“Beginners” is a cute romantic comedy that opened up this past Friday and you might just wanna go see this flick.
Directed by Mike Mills, the movie follows Oliver (played by Ewan McGregor) as he gets hit with the double whammy of his father coming out of the closet at the same time he finds out he is dying of cancer.
French actress Melanie Laurent brings her great personality to the role of Anna, Oliver’s love interest, who ironically is an actress as well.
Melanie wowed us in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” but she doesn’t want to be known as the French girl with a gun, so she decided to delve into this deep, quirky role.
Another big star in the movie is Cosmo, the Jack Russell terrier who never leaves Oliver’s side.
We sat down with Melanie for an interview. Check it out below!
GlobalGrind: We love your character in this movie. The first few minutes, you don’t say a word. What did you really have to do to build your character?
Melanie Laurent: I don’t know because when you shoot a movie, you start off shooting the last scene in the movie, so you can’t really build it like in the script. You have to manage with this. She was super different than me so I had to invent things. I love my dad and I have a great relationship with my dad and I can fall in love easily and I’m not that complicated as she is. I just trust Mike (Mills) because I really wanted to be more simple sometimes and he was like, ‘No, she’s really more complicated.’ So, he helped me a lot.
Your last boyfriend was an actor and in the film you also play an actress. How do you find time to see each other?
It’s done because it’s too complicated, so I can answer the question I guess. It’s not about when you don’t see each other, because when you don’t see each other, it’s kind of exciting because it’s always new. No, it’s kind of like ego, two big egos in the same house and it’s not working.
We saw you were at Cannes. When you do have to go to dressy events, how do you remain comfortable in all the designer dresses you wear?
To me, Cannes is sort of the princess moment, so you have to play. It has to be funny. I always think like everything has to be fun because if it’s not, you became stupid and crazy. So I played the princess during my few days and it was super cool to do.
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“Beginners” has an interesting twist. Oliver’s father Hal comes out as gay and you said you had a good relationship with your father. If your father said that to you, ‘hey, I’m gay.’ What would you do?
I don’t know. I hope I would have the most understanding reaction and I would hope I would be like a good human being saying, ‘Well, OK. That’s not a big deal.’ I hope so. I cannot be sure of this but you know, you never know.
One of our favorite parts of the movie is the dog who’s actually on the poster as well. If you could talk to a dog, what would you ask a dog?
I would ask Cosmo why he didn’t like me? (Laughs)
He didn’t like you?
ML: He was jealous (Laughs).
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Melanie, Ewan McGregor and Cosmo dining in “Beginners.”
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Melanie, Ewan McGregor and Cosmo dining in “Beginners.”
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Melanie Laurent on set of her new film “Beginners.”
