HEMINGWAY. Portrays a porn actress in “Starlet.” Ruben V. Nepales
LOS ANGELES—“That was the funniest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Dree Hemingway, great-granddaughter of Ernest and daughter of Mariel, said in a recent interview about being linked to “Twilight” star, Robert Pattinson.
The model and lead actress of “Starlet” was wrongly identified as the “mystery blonde” seen with Robert in New York’s Electric Room Bar last month.
“Robert was super fine and sweet,” said the niece of the late supermodel and actress, Margaux Hemingway. “That meeting went on for 10 minutes. —Not very life-changing.” Laughing, she added, “The English accent—fine—I was floored. I melted a little bit.”
Dree explained, “I was in the Hamptons Film Festival doing Variety’s ‘10 Actors to Watch’ event (she was one of the honorees). The next day, I left and went to Brussels. I was doing a commercial and started getting Tweets like, ‘Were you at the Electric Room with Robert Pattinson? How could you do this to Kristen?’ I was like, ‘Oh my God, calm down. This is funny, because I’m in Brussels right now, and that never happened.”
Dree’s boyfriend also has a British accent—Phil Winser, who co-owns the hot organic NY restaurant, The Fat Radish. She gushed about him—Hemingway’s great-granddaughter is obviously in love.
Legendary author
We asked Dree if she has seen “Hemingway & Gellhorn,” the HBO film on the romance between the legendary author (played by Clive Owen) and journalist Martha Gellhorn. “The one with Nicole Kidman?” We said yes. With a laugh, she admitted, “I tried watching it on a flight, and I fell asleep.”
Dree, whose mom, Mariel, appeared in Woody Allen’s iconic “Manhattan” and Bob Fosse’s “Star 80,” said that the Hemingway name is both a curse and a blessing. “It gives us connections to different things that might make it a little bit easier for us than other people,” she pointed out. “But, it’s also a burden, because once you’re in the door, you have to prove yourself 10 times more.”
Now, she’s reading about one of 20th Century’s literary giants. “I’m halfway through ‘Hemingway’s Boat’ (by Paul Hendrickson), which has been the most inspirational book for me to connect to him, because it’s from an outsider’s standpoint.
Dree also admired Margaux who passed away in 1996. “My aunt Margaux is one of my role models,” she said. “I only knew her for a short time. She had the most beautiful energy. She would smile and light up a room. My mother is my inspiration for wanting to act.”
Body double
In Sean Baker’s “Starlet,” Dree plays a porn actress who strikes an unlikely friendship with an elderly widow (Besedka Johnson). She volunteered that a body double was used for a porn-sex scene. “That would be very courageous if I decided to have sex in a scene. It’s not me. It’s a very important scene. It’s scary, because it’s a big choice to be in a movie that can’t be rated because of a scene. I talked to Sean about it. I’ve never been more nervous.
“I threatened to not come in. I was so scared, and I was only doing close-up shots. I talked to Sean about it, and he was like, ‘We’re not advertising this movie for kids. This is for adults. It’s not coming from a sexual standpoint. It isn’t offensive.’”
She said, “It’s so funny, because I’ve met a lot of these porn stars and they’re so normal. We judge them easily. When I talk to them, they’re in workout wear. They go to ballet classes or take community college classes. They’re like you and me. They’re not flamboyant. It’s like, ‘This is my job. I show up to work.’”
“When we did the Q&A at the Locarno Film Festival, there was this girl who works for a magazine who said, ‘I’m also an adult film star.’ She was like, ‘This movie is good, because it isn’t about the tragedy.’ She said that it was nice to see something that wasn’t about judging them so quickly.”
E-mail rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com. Follow him at twitter.com/nepalesruben.