Oscar voters often love it when beautiful models, or starlets accustomed to playing the one-dimension girlfriend roles, reveal that they can actually be serious actresses when given a chance. The transformation has worked for the likes of Jessica Lange and Charlize Theron in the past – and this year, Michelle Monaghan looks to be shaking up the perceptions of people used to seeing her in the likes of “Made of Honor” and “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” with her tough, subtle work in James Mottern’s “Trucker.”
Yesterday, Roger Ebert gave the film four stars and announced, “Her performance clearly deserves an Oscar nomination.” Monaghan clearly remains a longshot in the category, but if nothing else a little buzz might tempt a few more viewers to check out the spare, finely-drawn, understated drama, which opens in a few theaters today and rolls out to more over the next few weeks. Considering that the film has been making the festival route for much of the last two years, the actress welcomes the attention.
It’s been a long haul for this movie already, hasn’t it?
Yeah, the film has had a hell of a journey. I attached myself to it in 2006, and it took about a year to get financing. We made it in the summer of 2007, and the following April it went to Tribeca, and then we found distribution in 2008. So it’s taken a lot of dedication on the part of a lot of people to see it through to this point.
What attracted you to the part?
Honestly, this is the role of a lifetime for me. She’s a very honest woman, a real woman, very unsentimental. She’s not a victim, and she’s not a one-dimensional character.
The director, James Mottern, came from documentary films and had never made a feature before. Were you comfortable with him from the start?
I was. I’ve worked with a lot of first time writer directors. Somebody might say I was taking a risk working with him, but I looked at him as taking a risk on me. And more importantly, we just had the same vision for the film. He was real clear about how he wanted to make the film, which was exactly my sensibility.
What is that sensibility?
He wanted to have an early ‘70s quality to the film. Also, there are certain scenes you could really play up and make the obvious choice. She could play the victim, the character could be really sentimental, there were moments where there could be a lot of melodrama. And James didn’t want to do that. In fact, he wanted to do the exact opposite. And he really wanted to allow the camera to linger a lot. Most directors today don’t give you a chance to watch the actors act, because they’re always cutting to the dialogue. In this movie there are some real quiet moments, solitude, with all the characters.
