It’s so sharp in my mind because A) It was something that I wanted so much and B) I had another actress that I was sure he was going to hire. What do you remember about that process?Įverything. He’s said he put you through several rounds of auditions before you got the part. To commemorate Harden’s unanticipated 20-year-old victory and the “magical” night that followed, we talked about the road to the Oscars, what the milestone meant to her, and the one nominee who wasn’t so happy with her win. It paid off: Her performance is the heart of the film, which marked Harris’s directorial debut. “I am that girl who would say, ‘I don’t understand why a red dot in the middle of a white painting is considered art,’ so I wanted to learn why,” she explained during a recent phone conversation. To portray Lee Krasner, the tough-minded painter who married Jackson Pollock shortly before he produced his most famous works, Harden studied the history of abstract expressionism. “What a thrill,” Harden said when she arrived at the podium. The other women in the category - Judi Dench ( Chocolat), Kate Hudson ( Almost Famous), Frances McDormand ( Almost Famous), and Julie Walters ( Billy Elliot) - had higher profiles, and so did their movies. She hadn’t been nominated for a Golden Globe or Screen Actors Guild Award that year, and Pollock, for which she won, was an intimate Ed Harris passion project that opened nationwide a mere two days before the ceremony. When Nicolas Cage declared Marcia Gay Harden the winner of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2001, no one could believe it - especially not Marcia Gay Harden.
In the romantic farce If I Were You ,University of Texas alumna Marcia Gay Harden delivered a performance every bit as accomplished and unexpected as those that were Oscar-nominated-and yet she never even got the chance to compete.Photo-Illustration: by Vulture Photo by Sony Pictures Classics Forgive me, however, for feeling that the competition is a bit rigged this year.
Read More The Terrific Marcia Gay Harden Movie You Didn't Get to See in TheatersĪs Oscar night draws closer, the prognosticators have declared a neck-and-neck-and-neck race between Jennifer Lawrence ( The Silver Linings Playbook ), Jessica Chastain ( Zero Dark Thirty ), and Emmanuelle Riva ( Amour) for the Best Actress prize.
A completely ignorant Lucy observes that people screw up their own lives but would never willfully destroy someone else’s, so the two make a pact to give each other advice with the caveat that they both must do exactly what they are told. She gets the details of her husband’s affair from Lucy, and describes her own experience with a straying partner. Madelyn follows Lucy home and prevents the dippy, distraught girl from committing suicide, never telling her who she really is. So polite that she races off in embarrassment after spotting her husband (Joseph Kell) at a compromising lunch with a gorgeous young thing, her Madelyn turns events to her advantage and ends up with three men drooling over her-a nice brains-trumps-cute trick from a starchy matron in sensible heels-even as she fends off Leonor Watling's charmingly ditzy Lucy.Īn unholy alliance is formed when Madelyn (Marcia Gay Harden) horrifyingly spots her husband Paul (Joseph Kell) having dinner with a heretofore unsuspected and quite younger girlfriend, Lucy (Leonor Watling), an aspiring actress of no discernible talent. Forget "mash-up"-Harden works many modes, side-by-side and within each other. Using whip-smart wordplay from writer-director Joan Carr-Wiggin (A Previous Engagement), Marcia Gay Harden does a star turn in versatility. "If I Were You" Does Screwball Canadian Comedyįeaturing adultery without the naughty bits, a wife-mistress rivalry, and a couple of nursing-home deaths, If I Were You is a screwball comedy for Canadians-not LOL funny, but as crazy as you might expect Toronto to get.