Jennifer Jason Leigh gets diverse

Actress speaks up on her vastly different Hateful Eight, Anomalisa roles.

At 53 years old, actress Jennifer Jason Leigh is riding high with two of her most rewarding roles to date - and they could not be more strikingly different. In Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, she stars as foul-mouthed, vicious gang member Daisy Domergue. In Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman's animated Anomalisa, she offers a tender voice performance as shrinking violet Lisa. And both have already received awards recognition: she won the National Board of Review's prize for Hateful while she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Anomalisa (a first for a voice performance).
You're the only female in a sea of men in The Hateful Eight. What was that dynamic like on set, particularly given that this is such rowdy and raunchy material?
I felt like gender didn't come into it that much. I felt in some ways very protected, but I also felt like they didn't change for me. They didn't behave differently for me. Like, they still told the same stories they would tell if a woman was not present. I felt like one of the guys. At the same time, I felt like they definitely cared about me and my well-being. It was like being a fly on the wall in many respects, because I've never been just the lone woman with a bunch of guys. It's such a tight-knit ensemble.
Your character is on the receiving end of quite a lot of violence in the film. Were you at all concerned that it would come across as misogynistic?
No. I wasn't at all. Because she's a leader. And she's tough. And she's hateful and a survivor and scrappy. I thought it was funny, but I didn't think it was misogynistic for a second. Quentin doesn't have an ounce of misogyny in him. It's not in his writing. It's not in his being. Yeah, you look at Kill Bill, you look at Jackie Brown, the heroine of Inglourious Basterds - he has a history of writing strong female roles. writes the best parts for women out there. He writes very brave, bold, insane, fabulous women.
How did you like it?
I loved it. I didn't want it to end. I think he's remarkable with actors, and he's so smart and so caring. He demands the best of you. And you want to give him all that you have and all that you can possibly offer.
And he also makes you feel kind of free enough to make bold, insane choices. You know he'll rein you in if necessary, and you know he'll push you when he wants more. But he does it in the most loving way.
He brought me up to Telluride at one point for a hair and make-up test and I got there to his house and he's like, "I don't really need to do a hair and make-up test with you. I just want to play you a piece of music."
With a role like this that is so defined on the page, do you get into much research at all?
Well, it's a little bit of both. Quentin's whole thing is you need to know these lines backwards and forwards so you aren't thinking about them for even half a second. He wants that moment that only comes if you know it so well that life just happens inside them. His dialogue is so brilliant that you can't really go wrong if you know it. He also very much wanted me to find Daisy from the inside out.
We'd like to switch gears over to Anomalisa for a bit. What was this experience like with Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson?
We did it as a radio play 10 years ago and we rehearsed for a week with Charlie, but we only performed it for two nights. So when it was over I was sad, because I loved playing her. She's such a beautifully written character, and he wrote it for me, he wrote it for David [Thewlis], he wrote it for Tom [Noonan], so you really feel seen in some strange way. Because it's just your voice. There's something very intimate and private about it. And then 10 years or eight years later when he said he wanted to do it as a stop-motion animated movie, we were all excited because it seemed like the perfect medium for the material. You could never do it live action. It would be kind of destroyed in that way. And then when I finally saw the film, I felt like I was seeing it for the first time. I feel like it's groundbreaking.
I couldn't believe how affected I was by it and how I kept forgetting they were puppets. I kept forgetting that it was me. And then I would be reminded that it was me and I would be reminded that they were puppets, and then I would forget again. There's something about the fact of them being puppets where you project yourself into what they're going through in a much deeper way. And the material is so powerful.
And they couldn't be more different.
Yeah, they could not be more different. So that's exciting for me as an actress. It's always what you want, in a way. I'm sort of shocked that it's happening to me now, but it's really lovely. Reuters