Patricia Arquette cover story, Sunday Telegraph Stella

Don’t be fooled by that apparent air of sorrow.
Patricia Arquette is the steeliest of stars who
writes her own rules and whose latest film – shot
over 12 years – says everything you need to know
about her staying power. By Kate Bussmann
A
mater
of
endurance
Photograph by Amanda Friedman
I
t would be easy to get Patricia Arquette
wrong. When she first sits down on
a sofa opposite me in a bland Berlin
hotel room, she is subdued and softly
spoken, fidgeting with a long tasselled
scarf. She exudes an untempered
vulnerability, a rawness and melancholy
that makes you worry if she’s OK. It’s the
same quality, presumably, about which
she once said, “Every man I’ve loved
has tried to find it, fix it, soothe it.”
But Arquette, 46, doesn’t need saving,
and never has. Not by Nicolas Cage,
whom she met when she was 18,
who proposed the same day, and whom
she eventually married at 27. Not by
Paul Rossi, the Argentine musician with
whom she had a son, Enzo, at 20 and
from whom she split when their baby
was a month old. Not by her second
husband, the actor Thomas Jane, with
whom she has a daughter, Harlow, 11,
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and whom she divorced in 2011. She
comes from a long line of free spirits
and performers, from an 18th-century
explorer via her great-grandparents,
a vaudeville double act, to her parents,
an actor and an actress-turned-therapist
and poet, who imposed no rules or
boundaries on their children. All five
of the Arquette siblings ended up
performers too: Rosanna, David,
Richmond and Alexis (born Robert)
are all actors.
Patricia, “the classic middle child, the
mother hen”, was brought up to question
authority, to believe that anything
was possible, even religious harmony:
her father was Muslim, her mother
Jewish, and she was sent to a Catholic
school. She was harshly disabused of
that idea when, at the age of five or six,
a teacher told her that she couldn’t
take communion because “your
mother is Jewish and she’s going to
hell”. “You know what,” responded the
young Arquette, who until that moment
had wanted to be a nun, “I think your
Jesus and my Jesus are different.”
So it shouldn’t really come as
a surprise when, four minutes into
our conversation, this other side of the
mild-mannered Arquette appears. It
comes as we’re talking about her new
film, Boyhood, in which she plays
a single mother who at one point finds
herself in an abusive relationship. “It’s
like the blinders go up: she shuts it out.
It’s very old world female,” she begins.
“Now, I wouldn’t be like that. I would
climb across the table and stab him
in the head with a fork.” As she says this,
she is up, coming at me with one knee
on the coffee table and miming the
same action, her fist clenched around
imaginary cutlery. It’s so startling,
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hen Linklater first approached
her about the film (“What are you
doing for the next 12 years?” he asked),
there was no script or even a full plot.
At the beginning Mason’s parents
(Arquette and Hawke) are estranged:
she is struggling to make a life for her
two children; he is a wannabe musician
who doesn’t even have seat belts in his
car when he picks them up for a visit.
Linklater and his stars brainstormed the
rest as they went along, drawing
inspiration from their own lives. They
are all justifiably passionate about the
result, and watching
it is an odd experience:
you have to keep
reminding yourself that
they didn’t need to
“age up” the cast for
later scenes, or use prop
houses to source ancient
iPods and Obama/
Biden bumper stickers.
“When I first heard
about it, I was blown away,” says
Arquette, dressed in a mash-up of
polka-dot silk skirt, ripped jeans, stripy
sweater and platform heels. The
complications didn’t faze her – such as
finding a week each year in everyone’s
calendar, or the fact that the president
of the studio repeatedly had to justify
internally why they were spending
money with no hope of a return for years.
“This film does not in any way fit into
a business model, especially in America.
More and more of the business is run by
bankers – the smaller movies are gone,
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away from the male-female story which
dominates a lot of film: the falling in love,
the ‘are we going to work it out?’ I see
a lot of women struggling with that shift,
trying to hold on to that earlier story.”
Perhaps she finds it easier to move on
because she was never that comfortable
‘When I was tiny I felt unattractive and awkward.
I didn’t want to be looked at. And yet I put myself in
a business where people have to look at you’
Dead and Boardwalk Empire), Michel
Gondry (Human Nature). Although
today she’s perhaps better known for her
seven-year run as the psychic suburban
mother in the television series Medium,
the roles that made her name played
heavily on her sexuality. There was the
wild call girl of True Romance (1993)
who literally had to fight for her life, and
the fragile bombshell of Lost Highway
made to strip at gunpoint. In 1995 she said
that “of all the parts I get, 99 or 100 per cent
Above In True
Romance, 1993.
Right With Nicolas
Cage in 1996
This page, clockwise from
above Arquette in Medium,
2005; with Thomas Jane
in 2010, a year before
their divorce; Boyhood
it’s great that they got the good part of
acting – learning your craft and being on
set – but not the weird s— of, ‘Oh, you’re
in a movie, you think you’re cool?’”
For Arquette, too, seeing herself age
on screen was “gnarly and intense” –
but she insists that, as she gets older,
she feels “a little more free. I’m moving
with the focus on her beauty and
body. Over the years she’s worked for
virtually every auteur in Hollywood
and many beyond: Tim Burton (on
Ed Wood), John Boorman (Beyond
Rangoon), David O Russell (Flirting with
Disaster), David Lynch (Lost Highway),
Martin Scorsese (Bringing Out the
Rex
W
pretty much. And there is no obvious
demographic for this film: who’s going
to want to see a movie about some
kids growing up? A grandma? They’re
not tunnelling out of a prison or going
into outer space – there’s no plot thing
that makes it easy to sell.”
Working largely in secret, the cast
and crew became very close. Watching
it now, it’s impossible for her not to relive
the events of their off-screen lives: “All
of that, I see it happening: ‘That’s right
before my daughter was born, that’s
when I got married [to Jane], that’s when
I got divorced, that’s when Ethan got
divorced [from Uma Thurman], that’s
when Rick’s babies were just born…
That’s when Ellar’s mom and dad split
up, he’s a little sadder there…’”
You particularly feel for Coltrane,
having his awkward teenage years (acne
et al) preserved on film, something he
signed up for when he couldn’t have
understood what he was getting into.
“Right, right,” she says. “I didn’t really
think about that until they struck those
moments. But they’re amazing kids, and
Previous page: blouse by Greg Lauren. Stylist: Nicholas Klam. Hair: Calista Sanderson. Make-up: Amanda Carroll. This page: Rex
I laugh. She laughs too, then sits back
down, and returns to her scarf.
It’s a sunny morning in the middle of
the Berlin Film Festival, the day after
Boyhood has been screened to a full,
rapt house, despite it being nearly three
hours long. It’s one of the biggest draws
of the festival, not only for its cast (Ethan
Hawke also stars) and director (Before
Sunrise’s Richard Linklater), but because
it’s one of the most daring films in years.
Filmed in short bursts over 12 years with
the same cast, it follows a boy, Mason
(Ellar Coltrane), and his family from
when he is six to the day he arrives at
university. It’s comic and dark, epic and,
as Arquette puts it, “human and small”.
of them are incredibly sexual people”.
Now she can see that “I wasn’t in my
body completely. I was still trying to
find my way. I’m grateful to have been
a part of those projects, and I do think
there’s validity in those stories and with
those filmmakers, but I was still breaking
out of my eggshell with my sticky
membrane on, not knowing who I was.
Maybe I still don’t know.”
Arquette always wanted to be an
actress, but it came at a price. “When
I was tiny, I was a real observer of
human behaviour and I knew I wanted
to tell the human story, but I felt shy
and unattractive and awkward. I didn’t
want to be looked at. I remember when
I was six or seven asking my mom why
people were looking at me. She said,
‘They’re looking at you because you’re
a beautiful little girl.’ But I didn’t believe
her. And yet I put myself in a business
where people have to look at you.
I think I learnt to block it out.”
A
rquette has been involved in two of
the most talked about courtships
in Hollywood history. Her second
husband Jane proposed by editing a
Charlie Chaplin film to include a cameo
of himself holding up cards saying ‘Will
you marry me?’ and rented a cinema to
screen it for her. After Cage proposed
when they met in a Los Angeles diner,
she sent him on a quest to bring her
JD Salinger’s autograph and a black
orchid before she would say yes. He
passed the test, but ruined everything by
throwing an almighty tantrum at the
airport on the way to get married. When
they met again at the same deli nine
years later she proposed, and they were
married within two weeks. They kept
the wedding a secret, and it has been
widely believed that they separated after
nine months,
somehow keeping
that quiet too until
their divorce five
years later in 2000.
But when I raise
this she tells me it’s
not true. “There
were times when
we weren’t living
together because
we were fighting,
but it wasn’t as reported and I didn’t feel
that I needed to explain that. There were
times when my mom was dying [from
breast cancer in 1997] and I was living
with her, taking care of her. There were
times when he was away working on
a movie. It was our thing. I still don’t feel
like I owe it to anyone. It’s funny when
people are so wrong, and they put you in
this position and decide who you are.”
Her parents’ deaths, within a few years
of each other, deeply affected her and her
siblings. “It was a horrifyingly painful
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wake-up call. It pulled us together. There
were things that we didn’t get, some
structure and stability, but we also got
this spiritual depth from our parents
that most people never experience.”
Soon afterwards she found she was
pregnant. Her son Enzo was thrilled.
“He said, ‘It’s perfect timing – you need
to baby someone, and I really need not
to be babied anymore.’ I’m hoping, the
way I’ve plotted it, I’ll be a grandma by
the time [Harlow leaves home]. There’s
a little pressure: ‘You’re good for about
eight years, Enzo, then you’d better get
busy,’” she cackles. “I’ve been a different
parent to my son and my daughter: with
my son, we were kids together. I was
hustling from the beginning.”
‘There were things we
didn’t get from our
parents, some structure
and stability, but we got
this spiritual depth’
When Harlow was born, of course,
she was in a very different position,
and when a producer asked her to lose
her pregnancy weight for Medium the
answer was a flat no. “‘I totally disagree,’”
she recalls telling him. “I wanted to show
the real world: you don’t have to buy
your mate’s fidelity by looking a certain
way. If you’re really in it for the long haul,
10lb isn’t going to make – shouldn’t
make – the world of difference.” She
won (“I was lucky I had enough
professional juice on my side that I had
some power”) and was proven right: the
show was a hit and won her an Emmy
and three Golden Globe nominations.
She still wields that power, secure in
work (she will be the lead in CSI: Cyber,
which starts this autumn) and in herself,
despite first impressions. She is in
a relationship too new to talk about, but
smiles when I ask. “I’m really happy.
It’s nice, you know? It’s like my character
says in Boyhood: ‘Is that all there is?
I thought there would be more.’ I have
felt that way before in cycles. Then
sometimes you turn a corner and your
life changes in five minutes. And you
never saw it coming.” }
“Boyhood” is released on Friday
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