Arts & Entertainment

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COVER

Hollywood's from page 41

cesses.

RACHEL WEISZ

Weisz

Weisz, 34, is nomi-
nated for Best
Supporting Actress
for The Constant
Gardener, a thriller
in which she plays a
liberal activist mar-
ried to a British

diplomat.
She began acting while studying at
prestigious Cambridge University in
England. After graduation, she went into
the British theater and did some British
films.
Her commercial breakthrough film was
The Mummy (1999), an action-adventure
hit. Since then, Weisz has done some small
good indie films and taken mainstream
roles, like Hugh Grant's love interest in
About A Boy. Her Golden Globe win for
Gardener and her Oscar nomination have
vaulted her career to a much higher level.
In the 1930s, Weisz's Jewish father fled
Hungary, which was imposing anti-
Semitic laws, for Britain. He's had success

as the inventor of breathing equipment
and mine-sensing devices.
While Weisz's mother, a doctor, is some-
times described as "Jewish," the actress
once told a reporter that only her father is
Jewish. Rachel's mother is a Catholic by
birth and left Nazi-occupied Austria for
Britain in 1939. Why she left Austria is
unclear, but quite possibly because she
was Jewish (or partly Jewish) by ancestry,
if not by faith. (Rachel was raised without
religion.)
Whatever her mother's ancestry,
Rachel's beautiful Semitic looks and last
name meant she grew up in England
being taken as Jewish, and she played a
Jewish woman in Stalingrad and Sunshine.
The intellectual actress seems to prefer
brainy Jewish directors. She was romanti-
cally involved with Sam Mendes
(American Beauty), whose mother is
Jewish. Since 2003, she has been living
with American Jewish director Darren
Aronofsky. They became engaged last year
and expect their first child in May.
Aronofsky directed Weisz in his film The
Fountain, which will open later this year.

In 2001, Weisz unloaded in an interview
with a Jewish female journalist. She spoke
about how she was advised to change her
Jewish last name for Hollywood because
Jewish film execs "all fancy Aryan blonds"
for acting jobs and see Jewish women like
her as wives, not actresses.
The actress was perhaps a little over
the top, but one could sense her determi-
nation not to let anything get.in the way
of her success.

Directors, Writers
And Producers

STEVEN SPIELBERG, ERIC ROTH

and TONY KUSHNER
Spielberg's Munich, about the aftermath of
the murder of Israeli Olympic athletes, is
nominated for five Oscars including Best
Director (Spielberg), Best Adapted
Screenplay (Kushner and Roth) and Best
Picture.
There certainly wasn't a critics' consen-
sus that Munich was great filmmaking —
whether they agreed or disagreed that the

The Truman Show

I know so little.
The themes of the film seem universal
to me. But maybe some Jewish strand of
my consciousness figured into what drew
me to the material.

A conversation with Capote director
Bennett Miller.

Nate Bloom

Special to the Jewish News

irector Bennett Miller is Oscar-nomi-
nated for 2005's Capote; the film is
up for Best Picture, and Philip
Seymour Hoffman is the top contender for
the Best Actor Award. Miller's only other
directorial effort was 1998's acclaimed doc-
umentary The Cruise, an affectionate por-
trait of Timothy "Speed" Levitch, a rather
eccentric Jewish tour guide for
Manhattan's Gray Line double-decker
buses. The Jewish News recently caught up
with Miller and asked him about his film
career.

D

JN: How did you get started in the film
industry?
BM: I became interested in theater when I

was a little kid. When I was 12, I got a video,
camera, and from that point on, there was-
n't a time I wasn't shooting something. The
local cable access studio was in my high
school, and I was always there.
[Capote scriptwriter] Danny Futterman
was pretty serious about acting, even back
in high school. But nobody in my family had
anything to do with entertainment. My
father is a builder, and my mother is a

42 March 2 • 2006

painter.
I met Phil Hoffman (actor Philip
Seymour Hoffman) at-a theater pro-
gram that you had to audition for,
and it was run by Circle Repertory
Theater. For most of us, it was our
first experience with serious theater
people. The fantasy I had in the back
of my mind about directing seemed,
now, more real.

JN: What has been the reaction to the
film?
BM: Harper Lee (the author of To Kill a

Oscar nominees Philip Seymour Hoffman and
Bennett Miller

JN: Did you struggle much in your career?
BM: [After dropping out of university film

school], I got an internship with [director]
Jonathan Demme. But he got fired, and I
got fired after a year.
What happened was I got to be 27, doing
corporate industrials and documentaries to
raise money for schools. I took stock of
myself, and the path I was on was not a
great path. All the romanticism was gone,
and I made a decision to get out go into
public service or something.
Then, when I let go of careerist motives, I
felt a renewal of the feelings that got me
into film. So, before I left filmmaking, I
decided to make one more film. I had an
idea on a documentary on a Jewish New
York tour guide. It has a lot of Jewish
themes in it.

-

film was "bad histo-
ry" and too sympa-
thetic to the Olympic
terrorists. Many
pundits have said its
nominations are
more in the nature
of a "good citizen"
award for attempting
to show all sides.
Spielberg
Eric Roth, 60,
whose awards
include an Oscar for
writing Forrest
Gump, didn't pro-
vide a script that
satisfied Spielberg,
so Spielberg turned
to Pulitzer Prize-
winning playwright
Kushner
Tony Kushner to
rework Roth's
screenplay. (Many Jewish papers have
assumed Roth is Jewish — and this writer
assumes so, too, since Spielberg gave him
the Munich job. However, very few person-
al details are available about Roth.)

JN: What happened after you made The

Cruise?

BM: The Cruise got me a lot of attention

and awards. I got [and took] offers from
big companies to do commercials. I for-
got about my vow to get out.
Every door I had been knocking on
before now opened, and it became a
question of what do waiting for the
right project, reading a lot - until Danny
Futterman's script [of Capote].

-

JN: Are there any Jewish themes in

Mockingbird, Capote's cousin and a major
character in the film) wrote Catherine
Keener (who played Lee) and me a two-
page handwritten letter, and she said she
"liked Capote very much" and that "it told
the truth about Truman." Dozens of peo-
ple who knew Truman, friends of Truman,
have contacted me, and there hasn't been
a word of criticism about the veracity of
the film.
It took [Hoffman] six months of labor
before shooting to get the character. And
if he didn't really own the moment, he
would lose the character, he would lose the
voice, everything. He's not Rich Little [or
like] people who are good at impressions.
If you asked him now to do [Capotel, he
would be incapable of doing it. He needs
the full thing to be connected to the
moment. Although his performance
comes across as facile, it's not. 1.1'

Capote?

BM: I certainly didn't think about [my

Jewish background] while making this
thing. I have so little sense of self identifi-
cation as being Jewish in a religious sense.

-

The Cruise will be released on DVD
on March 7; Capote is out on DVD
on March 14.