Bello epoque - interview with actress Maria Bello - Interview

As the sex-addicted junkie lover of junkie author Jerry Stahl in Permanent Midnight (1998), Maria Bello announced, "There are only two things you can do in a hotel" - and then did both to excess. The thirty-one-year-old Philadelphian has played almost nothing but damaged characters since she finished her stint as the kung fu-fighting female lead on the short-lived TV series Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1996). She was the girlfriend of another junkie during her ER days, and in Payback, Brian Helgeland's recent blue-tinged remake of Point Blank (1967), Bello Is ex-con Mel Gibson's ex-girlfriend, a hooker with a heart of steal. Because she portrays deceptively fragile street waifs/warriors who are both bruised and brazen, it comes as a surprise to discover that the half Polish-half Italian actress is a blast of cheerfulness.

HENRY CABOT BECK: Would you agree that you're considerably less Jaded, less dark, than the characters you've been playing?

MARIA BELLO: I feel like I'm the least cynical and jaded person that I know. I'm like a little kid. And yet I can be so dark, which is why I can be so light. I think I learned from a very early age to be where I was. If I was sad I let myself be sad, if I was angry I let myself be angry, if I was in pain I let myself be in pain. And if I'm feeling joy I let myself feel that as well. I don't try to block experiences.

HCB: If you're in one of your dark moods and something really wonderful happens, does that pull you out of it?

MB: No. It's really about your connection to yourself.

HCB: Can you play a dour hooker when you're having the heat time of your life?

MB: Yes.

HCB: I guess that's being an actor.

MB: Maybe it's being a human being. If you really let yourself live and have a lot of experiences, then those things don't leave you; they're part of you. Every character I play is a part of me. I never really feel like I'm making anything up.

HCB: You don't sound like someone who's had dark experiences with drugs, or am I wrong?

MB: All I can say is, I know what it is to be wounded - I think all of us do. To be on our bellies. To be near death. To not understand what it's all about. I have had those experiences. I know what they mean for me.

HCB: Did you see Point Blank?

MB: Year. I thought it was amazing.

HCB: What did you think of Angie Dickinson? You play her role in Payback.

MB: I wasn't really playing her. The way Brian Helgeland reinterpreted the story and the script, I don't feel Payback's even similar to Point Blank, do you? What I loved about it was that in the world of the film, [Mel Gibson's character] is a good guy. I mean, we're all bad guys, I'll grant that, but in his own little mind and in his own morality and in the set of this screwed-up mobster world that he lives in, he's doing the right thing. And he plays the character with such conviction - he's so likable, even when he's so violent.

HCB: He's willing to die and kill and do everything that's necessary for seventy thousand bucks, and because he's willing to look ridiculous for this paltry sum, he becomes a kind of goofy, quixotic character. Nothing is going to stop him from getting his money.

MB: Right, and that's the beauty of it.

HCB: How was it playing opposite Mel Gibson?

MB: Talk about a little kid's fantasies coming true! Just to be sitting around and working on the script and telling jokes and hanging out was incredible.

HCB: Do you feel like you might get stuck doing bruised women?

MB: I want to do a romantic comedy so bad, something like Mr. and Mrs. Smith with action and adventure in it. Those old Kate Hepburn and Spencer Tracy movies - I love those.

HCB: I understand you went to Africa with your Dream Yard children's aid foundation last year.

MB: I went to Tanzania, Botswana, Kenya, and South Africa. I took six weeks, by myself, learned a little Swahili, and collected the stories of kids all over those countries. My whole thing is, if you know how to get on your knees in the dirt and crawl around and act like a giraffe, any kid will talk to you. I don't want to be one of these actors who can't act anymore because they don't live.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group