Melissa Leo Stacking Up Great Roles

Most people started paying attention to actress Melissa Leo after on her Academy Award winning performance in The Fighter, but she has a long list of great roles, and it seems like they just keep getting stronger, with recent films like “Frozen River”, “21 Grams”,”Why Stop Now” and “Flight”.  She stopped by the SiriusXM studios last week to talk with host Ron Bennington about her latest role in the film “Francine”.  Excerpts of the interview appear below.

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Ron Bennington: How do you just keep nailing these roles one after another?

Melissa Leo: I don’t know. I don’t have a lot else going on in my life. (laughs) So, I just – you know. My commitment to my work has become my pride and joy.

Ron Bennington: The film “Francine”, it’s out – well, the Museum of Modern Art which has got to be a crazy thing for you, right?

Melissa Leo: It’s really cool. They make a really beautiful opening for a film. And the film is actually play for the rest of the week over there at MOMA if people can’t make it on Wednesday night.

Ron Bennington: I think that’s remarkable. So, you’re going to do the whole opening there and everything?

Melissa Leo: Yeah. We’re going to have an opening – premiere tomorrow in the evening.

Ron Bennington: Well, that’s great for you, but also great for these young filmmakers, I guess.

Melissa Leo: I don’t know that they would need all that much help from me. Brian (M. Cassidy) and Melanie (Shatzky), they’re a pretty remarkable husband and wife team that had a fair amount of documentary work behind them to begin with and made this foray boldly into a dramatic feature and I am very proud to be a part of it with them.

Ron Bennington: There are shots in the film that are just like little nature shots. The cinematography is just so beautiful. And it almost is like a drop where it takes you down. Almost every one of those transitions, as you’re trying to figure out your character Francine, but it’s an amazing amazing different kind of filmmaking that’s taking place here.

Melissa Leo: Yeah, the shots are – we didn’t do any standard, master, two shot, close-up kind of filming as I say they come from documentary. It was really humorous the first couple of times, I would say – well, if you didn’t get that time, that’s okay. We can do it again. (laughs)

Ron Bennington: Right. You’re not just capturing this.

Melissa Leo: So – and the way in which they see it and therefore the way you view it, the use of the medium of film is some of the most amazing I’ve ever been able to have a part of.

Ron Bennington: A mood comes in very very quickly and stays with us there. And even though it’s about your character, it does seem like it’s about a very big part of America now, doesn’t it? That we’ve hit a place where it’s hard to see how to get up off your knees.

Melissa Leo: Yeah. And that’s really really beautifully put. You’ve kind of stumped me there because that really is, is something I know, not for the filmmakers, but for me there’s definitely a portrait of incarceration in this country and the aftermath of incarceration in this country. And even broader and more universal than that. Of the lonely desperation of so many people and somehow with Francine’s specifics, it opens a whole world of what is troubling to a lot of us nowadays.

Ron Bennington: Yeah and if there is no opportunity, if there is no kind of hope for the future, that’s kind of an incarceration even when you’re out.

Melissa Leo: Exactly.

Ron Bennington: Even when you’re out and to see what’s happening with small town America and the reflection in this film, is that the dreams are getting smaller all the time, aren’t they?

Melissa Leo: Oh God. That’s so beautiful. Really really well seen.

Ron Bennington: It’s a terrific film. Comes right off of another film that you did with Jesse Eisenberg which I just loved this year where you played around with the drug angle a little bit which also plays in I think with small town America now.

Melissa Leo: Yeah. “Why Stop Now” is very interesting. I think several years ago when I was asked to play a mom, it seemed to me, she was kind of a mom from the 50’s. And I wasn’t even born in the 50’s. Right afterward, but…so, this notion of that there could be heroin addicts even that hell or knell. The parents, and sometimes even grandparents of children – that’s the world we live in today. So that the story always had an interesting angle on looking at life. And working with Jesse Eisenberg, I would go back again. I’d leave this interview and go back again. (laughs)

Ron Bennington: He is one of those kids like yourself who will take a lot of chances and do different type things. How do you get to this kind of fearless place with your career? Because I see so many people in acting that would – I think they would be afraid to take most of the roles that you take.

Melissa Leo: Yeah. I can’t speak for others and how they do what they do. But for me, acting began with a genesis that had nothing to do with final result. Which ends up being a gift to me as an actor. Because we should be much more involved in process than final result. As soon as an actor goes for result, you get a bad performance. So even in the bigger picture of what my life will look like, my life as an actor- ooh, will I get to have my picture really big on posters? That’s not – I’ve only grown into a world where maybe I want to see the poster before they put it up on Times Square. It just hasn’t been a part of it. I’ve been able to lose myself in my characters completely and thoroughly which I think is to a large degree an actor’s job. To go fearlessly to fulfill the role, to help tell the filmmaker’s story.

Ron Bennington: Do you have doubts though going into this? Do you think to yourself – hey, am I the person that can unveil this? Am I the person that can get there? Or do you feel like you’re over your head sometimes?

Melissa Leo: I won’t say I haven’t felt I was over my head and then that becomes an extraordinary challenge. But I think it might surprise you what has felt over my head. “Francine”, not at all. Francine, I knew I could dig into her and me and come up with something that made us one – that you would get Brian and Melanie’s story. Did 2 days with Denzel Washington on “Flight” which will open next month. And it was 2 days of me leading him through a series of questions in which I repeat the same story again and again. I am a woman in a suit, very put together and he basically says “yes” and “no” for a 12 page scene. I carry the rest of the dialogue. I was scared to death walking on to that set. And that I needed to be – there’s a thing we talk about in acting of status. And I needed to take high status, to Denzel Washington? Whew.

Ron Bennington: You also did a piece this year that go everybody talking. And that’s with Louie.

Melissa Leo: (laughs) I knew it was coming.

Ron Bennington: Yeah. Well, we’re all big fans of his here. And he comes in on this channel all the time with O & A. And that piece was so phenomenal for people. Isn’t weird that something can happen that will be like that much time and get as much talk as a film that you work on?

Melissa Leo: People are still – friends and family that I say I have never, in all 30 years of working as an actor, “Fighter”, Oscar, etc, personally walking down the street – the difference in response, people coming up to me. I too, I can pass through the supermarket like just another lady, and there I am in store after store since the “Louie” episode aired and people coming up to me – never mistaking that I am that complicated woman you see on the show, knowing it was a performance and needing to congratulate me on it. I never had anything like it. Just amazing to me. And working with him – Oh man. What a delight. Scary? Scared to walk in to? Oh, I was petrified to walk into that one. But it was working with him and grounding and getting – oh, I just needed to do what I do. Make it real with him.

Ron Bennington: And that’s the thing I think Melissa that just becomes so stunning about you – is that it just keeps happening over and over, that we feel like – oh, isn’t this great? She got that role of a life time, but it seems like you’re peppering these roles of a life time. They’re really starting to stack up now.

Melissa Leo: Well, I don’t know what to say to that. I thank you so much. For me, it’s simply my job what I believe in my heart that I was put on here, on the Earth to do and that I would get a chance to work with experienced, inexperienced, all kinds and sorts and shapes and people and things that my work would continue to grow in it’s variousness and it’s breadth is more than a dream come true for me.

Ron Bennington: But did you know that as a really young person? Did you feel to yourself that this is what I should be doing when a kid?

Melissa Leo: I didn’t even know what it was called. You remember Peter Schumann and the Bread and Puppet Theater? And when I was 3 years old, I was in puppet workshops with Peter Schumann down in the building that’s now the Public Theater. And he had gotten from the city for a dollar a month or whatever. And I’d go and participate in their “Nativity” and eventually in disarmament rallies with them and other things like that over the years. And then that brought the pretend I had done at home with my mother, brother, neighbors, dolls and showed me that there was an audience that would watch the pretend. That would make the pretend even better by believing the pretend. And that’s what hooked me into what I then learned was called acting. And I haven’t looked back.

Ron Bennington: Never worked any kind of – or had any dreams for any kind of outside kind of job? Just always wanted to stay with acting?

Melissa Leo: I walked away from a waitressing job. It’s 30 years ago now, here in New York City. And I said I’m an actor. This is what I’m gonna do. And I have only ever been employed as an actor. I’ve only ever pursued it. Do I want to direct? No thank you. Too much respect for the job. Do I want to teach? No, I like acting. Do I teach? All the time. On the set, all the time anyone will listen. But no, I’m real happy just being an actor.

Ron Bennington: “Francine” is going to be playing here in New York and then I guess the hope is to get it out to as many places as…

Melissa Leo: It’s not just a hope. Actually it does seem like – we’ll open tomorrow night there at MOMA and then we have like a week playing at MOMA, so if you’re not able to make tomorrow night, there’s more time in New York City to see it. And then they’re going to do a slow spread to what will probably be art houses across the United States. And anybody listening in, go down to your local theater and ask the manager or the owner, they’re usually quite available there in the lobby, when’s “Francine” coming to town? And you’ll help us and we’ll help you and that will help the film grow.

Ron Bennington: It is the best thing too about independent film is even the kind of people who run those kind of theaters is that you know them with a way you don’t know the big theater chahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8g26svrseoin people. And particularly, I’ve lived in some places that weren’t on the coast and always have to know that theater and it becomes like this life blood to the community, but this film I think people need to see now more than ever because we’re at a point where we have to admit that we’re at a low point here in America. And sometimes that needs to be reflected back to us.

Melissa Leo: That’s why I do what I do. It’s an ancient healing art, drama is. To see ourselves reflected so we can become better human beings.

Ron Bennington: Thank you so much for being in here Melissa. Best of luck to you with every thing that you’re doing. I hope to see you next time through.

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8g26svrseo]

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You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.  Not yet a subscriber?  Click here for a free trial subscription.

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You can learn more about Ron Bennington’s two interview shows, Unmasked and Ron Bennington Interviews at RonBenningtonInterviews.com.