Arts & Entertainment nN H 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.