Patricia Clarkson – The older the better!

Youth is the key element if you got to survive Hollywood. The younger and vivacious you are the additional contemplation you get and the larger number of roles you bag in movies. It’s not the same case when it comes to Patricia Davies Clarkson, the actor debuted in Brian de Palma’s The Untouchables in 1987, then following 11 years she got a significant breakthrough in 1998’s High Art. Stardom was soon to imitate her as she kept on bagging awards like dual Emmy wins for HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” and critics’ awards for Far From Heaven, The Station Agent, Good Night, and Good Luck, Oscar nomination for Pieces of April.

Cinematical met Clarkson during last month’s Savannah Film Festival and had a chat amongst her.

Cinematical: Your character in Woody Allen’s Whatever Works is a Southern gal who comes to New York City but stays and reinvents herself, dropping in love with the city. You were a Louisiana gal who came to New York to study drama and stayed, apparently also a New Yorker at heart. Was Marietta’s experience familiar to you?

Patricia Clarkson: It was truly similar – I mean, I was not a fundamentalist Christian, but I had a basically similar path. I was a terrific Southern girl hitting the big city for the first time with my big hair; I continuing to have my big hair. My big hair and my non-black clothing. And that’s how I began. I headed off to Fordham University; I had never lived in New York. I had been on the East Coast once when my father was stationed in Newburgh, New York but that was it. I’ve lived there now for a long, long time, relatively much since I was 19. So nearly 30 years. I’ve spent a little time in L.A. here and there but I’ve very lived in New York. I just had this feeling. I called my mother one day when I was at LSU and said, I own to go to New York. I’m not coming back. And she said, ok – as long as you go to school in New York, finishing up your bachelor’s degree.

Cinematical: Do you mull over yourself a “character actress,” and what performs that run cruel to you?

Patricia Clarkson: I are certain I certainly do character work, but I think all endeavor is character work. But I do play leading ladies, so I’m in the perfect position to sort of do everything I want. I still look relatively excellent – and I still undergo my own true have to take care of – and I believe often directors seek me out because of that, because I still check like myself and yet I am the age I am, and I’ve never tried to hide it or be anything supplementary than how I am. But it’s interesting how I’ve become funny things of a glamorous actress the older I’ve gotten. I take it where I can get it, so I’m lucky.

Cinematical: Veteran actresses often talk about how it gets harsher as the decades pass to get valuable roles. Do you share that sentiment?

Patricia Clarkson: I undergo been heard offered great things; I’ve been offered remarkable things and I’m forever grateful to the people who have given me these kinds of beautiful parts. Sometimes they’ve been small parts, sometimes they’ve been large parts, but they’ve continually been great parts. That’s the common denominator, and I’m lucky, lucky. I’ve been heard fortunate enough to have the smarts to say yes and to be available, and I’ve often worked for not a lot of money, not a lot of amenities…and sometimes we have a lot of amenities, shooting these beautiful parts! So it just depends.

Cinematical: You and Susan Sarandon starred in a SNL Digital Short privy “Motherlover” with Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg. How did that come about?



Patricia Clarkson: [Laughs] That was simple. I just got a call. I assume Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake had me and Susan Sarandon in mind as the mothers. I was a little shocked at first; I didn’t in reality understand. I was like, how are we doing in the video? Remember, I’m a nice Southern girl. Then when I found out how it was, I was like, Oh my gosh. They [Timberlake, Samberg, and Lonely Island cohorts Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone] were lovely, lovely. We shot it in one day – I simply showed up in the morning, we shot all these kinds of videos, we shot such a night, and boom! The following night it was on “Saturday Night Live!” It was wild. It’s crazy how they do this, they Hello How Are you? so long and such long hours, and they’re brilliantly talented. They’re all just geniuses, the Lonely Island guys.