Playing the impish title call girl of Chloe, Atom Egoyan's luscious erotic drama and his most accessible film in years, Amanda Seyfried insinuates herself into the life of a Toronto gynecologist (Julianne Moore) whose marriage to a handsome professor (Liam Neeson) has run ice cold. It's the kind of performance that might inspire a new generation of young actresses with similarly bodacious aspirations, just as a technicolor Baz Luhrmann romance did for Seyfried back when she was a pre-teen playing dress-up in her bedroom. She told us all about it yesterday, when we asked her to play My Favorite Scene.
"I watched Romeo+Juliet so much as a child, a young girl, maybe a prepubescent girl, I guess. And that movie propelled me to this other kind of passionate realm where I was like, 'I got to be there. I got to do this. I got to portray this -- whatever it is -- classic love story.' It was just so fucking powerful. I understood it then, and I wanted to be able to do that.
"What about the fucking scene -- this is what I used to do in my mirror. In the bathroom, I'd put a white wife beater tank top on, I'd put my hair back and do this thing because she had the wings on, and I'd pull a strand [of hair] in front of my eyes, and I'd try to imitate it -- like, looking through that fucking fish tank, man. When they're in the elevator and they're kissing? I mean, come on. How does it not evoke such love in such a young girl?
"And I wanted that because I needed it. I was obsessed with it. And I wasn't obsessed with any one particular actor, but with what they had, what they shared. I don't know why, but I think that's why I'm here. I mean, I do know why -- it was powerful. See, I know it's a really generic answer, but I played that fucking scene out. For like two years! And I wrote down all the words of the movie in a notebook with pictures. I'd print them out on my computer.
"And what about the scene in Twister, when Philip Seymour Hoffman is like, 'Finger of god?' And everyone's really quiet, because it's such a crazy metaphor? That's another reason I'm here!"
Here's the Romeo+Juliet Elevator Scene, plus a some background on how they did it. (It was a lot more complicated than it looked!)