For nearly 20 years Patricia Clarkson has moved easily and cheerfully between TV and movies, from low-budget wonders to big-budget juggernauts. Now this best of American actresses has three new films that offer dramatically different parts, writes Michael Dwyer
PATRICIA Clarkson is bemused to hear that she has been described as the "queen of the indies". She laughs with just a hint of embarrassment and pauses before responding. "Well, I don't know about being a queen, but I have been a part of some wonderful films. I'm very fortunate in that respect and I must say that I would not change any of them for anything. Each one was a unique experience, even as brutal as some of them were to shoot, in particular Pieces of April and a few times on The Station Agent, because the money was so sparse."
One of the most respected and sought-after actors in American cinema today, Clarkson has demonstrated a most impressive range and versatility in more than 40 movies. She has been consistently adventurous, always willing and eager to work on low-budget movies for first-time directors, such as Peter Hedges (Pieces of April) and Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent), and with uncompromising filmmakers from Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven) to Lars von Trier (Dogville).
Yet, even though she has received an Emmy for Six Feet Under, an Oscar nomination for Pieces of April and several awards for her work in theatre, Clarkson has not received the full recognition she deserves. It is surely only a matter of time before she gets the crucial role that will catapult her into the front line of American actors.
Ironically, the indie queen started out in a big-budget mainstream movie, The Untouchables (1987), in which she played the wife of Kevin Costner's Eliot Ness. "If you add up all the independent films I've done," she says, "they probably cost less than a week's shooting on The Untouchables."
She followed it with a role in Clint Eastwood's fifth and final Dirty Harry picture, The Dead Pool, which also featured rising actors Jim Carrey and Liam Neeson. "I didn't have any scenes with Liam," she says. "But I got to know him on that film and he's a gentleman and a scholar. I admire him greatly."
Now 46, Clarkson says she always wanted to act from when she was growing up in her native New Orleans. "It had something really unique to it, the most European of all American cities. I loved acting from the time I started when I was around 12 in junior high. It gave me a great outlet at school. I took a break for a few years when I went to Louisiana State University and studied speech pathology for two years. Then I left New Orleans for New York and finished my degree at Fordham. I really dove into theatre there and then went to the school of drama at Yale."
She went on to move with ease between theatre, cinema and television, securing some particularly juicy roles on the small screen: as Annie Hoffman in the riveting 1995 series Murder One; "a little stint on Frasier, which was nice"; and her Emmy-winning performance as Sarah O'Conner, the prescription drugs addict on Six Feet Under.
"It's funny," Clarkson says, "but so many people say that I've been such a part of that show, but I only ever did six or seven episodes over the whole series. I haven't done much television, but what I did was quite dreamy."
She gave one of her most memorable cinema portrayals as Eleanor, the best friend of the Julianne Moore character in the superb Far from Heaven (2002), which earned her several awards from US critics' groups but inexplicably failed to secure her an Oscar nomination. She was robbed.
"Why, thank you," she says. "Yes, there were rumours circulating that I might be in there. The people who were most upset were my sisters. They had seen the film and read the reviews and all the press stories saying I was going to get nominated. I have four older sisters, and I had to explain to them that it was a small, tough independent film and that would not help it.
"Then I got nominated the following year for Pieces of April, this very tiny breath of a film, and that amazed me. Then again, you just never know with the Academy. Quite often when they nominate you, it's for a whole lot of other things as well.
"By the time I got to the Oscars it was about my eighth awards show and I felt oddly relaxed. Being there for a film that cost just $200,000 was remarkable and an honour in itself. I loved my dress. It was sexy. And I had a great time. But it is a little like Cinderella by the end of the night, when you have to turn into a pumpkin and go home."
More recently, in Craig Lucas's drama The Dying Gaul, Clarkson plays one of her more complex characters, as the sensitive wife of a successful Hollywood producer (Campbell Scott), with Peter Sarsgaard as the gay screenwriter who gets caught up in a triangular relationship with them.
"It's beautifully written," she says. "I love the way the film brings out so many different feelings and human weaknesses in the characters, even though each of them does things that are unseemly and even despicable. The three of us just entered the Craig Lucas zone and went from there. It was very intense, you know. We had a very limited amount of time to shoot the film."
The Dying Gaul makes interesting and intelligent use of the internet as a key element of the screenplay. As soon as a laptop comes out, anything can happen. "The internet becomes an almost mystical figure within the film," she says, "and it takes on a spiritual quality as we're talking back and forth. We decided to speak what's written in the e-mail messages because after a while you need for that to be aural."
Clarkson went from that relatively small-scale production to Steven Zaillian's new big-budget version of All the King's Men, which was to have been released before Christmas but has been delayed to the autumn to qualify for next year's Oscars. It stars Sean Penn as Willy Stark, a character based on Louisiana governor Huey Long and the role that won Broderick Crawford an Oscar for the 1949 version.
"The book is set from the late '30s into the '40s, but the film is updated to the late '40s into the '50s," Clarkson says. "I never saw the original film, and neither did Steve Zaillian, who went back to the book and did his own adaptation. I think Sean did Huey Long proud. I bet Huey Long was looking down at Sean and saying, 'Yahoo'.
"What a journey that film was. It's me back in a big studio film, and back home because it was all shot in New Orleans and we were filming in places I hadn't been in since my childhood. I play Sadie Burke, who's Sean's mistress and his secretary, and it's a wonderful part. Most of my scenes are with Jude Law, so my sisters hate me for that, and my other scenes are with Sean and with James Gandolfini. I was like the girl with all these boys, but when the boys are those guys, I would spend them with them any day."
Clarkson was surrounded by men again in another 1950s setting for her next movie, Good Night, and Good Luck, directed and co-written by George Clooney.
"I was going, 'My God, get me out of the '50s'. But my characters in the two films are so different. In All the King's Men, Sadie is dark and smart and cynical and dry. She's penetrating and infiltrating and angry and fiery. My part in George's film is quite beautiful and sexy, and based on a real-life person, Shirley Wershba. Shirley has seen the film and she loves it.
"I don't know what it is, but once again, that picture was just me and all those guys - the girl with the band. I play the girl in the newsroom and I'm secretly married to Robert Downey Jr. We had to have a secret marriage because married couples were not allowed to work together at CBS at the time. This is another ensemble film, which is what I love."
Good Night, and Good Luck opens today. The Dying Gaul will be shown in the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival at 4pm next Friday in Cineworld
