Kerry Washington: The Sundance Interview

Let's talk about Mother and Child a bit. Rodrigo and Garcia clearly loves actresses. Do you love him back?

He's just lovely. I just love him. I don't know a single person that works with him or for him that doesn't feel that way -- he's just awesome. He's a great, great, great man...patient and thoughtful and generous.

I think you can tell how much he enjoys female characters because he's not afraid to show their flaws, too.

I think what it is is that he's very invested in the truth of humanity. You don't tell the truth about a person unless you're invested in their humanity -- nobody is all good or all bad. I think Rodrigo has the courage to tell stories about women, not just women who are in the supporting role to push along the man's story. I think he just allows room for that.

Your character is consumed with having a child. What's motivating that strong urge for her?

Oh, God. If we knew that....[Laughs] I think she's the sort of woman where that's part of what she wants for herself. I don't really know if there's a way to articulate that as a woman -- I think for a lot of women, you just get to a time and place in your life where you think, "That's what I want." What's difficult about her is that she's having difficulty getting [pregnant], and she's always someone who's either been in control or had the illusion of being in control in most areas of her life. She's a perfectionist and very accomplished and then this thing comes along, which is nature, and she can't control it. We have our Blackberries and our schedules and our calendars, and we think we get to decide on everything, then things come along and remind us that we don't have complete control.

Was that a sobering thing to learn as an actress with ambitions?

The trick is to live a life as proactively as possible. For me, to maintain my passion and my drive, and to allow for my desire and ambition and goals, it's important to also detach from the results. It's a real balance to be both proactive and ambitious and courageous, and also to be detached and accepting and flexible. I think that's the big balance in life.

How much was making your Broadway debut in a play like Race part of those goals?

I grew up in New York, so I fell in love with acting on a stage, not in front of a camera. Theater has always been very important to me and I had been looking for the right project to do as as Broadway debut. I'd been looking for a while, and when this came along, it was a no-brainer. I really, really wanted it, and it seemed like a good way to come back home, so to speak, to New York and the stage.

A lot of actors love theater because they get so bored with the leisurely, "hurry up and wait" mentality of shooting a studio film. Still, you've done your fair share of quickly shot indie movies, like Night Catches Us.

I think the biggest difference is acting in and out of sequence. You're right -- on a film like this, you're working a lot, and in a way, it's longer hours, although doing a play is so athletic. What's different is that you spend a whole day focusing on what could be a minute and a half in the movie, so you have to be very clear about the emotions and the shots of that moment, and you have to be able to place it within the context and the arc of the other 100 pages of the script. When you're doing a play, it's like every day is a piece of the puzzle, whereas in theater, you're going through the entire story every night. Each moment builds on the moment before it in a different way.

Did anything about it surprise you?

It's been a long time. One of the things I love about theater is the enormous humility it requires. Again, there's the illusion of control; in film, you get to go, "OK, that was great, print that and let's move on," and then you move the camera and go to a different scene. You have this idea that you're in control and you've got that. In the theater, you can say, "That was really great, that was perfect," but it's like, "Oh well -- good luck tomorrow!" The play is not done with you, and you don't get to be the one to call the shots. I love that about theater.

[Photo Credit: Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images]

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