Jessica Biel
Interview: Jessica Biel Talks Home of the Brave
"I think everybody just felt like we knew we were making something important," she said. "I didn't know what it was going to turn out to be like. I didn't know about anybody else's performance. All I knew was what I was doing every day and how I felt and it just kind of felt like an excitement, a little bit of a thrilling experience because we were doing something really poignant and very timely and really, honestly, kind of important to show this aspect and this side of war. So yeah, we kind of felt it. We felt it but it's also just work and thinking a lot about character and about performance and so we really focused on that usually. I definitely felt it but I didn't concentrate on it. I just was really just trying to do the best performance I could."
That said, it is not a message movie. "I think it was really important to avoid the politics. I feel like we see a lot of war films with politics, and I just didn't really care that much to do a movie about that. I was really interested in watching people, broken people, people who experienced such traumas, coming back into this normal kind of society and dealing with it. I was interested in seeing vulnerable men, vulnerable soldiers breaking down and trying to figure out if they want to go back, if they don't want to go back, their lives, their families. I was interested in that struggle, not about, 'Is the war right?' and 'Is the war wrong?' and 'Should we be there or should we not be there?'"
In the combat scene that wounds her character, Biel is not the kick ass chick we've seen in Blade or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. "I thought a lot about that because I was trying to bring a balance of okay, she's trained, she's very smart and able and strong, but this is a situation that she could never prepare for. She's a woman. How would I feel? How would I really feel? What would I do? Would I be calm and cool and collected or would I be freaking out? Probably be freaking out and trying to maintain protocol so that was the dynamic that I was trying to show in there, that these are people. Yes, they're trained to kill and trained to protect and provide but when you take all the guns and fatigues away, we're talking about like 19-20 year old people, young kids. Just kids."
Biel wore a glove over her hand that restricted her movement the way having a prosthetic limb might. "Wearing it just sort of helped it along, helped everything, kind of like stepping into the corset for The Illusionist. It was like boom, once it was on, I was there, I was transported. Once this hand was on, it was like okay, I'm here. I'm this person again. It was so helpful for me. I wore it around on set every day, pretty much all day long. But I didn't want to wear it too much because I didn't want to be comfortable with it."
Vanessa finally manages to relate to a man as a lover, despite her self-consciousness over the prosthetic. Their love scene represented her catharsis in the film, where the pair laugh over the awkwardness of stripping each other with only three hands between them.
"There isn't really a moment where she like 'breaks down' breaks down. It could have been at the moment when she's unbuttoning the clothes, and it could have just been this total like release. But she wasn't emotionally ready for that yet. So I felt like it either had to be just tears, or it had to be laughter. And I just kind of came up with this idea. And also there was so much passion. She probably hasn't been touched in maybe a year. Maybe eight, nine months, and this man finally doesn't care. He wants to know, he's going to ask her straight out, 'Well what happened? Tell me.' Which blows her mind, that this guy is just going to ask her about it and not think that she's a freak and not look at her that way. So that's kind of how that happened. It's just one of my favorite scenes in the movie, too."
If this drama connects with Hollywood, it could bring Biel her first Oscar nomination. She's trying not to think about that. "You know, you get excited about it, and yeah, privately you give this speech and everything, but you really think, 'Whatever. If I win, amazing.' I mean, I can't even believe if that would happen. That would be incredible. Is that the goal for my work? I must win an award? No. You do think about it, but you don't harp on it, because it just sort of feels so untouchable and so unrealistic. I don't know why, it just does. You just feel like there's no way you'd win, so whatever, you just laugh about it and have a good time. But I think you would be lying to say you don't fantasize about it. I mean, you know, if you're an athlete, I'm sure you'd fantasize about, I don't know, winning some huge thing. Or, you know what I mean. I don't know."
Home of the Brave has a limited release this Friday.
Stay tuned for updates.
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