Alessandro Nivola: All-American, Always European

His career was similarly changed. Suddenly, after I Want You, Mansfield Park, and Laurel Canyon, Nivola was perceived by Hollywood as a British character actor. (His marriage to the English actress Emily Mortimer certainly hasn't cleared up matters). When Coco Before Chanel director Anne Fontaine wanted to cast the role of Boy, the one true love of Coco Chanel (Audrey Tautou), she was looking for an actor as close to Boy as possible: a Brit fluent in French. Thinking Nivola was English -- and hoping he knew the language -- she approached him for the part.

"I lied and said I could do it," he laughed. "I had high school French and that was it! I had to get a French tutor for two months to show up at my house in Brooklyn for two hours a day."

The result was impeccable. As Tautou herself told me, "He did an amazing job, because as a French person, when you listen to him talking, he speaks an amazing French. Really amazing." Nivola demurred, thanking Tautou for her support. "I was really fortunate that she'd had the mirror experience on movies like The Da Vinci Code," he said of the French actress. "She was really charitable in the beginning when I wanted to go home and quit acting."

Comparatively, Nivola's role as an Irish hood in Turning Green was no sweat, even though he confessed that he was much less familiar with that dialect. Still, he found inspiration in the most unlikely place. "One of the things I wanted for the voice of that character, this sleazy guy, was that he should have a soft, delicate, lyrical way of talking," he said. "I was listening to someone talk on NPR and he had these sibilant S's. It seemed like the perfect voice."

Though Nivola is happy with the fruits of his vocal mimicry -- "It's afforded me a huge range of roles that I'd never get to play" -- he cautions, "The thing with being able to do accents is that it's still completely separate from being an actor. My wife, for example, has the most beautiful speaking voice, but she can't keep a tune."

Mortimer may not be able to, but Nivola reluctantly concedes that, yeah, he can -- in fact, in the upcoming Janie Jones, he plays a past-his-peak rocker and sings ten songs written for the film by Clem Snide's Eef Barzelay. It's the first time in a while that he's played an American, but don't think that made things easy on him. "I'm so out of shape that I was winded after!" he laughed. "It's great to play a rock star. Maybe not so great to be one." ♦

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