“I had to let go”: the movie genre Rachel Weisz “became obsessive” about starring in
Before Rachel Weisz became an Oscar-winning actor, she spent some time modelling, studying under a master clown, and taking to the Edinburgh Fringe, but she’d soon find herself best suited to Hollywood.
Making her film debut in 1994’s Death Machine, she eventually started to earn more high-profile roles, but none launched her into the mainstream like The Mummy in 1999. Appearing alongside Brendan Fraser, the movie made her a Hollywood star, and before she knew it, she had jobs lined up left, right, and centre.
Weisz tended to bag parts in thrillers, historical movies, crime dramas, and the occasionally more romantic type, so there came a time when she decided to push the boat out and aim for a proper comedy. It was the mid-2000s, and with an Oscar already under her belt for the thriller The Constant Gardener, Weisz had a lot more freedom to explore more cinematic avenues.
While she’d done comedies in the past in the form of the British rom-com About a Boy, the festive flick Fred Claus, and the rom-com Definitely Maybe, she decided that none of these had properly scratched the comedy itch she was dying to satisfy, so when the opportunity to appear in Rian Johnson’s caper The Brothers Bloom came about, she jumped at the chance.
Before Johnson directed Weisz’s husband in the Knives Out series, he made his debut with the thriller Brick, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but three years later, he switched things up and opted for something a lot lighter, and Weisz was cast as Penelope – appearing with the likes of Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo, The Brothers Bloom allowed the actor to show a side of herself that she’d rarely shown on screen, and she delighted in the opportunity.
She quickly became “obsessive” about getting the role; she knew this one was perfect for her. “I definitely had to let go,” she told AV Club. “I really wanted to do a comedy. I’ve done a lot of drama, and comedy was the one genre I was not being offered. So I became obsessive about getting one. I tried with two little parts in comedies that were more mainstream, I was kind of fumbling around, and then I read this and knew it was the one I wanted to jump into”.
Luckily, the process of adapting to a more strongly comedic role wasn’t as challenging as she thought it might be – “Did it take adjusting? Actually, it’s not really any different from doing drama. When you’re doing comedy, you’re not trying to be funny. I think things are funny when the character is taking it totally seriously. I think when people are winking, it becomes slapstick, it becomes something else.”
So, going into the project as she would any other, Weisz had a fantastic time, and the film performed pretty well. She admits that she’s “no expert” when it comes to comedy, but she did a great job (she had studied under a clown when she was younger, after all).
She thus primed herself for one of the greatest performances of her career, which came several years later in the offbeat comedy The Favourite by Yorgos Lanthimos, which left her Oscar-nominated.
