"Where Movie Critics Get A Taste Of Their Own Medicine"
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AN INTERVIEW WITH:
Laura Elena Harring
by Peter Sobczynski

April 19, 2004

Best known to film fans as "Rita", the femme fatale at the center of the intrigue that was "Mulholland Drive"- still arguably the finest film so far of this decade-actress Laura Harring has amassed one of the most diverse sets of credits of any actress working today. A former Miss USA (and a genuine countess as the result of a brief marriage), she has been seen in films with co-stars as diverse as Denzel Washington ("John Q"), Crispin Glover ("Willard"), Bob Dylan ("Masked and Anonymous") and a killer Santa Claus with half of his brain emerging from his skull ("Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 3"). Hell, she even once starred in a film where she played a princess who found that the only way to save the rainforest was to become a champion lambada dancer.

Currently, she can be seen opposite John Travolta in the new big-screen comic-book adaptation "The Punisher" as the wife of an underworld kingpin (Travolta) whose desire for revenge against the cop who inadvertently killed her son leads to any number of explosions and moments of bloody retribution. Recently, she sat down to talk about the film, her wide range of credits and the behind-the-scenes drama on the set of "Lambada".

What was it that got you interested in acting in the first place?

I like digging deep into other parts of myself to find different characters. To me, that is really interesting. The very first movie I did was "The Alamo: 13 Days of Glory", which was a TV movie with Raul Julia. They called me because they saw me on TV and they wanted me to come and meet with the director. I did and I was very aloof-because I didn’t care-and I got the role. I was watching Raul Julia reading and just being in his own world playing Santa Ana and I just loved the feeling in the room. It was magic-nobody was speaking and you could hear a pin drop-and in a flash, I knew that this was what I wanted to do.

"The Punisher" is pretty much the first big-scale action film, let alone comic-book adaptation, that you have done in your career. What was it like for you to work on a film of this type for the first time?

I enjoyed it tremendously-I can’t tell you how much. I was really surprised. I didn’t realize that I was missing so much. I became a fan instantly. When I saw "Spider-Man", I loved it-I thought it was a well-made movie. I don’t think that these comic-book movies have that blood and guts and gore but you still get the rush of the chases. I don’t like going to the movies where I feel nauseous afterwards because I saw bones sticking out and things like that. I like those things to be balanced with humor and comic-book movies do that.

Did you have any knowledge of "The Punisher" before signing on to do the film?

No. What happened was that I was told about "The Punisher" and I immediately went to get one of the comic books. I met with the director at the Coffee Bean in Santa Monica and we talked about my character and her backstory. From there, he thought I nailed the backstory and I heard that I had the role. Then I heard that I might have to screen-test and whatever. I really wanted to do it but I was worried about doing a test, but in the end , he felt that I could act because he had seen "Mulholland Drive" and that he thought that I got the character.

Is it harder to play a villain than someone more heroic-to get inside the character and try to empathize with what they do?

You have to go into such a deep place in your psyche where you don’t judge yourself. When you are instinctive and you want to protect your family when you feel like everything is being taken away-I don’t think that Livia was premeditating this revenge. It was more of a spur-of-the-moment thing. I had to think of what part of me that someone would have to touch to get me to do something like that to make it real. It is kind of scary but it is necessary when you are playing such a dark character-to go into your own psyche to understand where that comes from without judgment.

"The Punisher" is, at its heart, basically a film about revenge and it seems that there have been a number of recent films in the last few weeks on that same subject-"Kill Bill", "Mystic River", "Dogville" "Walking Tall". Do you have any theory as to why there is suddenly a vogue for such films?

Haven’t they always been around, though? Look at all the Asian films-they are all based on revenge. Most martial arts films have one person surviving to kill all the bad guys. This has been around forever. I think it is in our human nature that when we are really hurt, we want revenge-unless you have studied Eastern philosophy and have learned that in the end, you don’t feel better. In the aftermath of September 11, a lot of people wanted revenge-it is human nature that when you hurt, you want to hurt back. I think we all know deep inside that you are just perpetuating the cycle.

What was working with John Travolta like?

The best experience of my life. I couldn’t believe it-I couldn’t believe that he approved me before I had even met him. That takes confidence and I feel so fortunate to have worked with such a screen legend. The very first day, we met around a table like this-we were going to do a read-through-and he had his back to me because he was doing something else. When he walked up to me, he had the biggest smile on his face and he put his hand out. I was very shy-I have this shy side to me-and we looked at each other and smiled and we both knew that it was going to be great. Everything that we talked about regarding our backstories matched-we both thought the exact same things. It was just amazing.

He is such a team player. He never excluded me from any creative discussion. He makes you feel like he is your best friend. He built me up more than anyone else because he wanted me to be great. Most times, insecurity gets in the way because there are a lot of things going on the set. It wasn’t that way with John and in my heart, he inspired me as a human being.

Looking over your filmography, I have to say - and I mean this in the best possible way - that you have one of the oddest sets of credits that I can recall of any actress in recent memory...

Why?

Well, for starters, there aren’t too many people who can claim that they have worked with David Lynch, Crispin Glover and Bob Dylan within the space of a couple of years...

Wow. I guess I do make odd choices. I take it as a positive thing. I like working with different people. I don’t like to be in the cookie-cutter-I like to be different. I like to go in the minds of different people. The most interesting thing is that I don’t find any of these people to be at all weird-I guess that makes me weird. I find them to be completely normal.

One of the first movies that you did was "Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 3", which was directed by cult director Monte Hellman. I was curious to know a.) how one goes about being cast in "Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 3" and b.) what it was like to work with Hellman?

That was one of my first movies. "The Alamo" was my first, that was my second and "Lambada" was my third-even back then I was doing completely different kinds of films. I remember that Monte gave me a book about how actors could direct themselves-he didn’t like to give them much direction himself. I loved working with him-I remember it being a very pleasurable experience. I also remember being very scared by the bad guy. Oh my God, that gave me nightmares for such a long time.

"Lambada" also had a very weird history behind it. Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus had just dissolved their Cannon Pictures studio and were going their separate ways and each of them decided to do a film to cash in on the lambada craze of the late 1980’s. Because both wanted to be first, both "Lambada" and "The Forbidden Dance" went on these insanely accelerated schedules in order to be first-they wound up being written, produced and released in just a couple of months...

Well, ours was the good one!

Of course - your film didn’t end with a climactic math test! What was it like trying to rush through a movie to get it out before the trend that it is based on completely disappears from view?

(Laughing) Oh my!. I remember that at one point, we had five million dollars more to make the film, so guess what happened? He brought in more cameras so that every scene had a bunch of cameras. You still had to be good because you weren’t going to get any extra takes-it just gave them different angles on each take. Menahem loved me because I was a young girl and I had an attitude. He wanted me to wear a skirt that would show my entire butt. I swear, it was cut up to here...{holds her hand to indicate how short it would have been}

That monster!

I would not do it so I got to wear a different one. You can still see everything, though, because I am always twirling. In any case, he laughed about the fact that I stood up to him.

Golan was one of these strange characters-when he had Cannon, they had the most schizophrenic production slates imaginable. Half of their films would be cheap exploitation trash like "Missing in Action" or "Death Wish 4" and the other half would be these incredibly artistic offerings like Altman’s "Fool For Love" or Zefferelli’s "Otello".

I didn’t know he produced "Otello"-I really liked that movie. He was interesting. He was the one who told me-at the time, I spelled my last name with an "E" because that was how it was given to me- " ‘Herring’ isn’t the name of a movie star-it’s the name of a fish!". I immediately changed it to an "A".

Obviously, you are best known for "Mulholland Drive", which began life as a failed TV pilot that David Lynch reconfigured into one of the strangest films ever made-one that people are still debating the meaning of. When you first read the script-both the TV version and the revisions-did you have a firm grasp of the story or were you confused as well?

When I read a script, if my body doesn’t react to it-laughter, tears, goosebumps-I just feel that it isn’t a script for me. With "Mulholland Drive", there was the scene in the beginning with the two detectives talking about the earring-it just really touched me for some reason. The writing was just so brilliant that I had to put it down in order to take it in. When we were halfway through shooting it, David gives us 20 extra pages. He wrote another piece that was an alternate ending. Then it didn’t get picked up and later, he gave us another 18 pages. Really, "Mulholland Drive" was three different scripts.

Do you still have people coming up to you to either demand an explanation to the film or to offer their own interpretations?

Every week. There was a small percentage of people who got it but most people kept wondering if their interpretation is the correct one and they think that I can help them. Really, I can’t because David never gave us the "correct" interpretation-he didn’t’t want anyone to have it. He wanted it to be a journey. He said to me, "Remember, Laura-the less you say, the better." He wanted it to be mysterious because he thought the mystery was wonderful.

Does it ever get annoying to have people coming up out of the blue to tell you their own interpretations after a while?

No, it isn’t annoying. I’m actually quite interested. When they beg me to tell them the secret-that gets annoying because I was under oath to David not to give out his interpretation. He doesn’t want people to know and so I just can’t do that.

Although it was cut out of the version released theatrically, you filmed a scene for the Bob Dylan film "Masked and Anonymous" that can be seen in the deleted scenes section of the DVD. How does one prepare to act in a scene with someone as legendary as Bob Dylan-particularly when they are someone for whom acting is not a full-time gig?

He was so cute-he was a cutie-pie. We worked on the very first day of shooting and he was so nervous. At Sundance, he came up to me and said "I’m sorry. I wasn’t that confident yet at that point." He was very sweet-he would knock on my door and ask me what I thought I should do. "Should I say my line and then look at my watch?" He was like a little kid. The director would say "Can you not walk like that? Can you walk normally?" and he’d say "This is how I normally walk." It was really a great experience. I had fun and he promised me that he would sing me that song...(sings) "They’ll stone you when you walkin ‘long the street".

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2004 Peter Sobczynski
All rights reserved.
Used with permission
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