Temple stars as Danielle, a debauched 1987-era Norman, Okla., high schooler with a bit of a chip on her shoulder. She's never met her father, her mother (Milla Jovovich) is about the marry a Mormon busybody (William H. Macy), and her licentious behavior has just gotten her partnered up with gay, chubby outcast Clarke (Jeremy Dozier) in the special-education class. One chance discovery and one stolen car later, the duo strike off for California in search of lost family and a better life. They find both, but not nearly the way either of them expected.
The film, written and directed by Abe Sylvia, was one of the major stories of the 2010 Toronto Film Festival, landing a Weinstein Company distribution deal worth a reported $3 million. Dirty Girl has been in hiding since, but Temple hasn't: The daughter of filmmaker Julien Temple and producer Amanda Temple recently completed shooting her part in Christopher Nolan's hyper-anticipated Bat-franchise finale, and has no fewer than five other films in various stages of completion or development, including director William Friedkin's recent Toronto premiere Killer Joe, her Michael Cera/Emily Browning collaboration Magic, Magic, the long-delayed lesbian lycanthrope effort Jack and Diane, The Brass Teapot, Small Apartments, and A Single Shot. Yet despite it all, Temple managed today to sneak in a word with Movieline.
So! What's been going on?
What's been going on... Just doing crazy press right now. I went to San Francisco a couple of days ago to show the movie there. That was a trip; we had an amazing time showing it at the Castro Theater. They loved it, so that was cool.
Seems that might be a key demographic.
It was pretty well-received. That was one of the coolest experiences I've had in a while. Then I'm doing this movie tonight, and I go to Paris for a few days. Then I go to back to L.A. I just wrapped a movie a few weeks ago, so it's nice to have a little relax time. I have a bunch of press to do, then some relax time, and hopefully I do another movie in November.
What did you just wrap?
It's called The Brass Teapot. It's about this young, very sweet, very in-love couple, but they have nothing going for them. They have no money, they're pissed, they're annoyed. Especially my character. She's a bit like Nicole Kidman in To Die For-- that kind of uptight woman who wants everybody to be talking about her and wants everything to be perfect. Then one day she finds this magical brass teapot that, when you inflict pain, spews out money. So as you can imagine, she and her husband start going a little crazy with that. It doesn't make them happy, which is the moral of the whole story. Money doesn't make you happy.
How do you decide what films you want to approach, and how do you go after them?
For me, when I read a script, I want to challenged. I definitely want to be challenged. I also want to connect with the character in a certain way. But it's really so much about the director for me. I have to be able to wholeheartedly trust my director and let the walls down and just go for it and be absolutely fearless. You have the freedom if you trust someone like that. It's like having a family member, and you just forget being you, and you just dive into whatever situation you get put into. You know that the director is going to be there to give you a hug if you need it, or pat you on the back, or kick you in the butt. I think that's really important. So having an audition with a director or even dinner with a director, you sit down and really get to know that person and you figure out how that's going to be. Sometimes that doesn't feel right, but most of the time, if the project is something you absolutely adore, then you're going to find a way to get on with the person. That's what I've from experience, anyway. The director is very important to me.
And while you're young, you're kind of a veteran at this point, right?
Since I was like 16, yeah.
So you've got the instincts down, obviously, but how much of this process still feels like a learning process?
Oh, it's all the time. I'm learning all the time. That what I love. I'm like a sponge. Knowledge is the key to life! You should be a sponge. With someone like Jeremy, this is his first movie, so I've got stuff to give, sure. But then I'm working with Milla Jovovich and William H. Macy and Tim McGraw and all these people who are older and wiser and who've live a lot longer than I have and have a lot more movies. So I'm learning from them. It's a chain of events. You can never not learn when you're on a movie set, I don't think.
Why did you want to act in the first place?
Why? OK, I was 4 years old. It was L.A. -- my parents lived in L.A. -- and I was sitting on the couch. They had this great striped couch in the living room. My dad had a laser-disc machine. I remember the dress I was wearing, too: This little short, bright blue corduroy dress with red trim, buttoned up the front. I was wearing that. And my dad put on La Belle et la Bête by Jean Cocteau. And I legitimately had my mind blown. I was in love with the beast. I wanted to be Belle more than I know how to put into words -- still to this day, and I'm 22. I wanted to do that -- anything I could do to make that stuff happen. So I started doing plays. I was always in fancy dress. It just became something I was obsessed with. I've always had a crazy, vivid imagination.
My parents weren't surprised when I finally told them. They weren't stoked to begin with, and they were nervous for me. But after I showed them that I was going to fight to do this, they were so proud. It was really cool.
You've said you were "desperate" to play Danielle once you read the script for Dirty Girl.
Completely.
What provoked that reaction in you?
I just read the script, and it was this challenge of this young girl who is so misunderstood. You read her, and you're like, "Damn, this girl is screaming to be put into the universe." She needs to be seen by people, because she is a positive example of someone who is who she is. She kind of gets off in the beginning on the fact that she is quite intimidating, and boys talk about boning her or whatever, and girls talk about how inappropriate she is. I think she kind of enjoys that, but I think she is lonely, because she's kind of got herself caught up in a catch-22, you know? And then she meets this unlikely character who comes into her life who I don't think she ever thought she would become friends with. And he just becomes her guardian angel, and they have the most extraordinary friendship. And friends are the most important thing in the world. When you find a good one, you shouldn't let go of it. I think it's a great example of how wonderful friendship really is for people. These two misunderstood characters come together and just blossom. I'm so someone you lives by the motto, "Don't judge a book by its cover." You're just going to miss out on a lot of things. You'd be a fool to do that.
What was the audition like?
The first time I came in, I was in the room and there were a bunch of girls looking very Cyndi Lauper-esque, with this blond, cute hair and little pink hot pants and platform high heels, blah blah blah. And I was wearing ripped fishnets, a pair of cut-off denim hot pants, a T-shirt that... You know, if you move, you have to wear a bra because it's very inappropriate. And a cut-off biker jacket, and a nose piercing, matted hair, and smudged eyeliner. So I definitely looked very different; it was like Courtney Love meets Cyndi Lauper. I went in, and I thought I nailed it: "Yes! I think I did good? Don't know. God." Then I went home, and I got a call from my agent, who said, "They want you to come back, but take out the nose piercing and brush your hair." Abe said it was because he didn't want to show my tape to producers looking that ragamuffin-y. I got the "dirty" slightly wrong I guess; it was smelly dirty versus slutty dirty. So I went in looking a bit tidier.
Then I got the phone call: "They want you to play Danielle." I wept. I was on my porch. I remember. I cried. She meant a lot to me. She sends a good message; I think the whole movie does, and I think it's so cool we could do that, because high school's a pretty tough place to be.
From a technical point of view, you are a 22-year-old British woman, and this is set in the '80s before you were even born--
'89. Yeah.
It's set between Norman, Oklahoma, and the American open road--
I don't even have a driver's license!
Did you have to learn to drive?
I had to learn to drive, but I still don't have a license.
OK, well, I won't tell anyone. But trying to get in the mindset and the skin of a high-school girl in Norman in 1987--
And that was the first time I'd ever been to a high school, when I stepped on that set. That was the first time I'd ever been to an American high school.
Whoa. So what was your process, even down to the accent?
I talked a lot with Abe about her. The big thing was the wardrobe and the look. I look like a different person in that movie. The accent is obviously key; that makes you change very much instantly. It was also a major thing for me to develop relationships with the people I was working with, like Milla and Jeremy. That was a very important dynamic for me. There's that line in To Kill a Mockingbird that Scout says: "You don't know a man until you've put on his shoes and walked around his front porch." And I think that was thing for me: to put on Danielle's shoes and stomp around. It was a different attitude, a different posture, a different way of holding yourself. And I loved that, because I really wanted to make it a journey for her. She goes from A to B, and there's a huge arc between them. It was really important to me to make that arc flow. And again, I just spent a long time talking to Abe about it; it's loosely based on his childhood, and he just knew this girl so well. He's known a lot of "dirty girls" in his life.
I also watched a few movies. Freeway. That was a great research movie. We also watched things like Breakfast Club, just for that idea of the '80s. A lot of music, too. The music really affects you in that kind of situation. We were given the hopeful soundtrack before we even started shooting the movie. Abe gave us a CD and told us exactly where songs would be playing in the script. That made a huge difference, too.
So you've got The Three Musketeers and The Dark Knight Rises on the way, both obviously very big movies. How are feeling about those, and what's your sense of where you are right now and what's coming next?
Well, I have another movie that was just up at Toronto called Killer Joe that will hopefully come out here at the end of this year or the beginning of next year. It's a movie I'm very proud to be a part of. And I shot two independent films this year -- the Brass Teapot one and this film directed by Jonas Åkerlund called Small Apartments, which was a really cool script, too. So it's a mixture of independent and studio movies. But how am I feeling? [Pauses] It's a whirlwind. I don't really know what to expect, to be honest with you. I don't really sit and think about it. I just kind of take each day as it comes. I guess I'm excited. I'm also nervous; I might never work again if these movies don't take off.
At least you can relax about The Dark Knight Rises. I think that'll do all right.
Definitely a good thing to a part of.
Have you shot that already?
Yeah, I'm finished.
What is your role? The casting announcement said something like, "street-smart Gotham girl."
I'm not allowed to talk about it.
OK!
Sorry. But! What's next is this movie called Magic, Magic with Michael Cera.
Have you followed any of these spoilers coming out about Dark Knight Rises? Anne Hathaway's cat ears? Shooting in Pittsburgh? Do you think viewers should know less than we've been exposed to?
I haven't seen any of it, but absolutely. I don't know jack shit about it, and I want it to be that way. I want to be surprised. I love those films. The whole point is to go and see it and have your mind blown. It's an experience, you know?