SELMA BLAIR: Are we recording?
CAMERON DIAZ: The recorder's on. but whether or not it's recording is another thing. [laughs] No. We're fine. So let's talk about your new movie, Storytelling. First question: What's up with the pink hair?
SB: [laughs] Todd [Solondz, the film's director] completely stripped me of things that were Selma. He was like, "No giggles, no smiles, and you have to dye your hair pink or blue to make it different." It was great because wardrobe informs so much for me. Like in Legally Blonde, I put on a pair of pearls and a big diamond ring and automatically I'm Vivian Kensington. So with Todd, I'm stripped of my normal hair, something that makes me feel so grounded, and he gives me a cotton-candy head and takes my clothes off. Literally. [both laugh]
CD: But watching your character I was completely blown away. I couldn't take my eyes off you. I was looking for the signs of what I know of you as an actor, and I didn't see any of it. It was so raw and so real.
SB: Oh, thank you. [My character] Vi actually reminded me of your Lotte [the character Diaz played in Being John Malkovich, 1999]. I really got to be someone that no one thinks of me as. I got into that pink hair, I took my clothes off, and I just played this flawed girl. I wasn't really aware of acting because Todd's writing is just so clear that it was so comfortable. Everyone's like, "Weren't you uncomfortable doing these really controversial things?" But it felt more real to me than trying to fit a funny in--you know, how I'll try to get a laugh. This was a breath of fresh air.
CD: Well, it paid off. And there are moments where you do put a funny in. That's my Selma coming through! [both laugh] As I was watching it, I felt like I was watching a real person. I saw real emotions--an actual person's emotions and what that person was going through.
SB: It was interesting to me that in the short time that we see my character, even though the part of the movie I'm in is titled "Fiction," what we see is so real in its description of what we do to feel comfortable in sex and relationships.
CD: You know why? Because Todd's a storyteller, and he did a movie called Storytelling. And the characters were storytellers themselves. Your part of the film talked about how storytellers who tell fiction come to find their fiction.
SB: I wish I had you on set to explain this whole thing to me.
CD: Then the "Non-Fiction" part of the film is the documentary filmmaker, whose story of nonfiction is so bizarre--
SB: --that it seems like fiction.
CD: Exactly. Nonfiction doesn't seem to be anything more than fiction. So even if you watch a documentary, whatever you take out of it becomes fiction as soon as you go to tell the story again. It's sort of like history is fictional.
SB: Wow. [both laugh]
CD: That's not where I meant to go with that! You know, maybe we shouldn't have dropped those 'shrooms! [both laugh] But seriously. I thought it was amazing. And, you know, I finally saw Legally Blonde on Friday.
SB: It's cute, isn't it? And so different from Storytelling. Did you see it with friends?
CD: I saw it with my 17-year-old niece, and the whole way through it she was saying, "Oh my God! This is so cute! Reese Witherspoon is my favorite actress!" I was like, "Thanks a lot!" [both laugh] But seeing you m that movie, and in Storytelling, and having worked with you on The Sweetest Thing [to be released this spring], I'm like, "You are the most fearless."
SB: You're only saying that because you know what a coward I am, so you know how hard it is for me to take the kind of role I took in Stotytelling.
CD: But you're not a coward. You're very courageous, because you are afraid, and yet you still do it. I think it's amazing. I want you to do more movies like Storytelling.
SB: I want to do more movies like Storytelling. I want to do more movies that have directors and writers who really believe in what they're doing, so I can be fearless. Then it's not just me telling their story--it's not me at all; I become someone else. And that's the best part of being an actor.
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COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
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By Cameron Diaz "Selma Blair: In storytelling she breaks every Taboo in the book". Interview. . FindArticles.com. 09 Oct. 2008. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1285/is_1_32/ai_82352413
