that kind of thing. But despite all of the laughing, there were all these moments of…well, terror. I was utterly terrified of her. Then the movie comes out, and I start doing all this publicity, and everybody’s in love with her; they adore her. And there was only one journalist, a female journalist from Australia I met while I was doing publicity in London, and she said something like, “Don’t you find Marge really scary?” And I almost went, “Yes! Terrifying!” And then I went, “No, no...” and I played the party line. But, in fact, I never acknowledged what I had always felt about her. There’s nothing scary about what she’s become in the minds of most of Fargo’s audience, but that element is also what’s made her so symbolic. So that moment is poignant, but why is it poignant? Maybe it’s that she’s so naive, so innocent.

To me, it was her utter imperviousness to evil. Her inability to imagine it, and that somehow allowing her to conquer it. It isn’t entirely explainable, which is a good thing.

There’s hope there. I have to say, what I appreciate—and of course my perspective is just blown at this point—but what I got from the end of Fargo, which I’d been waiting for in Joel and Ethan’s work, was an embracing of sentimentality, which they did, and it worked. In my opinion, they backed out of it at the end of The Big Lebowski. The whole future thing in that was bullshit, I thought, and Barton Fink was bullshit in the way it turned into a horror movie, from my point of view, and didn’t really deal with somebody not being able to write. And the whole ending of Raising Arizona was like, you know, sappy about them eventually having this big family and going into the sunset in their old age—bullshit sentimentality. Or like a backing off of sentimentality, because they made a comment on it. The end of Fargo was purely sentimental, and it worked. Of course, Joel and Ethan would just guffaw at that.

I wanted to ask just a couple more questions about New York. First, I would think that anyone with a degree of celebrity can “blend in” here, as it were, better than most other places in the country. Is that the case with you? Are you ever self-conscious about being out and being observed?

Well, it’s only been in the past couple of years that that’s happened to me. I had a lot of trouble this fall with it, but mainly because of my son. I don’t like having him exposed to it. We don’t let it be a part of our life, but it’s insidiously a part of his without him having any choice. That being said, at the same time, the natural tendency of New Yorkers is to respect each other’s privacy, no matter who you are or what you do. It’s just a given. So when it is there, it’s still in a generally respectful way.
   We were away all summer, so I felt it a lot more when I first came back, because I was “home,” and l didn’t want people to do that to me in my local grocery store. “This is where I live; this is my neighborhood.” Also, the more time I spend in the neighborhood, I’m just somebody else you see every day. So, yes, they know I’m an actor, but I’m in their neighborhood, so I’m “their actor.”

There’s a clipping I ran across from the New York Daily News, basically a gossip item around the time of the Oscars, which consists of a series of quotes from people who live near you, telling their stories of how “regular” the two of you were. What you wore to the gym, how much you perspired on the Stairmaster, where you shopped, that kind of thing. That seems a little creepy.

Yeah, it is. The problem is—and this is the problem that everybody in New York has—you’ve always got an audience here. Everybody does. Like when you walk down the street, and you hear a few lines from a knock-down, drag-out fight a couple is in the midst of—I mean, where else do they do it? You’re in transit, but you’re not in a car, by yourselves, so you’re being watched and heard. With Joel and I, now that we have a kid, the times we get to talk are limited. So when we go out alone together to see a movie, get dinner, often the things we’re talking about are important, personal things that need to be discussed. But you’re sitting at Ollie’s Noodle Shop at a table for two with people crammed in on either side of you. And when toward the end of dinner you realize that the people on your right haven’t been talking for the last half-hour, you suddenly know that they’ve been involved in the decision about, you know, which tampon I’m going to use. You’ve got it anyway as a New Yorker, but there’s a certain part of you that can tune out that conversation next door until it’s somebody you’ve just seen in a movie, or somebody you read about in a magazine. Suddenly it’s more difficult to do.

Do you ever imagine leaving New York?

There are two instances when I feel like I want to leave New York. One is when the fucking car alarm goes off at 5:30 in the morning, and the second is when my kid has to take a test to get into kindergarten. But I really can’t imagine living anywhere else. Although I have to say I can’t imagine having to live here for twelve months straight, year in, year out. I’ve never done that in the eighteen years I’ve lived here. I’ve always spent time away working or traveling. As a home base, though, there can’t be anything better.

Do you have a favorite movie theater?

Film Forum. It’s our date place, because I really don’t want to waste my time on most American movies. We went there with some friends the other night—a double date—to see Mr. Death. The perfect New York date movie. We sat where we always sit, right behind the “Dedicated in Loving Memory to Karl Mundt” seat. We always pay homage to Karl. We’re such geeks.