Interview 
with L.Harrow

Harrow:  Bio  | |  Photos

Sunday: an interview with: Lisa Harrow 

by Prairie Miller 

Actress Lisa Harrow, once called the new Katherine Hepburn, is currently the star of the Sundance sleeper Sunday. Winner of both the Grand Jury Prize and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance this year, Sunday is the first movie to take the top prize there by a unanimous jury decision. The film, directed by Jonathan Nossiter and also starring David Suchet, is about an adventurous and bizarre day in the life of an out-of-work actress who meets a peculiar stranger in the street who may or may not be her dream director. I talked with the New Zealand actress once married to Sam Neill and who first won acclaim for her role in The Last Days Of Chez Nous, about working in the United States, and how close the role of the obsessed actress she plays in Sunday is to her own feelings about the profession. 

PRAIRIE MILLER: How do you go about finding a character as the one you have so vividly drawn in Sunday? 

LISA HARROW: What I try to do is find out why the character says what she says and why a certain line has been written to be said. Because words come out of a need to communicate, they're not just there on a page. I'm very precise in my head about what is happening at any given moment in the script. Otherwise, I get lost. So for me, the whole process of working on a text is to solve those answers, to solve those questions. So sometimes, yes, I will say to a director, I don't really think that this is what should be said now because I think that the character couldn't possibly have come to that conclusion. You see, I think acting is a kind of science, really. You have a certain amount of evidence, and you have to draw conclusions. And so the evidence is the text and what lies underneath it. And what emerges is the character. 

PM: What drew you to this role? 

LH: The complexity, I guess. And the moment when Oliver and my character Madeleine are lying naked on the bed and just looking at each other. They need to speak and can't, and I thought, that's an amazing challenge, for two actors to sit there with no words and just have this dialogue between eyes. Also, actors are always looking for roles like this that are varied and complicated, because it's just much more fun, there's more to do. There's more of a chance to show what you're capable of. And I liked the mystery of the story, I liked the way you come to connect so quickly with another human being, I think that's an interesting human thing to explore. Another reason I liked Sunday was that I love characters who have journeys. You're a transformed human being by the end. I think just to live your life and not have a direction is silly. 

PM: What do you get out of acting? 

LH: Art, the storytelling. That's what actors are, they're storytellers. What are the stories about? Are they just about guys getting up and shooting guns, or are you trying to say this is a kind of understanding of the condition called life. I think that's so much what I believe I should be doing as an artist. My only role is to help human beings live their lives, why else be an actor. I don't understand any other reason to be an actor. That's what I think is the important thing for art, that's what art says to people.

PM: In Sunday, you play an unemployed actress, and there are so many in real life who are frustrated like that. Did you have compassion for her? 

LH: Of course. I've been through that too. When I did the film The Last Days Of Chez Nous in Australia, everyone said, phenomenal. Sunday is the first film I've been offered since then. So for six years, having been told that was a great role, and I won awards, I waited. So it can happen to all of us, that you go through sterile periods. And I'm a New Zealander living in London, so I also understand my character's sense of exile as a British actress living in the U.S. Like Madeleine, I started with the Royal Shakespeare Company and did all this great work. And then you reach a point where nothing is happening, or rather nothing to write home about. I thought, I want to come here to work in the U.S., I want to have a broader horizon. But I want to do something where I can do the work I want to do, and not wait any more, because the problem in this profession is that you are always waiting for someone to employ you. That's why I'm sure so many Hollywood actors, even the successful ones, try to get hold of the reins and decide, I am going to do this. Because every time you start a job, you start from scratch. And if you are a famous, established actor, you start with this horrible thing called a "reputation." So yes, of course I had huge sympathy for my character. I'm almost 54 years old, I'm getting to be an older woman, and this profession is not kind to older women. So when a role like Madeleine comes along, it's wonderful because it's honest. It's actually what it's all about, it's an actress desperate to find a job and meets someone who she thinks is a movie director. I totally understood that kind of eager, utterly self-consuming thing. It's horrible, but it's also very true. That's what I love about Sunday, how these issues just percolate up and sit there, like life. 

PM: What was your reaction when you first saw the completed film?

LH: I was stunned by its visual content, by the beauty of it. It was like having a baby. 

PM: What is the satisfaction behind making a low budget, labor of love movie like Sunday when it's surrounded by all these multi-million dollar extravaganzas? 

LH: Oh there is that, why else would you do it, besides being mad? You work for love, and not the money. Everything I've done in my life has been that way. But I've had some wonderful experiences, and for me that's obviously what's been satisfying. It's a great sense of happiness to me, because this film was a struggle. It was an act of total faith, of single-minded tenacity. So it's thrilling that in this world of special effects where you're not actually trying to be serious about this little thing called a life that we have to lead, that tiny glimmers of imagination still can shine brightly in a jaded world of entertainment....Did I say that?!