A daily chronicle of creativity in film, TV, music, arts, and entertainment, produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from November 2014 – March 2020. Host John Horn leads the conversation, accompanied by the nation's most plugged-in cultural journalists.
Actress Rooney Mara has been a professional actress for only a decade, but she has accomplished more than most of her peers in those few years.
Mara has worked with some of the best directors in Hollywood, including David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh and Spike Jonze. Rooney also received a 2011 Academy Award best actress nomination for “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.” And she won the Best Actress award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for her work in “Carol.”
The film, directed by Todd Haynes and based on “The Price of Salt,” a novel by Patricia Highsmith, is set in the 1950’s. Mara’s character — Therese Belivet — is a department store clerk who falls in love with an older, married woman named Carol, who is played by Cate Blanchett.
The Frame's John Horn spoke with Rooney Mara at the Telluride Film Festival — right before she received a career tribute at the festival — and asked her when she first realized she had a talent for acting, what attracts her to a role, and why she initially said no to appearing in "Carol."
Do you remember the first time you realized you were good at acting?
I didn't really think I was good at anything growing up, and I tried everything. I basically went through every single thing: I did dance, acting, piano, guitar. I didn't stick with anything because I didn't think I was good at anything ... so I didn't stick with anything long enough to really find out if I could be good at it. I think a lot of that has to do with my shyness growing up. I had a lot of fear about not being good at stuff, so I would just quit.
So what changed?
In first grade I had to write this little book and the teacher told me I should be a writer. aAnd there was a brief moment where I thought, Oh, maybe I'm good at writing. Maybe I should be a writer.
Do you think you're really good at acting now?
I think I'm good at it, but mostly when I watch myself I can pick up all the stuff that I don't like about it. I always think it could be better. I'm definitely my biggest critic.
How do you get better as an actor? If you're a figure skater, you have a coach and you're out skating everyday. As an actor, is it about reading? Watching other people acting? Listening to music? Being your own worst critic?
I don't know. I wish there was an answer to that. I feel like it's different for everyone and I feel like some people, as they get older, they get worse because they become more self-aware and more aware about things they don't like about themselves or the things that work for them. I just feel like you kind of have to be authentic and in the moment of whatever it is you're doing, and for me, the thing that helps me the most is living life.
If I work back-to-back-to-back, I have nothing left in me to give to the parts that I'm playing or the directors I'm working with. I made a really conscious decision when I was young not to be a child actor. My sister started acting professionally pretty young and that was definitely an option for me if I wanted to pursue that. And I kind of knew very young — like 11 or 12 — [that] I wanted to be taken seriously as an actor. I don't want to grow up on screen and I want to go to school, I want to go to college, I want to have an education and then I want to act.
I don't know how I knew that at such a young age, but I just feel like the more life experience you have, the better actor you can be because what we're doing is just imitating life. So if you haven't had life experience, how can you do it?
Does that explain why you've only made around five movies in the last five years? Is it because you want to have those life experiences before you take on a role? Or is it a combination of not having parts come your way that you feel a hundred percent committed to?
It's kind of all based on my moods. I'm a very moody person. So after "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," which was a year solid of shooting and then six months of press, it was a lot of work and I gave everything I had to it.
I didn't work for a pretty long time after that and "Carol" was offered to me right after. And I said no to it. I said, "I won't be good in this. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to play this part." And it's just that I felt like I didn't have anything left to give. So I kind of have this weird pattern where I'll do three movies in a row and then I'll take a year off. You know, it's kind of just based on how I'm feeling in life, I guess.
So what changed from saying no to "Carol" to saying yes?
I hadn't worked in over a year and ... most of the parts that I was reading were the girlfriend or parts that I didn't want to dive into. It wasn't that I read "Carol" the first time and didn't like it. I loved the script and working with Cate [Blanchett] is a life-long dream since I was 13 years old and saw her in "Elizabeth." I must have been feeling really bad about myself to have passed it up the first time. Then the second time I knew I couldn't pass it up.
How do judge the quality of your own performance? "Carol" is getting incredible critical recognition. You won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. How do you measure whether or not you are doing your job well? Are there outside validations that you look for?
Of course, everyone looks for outside validation but I don't necessarily always trust it. You always look for that one bad thing someone has to say and you're like, Yup, they're right. It's really easy to just be like, No one knows what they're talking about. People have bad taste. And then you glom on to that one really nasty thing someone said about you. So I don't really know what the answer to that is. I usually can watch myself a few years later and have more perspective on it and be a little kinder to myself. But I don't think I'm capable of judging right after I've done it.
"Carol" is currently in theaters.