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Features
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A Very Active Professional Life
At an age when many Hollywood actresses complain that their careers are over, Patricia Clarkson is about to make time for the dream of any actor: working with Martin Scorsese.
Friday, March 14, 2008 at 11:20 AM
By Ian Spelling
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Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com
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At this year's Elton John Oscar party with Chris Noth
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Patricia Clarkson is an Oscar-nominated actress who’s done Hollywood features and indie films, big-small movies, small-big movies and her fair share of TV. Now, nearly 25 years into her career, she’s a respected figure who’s far from a 24-7 celebrity. And that sounds about right to her.
“I don’t know that I’m in any particular place, and that’s maybe a good thing, that it’s always shifting,” Clarkson tells FilmStew during a telephone interview earlier this week. “I think I have, for me, just the right amount of celebrity. I have a comfortable life. I’m now at a point where I’m offered a lot of things and I really can choose what I want to do every year.”
The 48-year-old native of New Orleans, who received her Best Supporting Actress nomination for 2003’s Pieces of April, is more than comfortable with quietly going about her business. As opposed to say her co-star in that movie, Katie Holmes, now dogged by the paparazzi and unending Internet whispers.
“I never take it for granted,” Clarkson insists. “I know how deeply, deeply lucky I am. I’m being offered films that are really beautiful, that I want to do. I’m a woman in her late 40’s and my work is not declining. It’s kind of overwhelming right now.”
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Jeff Vespa/WireImage.com
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With Phoebe co-stars Felicity Huffman and Elle Fanning
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Indeed, along with the currently playing Married Life, Clarkson’s got a half-dozen other projects in the pipeline, including the Stanley Tucci directed Theo van Gogh remake Blind Date, the indie Phoebe in Wonderland, Spanish director Isabel Coixet’s drama Elegy with Ben Kingsley and Penélope Cruz, and Martin Scorsese’s currently filming Shutter Island, which the actress is about to join. She has essentially been working steadily since she played the wife of Kevin Costner’s Elliot Ness in 1987’s The Untouchables.
In Married Life, Clarkson plays the wife of Harry (Chris Cooper), a successful 1940’s marketing executive who plots to kill her because he loves her too much to leave her twisting in the wake of his romance with the much younger Kay (Rachel McAdams). Complicating matters are the feelings of Harry’s best pal Richard (Pierce Brosnan). Written and directed by Ira Sachs, Married Life is currently in limited release and will open wider in coming weeks.
“It’s kind of an old-fashioned film,” Clarkson observes. “It’s a thriller full of so many surprises, emotionally and psychologically. I think the overriding strength of it is that it’s a thriller. Yes, it has melodrama; yes, it has dramatic aspects and dark comedic aspects. But I think it’s a genre-smashing film.”
Clarkson describes her character Pat as a “pretty liberated” woman, especially in her mind - and that’s the problem. “I think she is a formidable woman,” she says. “She’s intellectual and she’s a sexual, sexy woman, and that’s why I wanted to play her. She’s a woman who married very young and had a child, and now that child is grown. She’s in midst of a mid-life crisis, as is her husband.”
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Jeff Vespa/WireImage.com
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In the Sundance clutch with Blind Date director and co-star Tucci
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This is the first time Clarkson has worked with Cooper since the 1995 Western Pharaoh’s Army. In fact, she - and, separately, Cooper - were both clear that another project pairing them together that is listed on IMDB with the date of 2008, Hurricane Mary, has yet to be shot and if it ever is, will have a release date that falls well past this calendar year.
“This was really a great way to come back together,” Clarkson raves. “We had a friendship that we could carry just right into it, and it was fantastic. You don’t always want that and you don’t always need that, but it was fantastic for this film, for these characters. It just worked.”
“I really, really adore this film,” she continues. “I loved working on it and I have loved doing press for it. We have been all over. It was a dream situation, a dream cast. I loved the sets and the costumes. It was just a lovely experience.”
It’s been so far a year of uncommon husband and wife relationships for Clarkson. At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the aforementioned Blind Date revealed her to be a wife who, having suffered the loss of a child, works with her husband (Tucci) to reclaim their relationship through a series of blind dates. And as if all this isn’t enough, there’s also a supporting role in Woody Allen’s upcoming offering Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
“It’s a very exciting time,” Clarkson concurs. “Working with Scorsese on Shutter Island, it’s a dream come true for an actor. And I have something else I can’t really talk about yet. It’s not completely official, but I have another extraordinary part that’s coming up, too, that I just got cast in. So – whooo! -- it’s going to be a fun summer and fall.”
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