What made you so excited about living in Mitzi?
First of all, it feels good to be her. She was filled with music, so there was always an emotional vibration going through her body. I think of the scale of the piano, and that was her range: that’s how low she can go and that’s how high she can hit, so to keep all that in you for a while is exciting. And it’s the way she approached so many things like, ‘Won’t this be so much fun? Won’t this be such an excellent memory for my family? There was creativity in every aspect of her life, from how she played with the kids to how she dressed and cut her hair. She was an artist in every fingertip.
Tell me about her hair because that helmet bob is a standout look.
The hair was the first thing we talked about. She was so acutely aware of what looked great on her – she’d worn those Peter Pan collars all her life and they looked so beautiful on her – and that wavy hairdo was her signature. When you look at pictures of her, they look like movie stills because she looks like a character. She was her own creation and her entire life and the lives of her children were works of art. That still gives me the chills as a mother of three children. I can’t think of anything better to strive for.
Do you feel the same? Do you create lives for your children that are like works of art?
It’s my aim. We’ll see when they’re all grown up how I did.
Spielberg ends the movie shortly after Mitzi leaves her husband for another man, but what did you know about the rest of his mother’s life that helped shape how you felt about Mitzi?
Later in life, she and Steven’s father reconnected and spent their final years together. They are overlapping love stories, which is ultimately why the story is heartbreaking, because this love between these two people hadn’t gone away – it had morphed and turned into something else. There was still enough love in their relationship to start a family, but in your single life it still wasn’t enough to make her stay. The courage of that decision for me! And so I never found her selfish or unhinged. I thought this is a woman who lives so truthfully, so expressively, and so courageously, and then gives that gift to each of her children because they saw her do it.
Many pundits thought you were a slot to win the Supporting Actor Oscar for this role, but instead you chose to campaign as the lead actor in a highly competitive price race.
