Fanning on Jolie as ‘Maleficent,’ Seyfried on ‘Deep Throat’

MATT Damon: No plans for another “Bourne” film unless… RUBEN NEPALES

LOS ANGELES—“I remember meeting Angelina Jolie for the first time at Pinewood Studios,” Elle Fanning said about her famous “Maleficent” costar during our interview.

Dakota Fanning’s sister plays Princess Aurora, a.k.a. Sleeping Beauty in Disney’s retelling of the classic fairy tale. This time, it’s from the perspective of Jolie’s Maleficent—how events harden her heart and drive her to curse the baby, Aurora.

“We were doing rehearsals for ‘Maleficent,’” continued Elle, who is 13 and acts her age, refreshing for a young Hollywood actress. She is giggly and exuberant. Dressed simply in blouse and pants, sans make-up, Elle had come straight from school where, she said, she had just taken a biology honors class test on cellular respiration. “I turned a corner and there Angelina was. I wasn’t expecting to see her that day. She gave me a big hug and said, ‘We’re going to have so much fun working together.’ I was like, freaking out. She’s touching me. I thought, this is crazy.”

Elle added about working with Angelina in the directorial debut of Robert Stromberg, Oscar-winning art director of “Avatar” and “Alice in Wonderland”: “As we started shooting, we got really close. I loved working with her and watching her. I felt  that I was trying to sort of mirror her in a way. When I was off (the set), I was like, how was she standing? I’m going to stand like that, too. She was just incredible. She’s so motherly. All her kids were on the set.”

In fact, three of the Jolie-Pitt children (Vivienne, Zahara and Pax) have small parts in the fantasy film to be shown next year. “Vivienne got to play me as the younger Sleeping Beauty in the movie,” Elle said. “She looked so good in the costume. It was great.”

AMANDA Seyfried says the sexuality in her “Deep Throat” role never scared her. RUBEN NEPALES

On Angelina as the self-proclaimed Mistress of All Evil, Elle said: “She was very elegant. She had the neatest costume. The costume had horns. She looked so good. And her character definitely has evil moments. But you get to see how the character became who she is, why she is so mean. You get to see the backstory of Maleficent’s life. The film is seen through her eyes.”

Dream fulfilled

Elle’s role is a dream fulfilled. She recalled: “When I was little, people asked me, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I said, ‘A Disney Princess.’ And I actually got to be one. I got to be Aurora with the outfits and the long hair. I got to experience that princess lifestyle through the movie. It was really fun. The whole experience was definitely very magical.”

Elle got good reviews for her performance as a 1960s London teenager in “Ginger & Rosa.”

‘Bourne’ films

We got to ask Matt Damon what he thought of “The Bourne Legacy” and its star, Jeremy Renner. “I love Jeremy Renner in everything he does,” said Matt, who topbilled the first three “Bourne” hits.

Matt said of Jeremy’s “Bourne” film, which was shot partly in the Philippines, and of his own plans for the franchise: “I did see ‘The Bourne Legacy’ and I thought Renner was great. I don’t have any plans for another ‘Bourne’ movie. I told that Paul Greengrass (who directed the second and third ‘Bourne’ films) that I’d like to if we could come up with a story that made sense, that we really thought could be as good as the other ones. But it doesn’t seem likely at the moment.”

ELLE Fanning RUBEN NEPALES

Lovelace to Cosette

Before she played Cosette in “Les Miserables,” Amanda Seyfried was in a totally different world. She portrayed a popular 1970s porn star in “Lovelace,” which premiered in Sundance last Tuesday.

“It’s great to go from one extreme to the other,” Amanda said of her jump from playing Linda Lovelace— whose “Deep Throat” was the first porn film to be a mainstream success—to an innocent orphan, Cosette.

“I shot ‘Lovelace’ as I was auditioning for ‘Les Mis.’ I was only a week in when I got the call (for ‘Les Mis’). It’s great to be able to go so far into one place and then to be able to access the other place so easily.”

Amanda pointed out that Cossette and her Sophie character in “Mamma Mia!” are similar in a way. “They’re from different eras, obviously,” she stressed. “They come from different families and have different life circumstances. But they’re both extremely optimistic and naive in a way, very gentle and sensitive.”

“Then I portray a woman who has been exploited and had a pretty terrible life for the most part,” she said. “Hopefully, the film can show my range. I like the diversity—I went from a happy bride-to-be (in ‘Mamma Mia!’) to an exploited porn star, to a virgin in the 1800s. It was really interesting, those eight months of my life.”

Not scared

Amanda maintained that the sexuality in her role as Linda Lovelace in “Deep Throat” never really scared her. “It wasn’t as much about that, as it was about the circumstances behind it, what really went behind the scenes,” she remarked. “But we did reenact some of the scenes in ‘Deep Throat’ in a kind of reserved manner (laughs), in comparison to what it could have been. It doesn’t go as dark as it could have. It didn’t have to. There are a lot of ways to tell her story. In this film, she comes across as misunderstood, misrepresented and mistreated.”

She continued: “It’s risky for an actress to play a porn star who has such a stigma attached to her. But I don’t know. Everybody’s got a story. Her story is pretty fascinating. She was able to endure a lot without any kind of benefit. She had a really s****y life. It was hard. It did go pretty far.”

Welcome change

Playing Cosette was a welcome change for Amanda. “It was such a relief to play Cossette because it helped me get out of Linda,” she admitted. “It was hard. It was really emotional to get out of Linda because I believe there was a side of her that could have shone and it didn’t. She had a light that she was never able to release and that sucks.”

Amanda was guarded in her answer when asked if she got to meet somebody close to Linda as part of her research for the role. “I can say that her lawyer visited the set,” the actress said. “That’s the most I can say. I did have some connection to people who were maybe the only ones who kept Linda going. That might even be saying too much. It’s so weird with these rules. I feel very close to her, from the people that I’ve met. My biggest regret is not having met her myself, having had no idea that I was going to have the opportunity to portray her.”

Amanda conceded, however, that a woman was “a big help” in her research. “I acquired a lot of perspective from this woman who was so kind to visit and be supportive of us in telling Linda’s story. I mean, it is a one-sided story. It’s from her point of view but I think it is really important. We don’t really know what happened … but I believe her 100 percent. I hope that translated when I was portraying Linda … Not just after reading the books (of Linda). It really happened when I connected with these people. That was the closest to Linda as I could get.”

The actress pointed out: “It’s profound to play somebody who really existed, had a story to tell and she wasn’t able to. Nobody really validated her in a way. One of the greatest things about being an actor is being able to explore that, and people allowing you to be her voice.”

Amanda related a personal anecdote about her connection to Linda, who eventually became a spokesperson for the feminist antipornography movement (she died at age 53 in a car accident in 2002). “I remember my dad said to me after he read Linda’s books and I went home for Christmas the other year. He started tearing up and he was like, ‘You are her voice. You need to give her freedom.’”

E-mail the columnist at [email protected]. Follow him at https://twitter.com/nepalesruben.