Aurelia Butler

Listing some of the many perils of womanhood in a still patriarchal society, the monologue that the actress America Ferrera delivers in “Barbie” with the intensity of a rallying cry, became one of the most talked-about movie moments of 2023.“I’ve never been a part of something so eagerly anticipated,” Ferrera said during an interview at a Beverly Hills hotel restaurant. Originally from Los Angeles but based in New York, she was back in her hometown for an awards-season screening of the smash hit.Relaxed in a cozy beige sweater, Ferrera, 39, was recalling a prerelease press stop in Mexico City where 20,000 frenzied people welcomed the filmmaker Greta Gerwig and the cast of her pink-soaked comedy. “It was like a presidential campaign,” she added.Ferrera plays Gloria, mother and Mattel employee whose self-doubt and unfulfilled aspirations in the real world prompt an existential crisis in Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) in Barbie Land. Ferrera’s plucky performance has landed her in the Oscar discussion this year.Though Gloria might be considered a supporting player in “Barbie,” Ferrera knows that it’s her flawed character who sets the adventure in motion. The performer, who broke through in “Real Women Have Curves” (2002) and went on to win an Emmy for her turn as the title character in “Ugly Betty” (2006-10), deeply admires how Gerwig dared to infuse a seemingly vacuous concept with plenty of meaning.“It’s huge for something that is both so commercially successful and culturally dominant to also be about many things at the same time, which is not easy to execute in the biggest movie of the year,” Ferrera noted.Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Has the massive success of “Barbie” come as a surprise to you?I went into reading the script with really no attachment to Barbie at all. I didn’t grow up playing with Barbies. I was more curious about what Greta would do with it. It wasn’t just funny and subversive and delightfully weird. It was also about womanhood. When I was done reading the script, I was just giddy that this was the Barbie movie that no one asked for, but we were going to get. I felt it was going to be huge from the beginning.Why did you never play with Barbies as a child?We couldn’t afford Barbies. She was very expensive along with all of her stuff. [Laughs] I had a cousin who had Barbies, and I would play with them at her house, but they also seemed very far away from me. I didn’t necessarily feel represented in the Barbie narrative. It felt like a world that wasn’t accessible to me.Some critics took issue with her monologue as an oversimplification, but Ferrera countered, “We can know things and still need to hear them out loud.”Amy Harrity for The New York TimesSince you didn’t have a personal attachment to Barbie, how did you find your way into the character of Gloria and this world?One of the things that really gave me a glimpse into this character was the documentary called “Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie” that showed when Barbie expanded into many different sizes and shapes and colors. The woman [Kim Culmone] who led that as the head Barbie designer, a very cool feminist progressive woman, was getting backlash from all sides: From the legacy holders saying, “Barbie can’t change.” And from her progressive friends, angry that she cared about Barbie. “Why would you care about something that has been so bad for women?”But she had her own deep personal connection to playing with Barbies with her mother. She fought for this idea that she knew was imperfect but that still meant something to her. That gave me the insight I needed to play Gloria as a real adult woman and to understand why she plays with Barbie and wishes herself to Barbie Land.What did you think the first time you saw Gloria’s now incredibly popular speech?It definitely felt like an important moment, but Gloria was shining from the very beginning. She represents this quest for the permission to express yourself. She has to play the role of Mom and of responsible career woman, while hiding everything she loves underneath the corporate suit, being what she thought she needed to be. From the moment we meet her with her pink sneakers on to her getting to drive in that car chase, there was so much wish fulfillment and release for somebody who has been repressing so much.The monologue felt so right for Gloria. Yes, it breaks the Barbies out of their moment, but it’s also the natural breaking point for Gloria, where she has to say what she’s discovering on this journey. I recognized that it was a big moment and that it needed to work, but it also didn’t work independent of her entire search for more freedom for herself.Did the speech change at all?The text evolved a little bit. Greta asked me, “Why don’t you just tell me what you would say? Write it in your own words. What would you add?” Not every director starts out by inviting actors to rewrite their work. Some of what we talked about made it into the script. The line, “Always be grateful” came out of that conversation with Greta. She expounded on it adding, “But never forget that the system is rigged.” There were many versions that we did. We ended in tears. It ended in laughter, it got big, it got small, and I was able to do that because I really trusted Greta to know what would be right for the film.What are your thoughts on the discourse that some people believe Gloria’s speech oversimplifies feminism?We can know things and still need to hear them out loud. It can still be a cathartic. There are a lot of people who need Feminism 101, whole generations of girls who are just coming up now and who don’t have words for the culture that they’re being raised in. Also, boys and men who may have never spent any time thinking about feminist theory.If you are well-versed in feminism, then it might seem like an oversimplification, but there are entire countries that banned this film for a reason. To say that something that is maybe foundational, or, in some people’s view, basic feminism isn’t needed is an oversimplification. Assuming that everybody is on the same level of knowing and understanding the experience of womanhood is an oversimplification.From left, America Ferrera, Ariana Greenblatt, who plays her daughter, and Margot Robbie.Warner Bros.Gloria’s story is deeply intertwined with that of Barbie. How do think the two help each other overcome their struggles?Greta, Margot and I talked about Gloria and Barbie’s relationship as a love story. Not necessarily a romantic one, which some people on the internet have pushed for that reading of it, but we talked about it as Barbie and Gloria needing each other to be complete and to be the pieces of a puzzle that’s missing for each of them. The journey releases Gloria of the impossible assignment of being the kind of woman that she thinks she needs to be in the real world. And Barbie releases her herself from having to be an idea that is never going to satisfy all the things she’s meant to satisfy by choosing to be a human.What was your reaction when you first saw the doll made in your image for the Barbie collection inspired by the movie?Surreal. There were actually some similarities to me in the facial features. She’s the first Barbie doll fashioned after a Honduran American woman to ever exist. That’s really special, to know that no one had a Honduran Barbie doll to play with until now.Do you feel like your career has always been marked by firsts, like being the first Latina to win a lead acting Emmy? There’s a lot of pressure in being the first.I just took any single opportunity in front of me to do the best possible work that I could do in the hopes that there would be another opportunity after that. Looking backward, it’s much clearer to see that my career has been shaped by how the culture saw somebody like me. The opportunities that came my way were ones that kept me in very specific boxes. What I saw as my job as an actor was to inject those characters with as much complexity as I could, and not just play characters that were a foil to an expectation.Have things improved for Latinas in Hollywood since “Real Women Have Curves”?It took Josefina López, who wrote it, 11 years to get that movie made. And when the movie was successful, it didn’t result in a watershed moment for Latina writers and directors and actresses being given tons of opportunities. As you stated, I’m the first Latina to win an Emmy in a lead category. I’m still the only one and that brings me no joy. While I would love to think that things are different today than they were 22 years ago when “Real Women Have Curves” was made, the data shows that in large part, it hasn’t changed.That makes me think of Lupe Ontiveros, who played your mother in “Real Woman Have Curves,” and who made a career out tiny roles she managed to turn into screen gold.Ferrera in her breakthrough role in “Real Women Have Curves,” opposite Lupe Ontiveros.HBO FilmsShe was such a force, an incredible talent. [Ontiveros died in 2012.] I often think about all the incredible performances we were robbed of, that Lupe never got to give because those opportunities didn’t exist for somebody like her. And she still did her work. She took whatever scraps would come to her and she would fill them with humor and make them memorable. I think about her often, and all the Latino actors who’ve come before me, who did whatever they could with whatever they got.What does the ideal future for Latinos in the industry look like to you?The hope is that we get to actually have outlets for the immense talent that exists among Latinos. And that we can move beyond fighting just to be visible and that we can actually create and exist as full humans, as artists, with things to say beyond, “We’re here.” But it’s hard to find those opportunities. There’s a lot out there that is very transactional in terms of checking boxes to claim diversity. One of the most exciting things to me about this movie was, as a Latina woman, being invited to be a part of something so adventurous and joyful and fun. Gloria is Latina, but being Latina was not her reason for being in this story. More

As the brilliant but flawed Kitty Oppenheimer, the actress plays a woman who had “extraordinary qualities, as well as ones that really let her down as a person.”In “Oppenheimer,” the writer and director Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster biopic — three words that generally don’t go together — the character of Kitty Oppenheimer is effaced twice over.Kitty, played by Emily Blunt, is the woman behind the man: Though a scientist herself, she is the sidelined wife of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the American physicist who led the development of an atomic weapon during World War II at Los Alamos, N.M. “Oppenheimer” is emphatically his movie, so much so that a lot of the script was written in the first person (“I OPEN my eyes- JUMP out of bed- SCRAMBLE to dress”).And second, though Kitty was Robert’s wife (they had two children together), she was not his first love nor, the film suggests, his strongest. The psychiatrist Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) was initially involved with Robert for three years, and the two continued to see each other, even after the Oppenheimers were married. Midway through the film, Kitty finds her husband manic over her death.“How heartbreaking it must have been for her,” Blunt said, “to see him in that kind of state about another woman.”It is all to say that Blunt, the London-born actress known for films such as “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Mary Poppins Returns” and “A Quiet Place,” might have disappeared into the three-hour epic, which was based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “American Prometheus.” But Blunt’s is among the most memorable performances in a film packed with movie stars and acclaimed character actors. The winner of a Screen Actors Guild Award for “A Quiet Place” in 2019, Blunt is now a likely candidate for her first Academy Award nomination.In a video interview last month, she talked about sympathetically portraying an unfortunate but not exactly likable character. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Blunt in a scene from “Oppenheimer” with Cillian Murphy, who plays her husband, the famed physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer. Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal PicturesChristopher Nolan asked actors to learn about their real-life characters. What about Kitty Oppenheimer informed your performance?We all read “American Prometheus.” On the flight out to Albuquerque, I could see other people trying to cram it. The wives in Los Alamos described her as being one of the most evil people they’ve ever met. Men were intrigued by her but a bit intimidated. Kitty didn’t do small talk. She only did big talk.Robert and Kitty Oppenheimer temporarily offloaded their baby son to their friends, the Chevaliers, because they were so overwhelmed. Was that scene difficult to perform?I have 9- and 7-year-old girls, and I adore being a mom. I’ve always really loved kids. So it’s quite hard to be so cold-shouldered with these little ones on set. Kitty’s clearly got trauma there — trauma that wasn’t named at the time. She has descended into drinking too much. I tried to empathize with the woman who was in possession of a phenomenal brain herself, who is having to contort herself into the good housewife-y. It must have been agony for someone like her, who was so wild, so brilliant, should never have been a mother, and clearly had huge depression after the kid was born.How do you balance empathy with being true to the character, potentially at the expense of likability?For me, it’s never important if someone is likable. I just have to understand them. I could play that quiet desperation of the character, the restlessness and that unashamed flair that she had, which was so fiery and exciting. And yet she was this very stabilizing force for him. She was his most vigorous protector. I think she had rather extraordinary qualities, as well as ones that really let her down as a person. She is abrasive and flawed, but I really sympathized with that idea of someone deteriorating at the ironing board, when she should have been made for intellectual endeavors that would have thrilled her.Were there any other scenes that unlocked Kitty for you?Do you remember the scene under the rock with Cillian? He’s gibbering with incoherence about his lover.When I read the scene, I was like, “Wow, that’s so interesting, it’s almost like he can’t see that he’s speaking to his wife.” And I slapped him — Chris was like, “Slap him.” It’s not in the movie, but I hit that famous cheekbone way too many times. Maybe what I played more is her attempt to save face. Like: “Pull yourself together, people here depend on you.” It’s more like, “I depend on you.”How did the unconventional, first-person nature of the screenplay influence how you approached the role?It was made clear to all of us that this is a single perspective. Oppenheimer’s character is going to reach through the screen and pull you inside of his head, and you’ve got these rather more wild, colorful characters around him. We were there to emotionally elicit different sides of this character.I interviewed Nolan shortly before “Oppenheimer” was released about the IMAX 70-millimeter format.It must have been like Dork Central for him. The passion about film is infectious.What was it like shooting with the IMAX cameras?It would be brought in like a massive fridge. And it’s loud: It sounds like Chewbacca coming in. There’s something freeing, because you know that it’s going to capture every little flicker and nuance on anyone’s face. But it is loud, and at first you’re like, “How am I going to function?” It’s the understated nature of Chris’s sets, the focus and lack of chaos, that it was never this declamatory moment when the IMAX would come in.How would you contrast Nolan’s “calm” sets with others you’ve been on?On some sets you’re flying by the seat of your pants. It can work both ways: With a comedy or something that’s more free-spirited, sometimes it’s great for it to be a bit more chaotic. But with Chris, it’s his preparation, so that when you show up, you don’t feel rushed as an actor. I’m sure the crew was horizontal every night by 7 p.m. More

In his performances in “Michael Clayton” and other films, he brought an element of danger and uncertainty that kept us on edge.It takes 27 minutes for Tom Wilkinson to actually show up in “Michael Clayton,” but his specter haunts every second.The movie opens with his voice on a recording, pleading in familiar terms with “Michael” — we find out later he’s a fixer at the law firm where Wilkinson’s character is a partner. “I’m begging you, Michael, I’m begging you, try to make believe this is not just madness, because this is not just madness,” the voice pleads, pitch modulating and then oscillating through steadiness to vexation. He launches into a story about leaving a building to find himself coated in “amniotic, embryonic fluid,” then coming to a “stunning moment of clarity” about his work as a litigator who’s poured years of his life into, well, we don’t know yet, but it must be bad.Tony Gilroy’s screenplay gives Wilkinson a lot to work with, but it’s his performance that grabs you by the throat, all the more gripping because we don’t really know what’s going on. Who is this man? Is he aware of what he’s saying, or have his marbles gone skittering across the room and into every corner? Is anything he says true, and if it is, does he know it? Those questions hover over the movie, the tension stretching drum-tight before Wilkinson even appears. George Clooney is the star of “Michael Clayton,” but its beating heart lies with Wilkinson, this imploding man on the phone.Wilkinson (no relation, though publicists used to ask me), who died on Saturday at 75, is one of those actors everyone knows even if they can’t quite place him. He is the guy from “The Full Monty,” from “Batman Begins,” from “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.” He did everything from “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” to “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” and channeled historical figures including Joseph P. Kennedy (in “The Kennedys”), Lyndon B. Johnson (in “Selma”), and Benjamin Franklin (in “John Adams”). He played a lot of priests and a lot of soldiers and a lot of men from history, but he never quite managed to be pigeonholed as anyone in particular.Wilkinson worked a lot, with multiple film, TV and stage credits most years since the early 1980s, in part because he usually didn’t play the lead. Instead he was the man you brought in to fill a role with gravitas and a spark of peril, someone who would never simply say lines but make everything suddenly significant. What’s so fascinating about Wilkinson’s career, the kinds of characters he chose to portray, is their capacity for vulnerability and unpredictability. When he walked onscreen, you were not quite sure whether this guy was going to be trustworthy or explosive.The instruments Wilkinson had to work with — his look, his stature, his voice — weren’t particularly remarkable on their own. His face, which began to verge on the cherubic as he aged, was that of an ordinary Englishman, someone you’d bump into in a pub. His voice wasn’t particularly rumbly or low-pitched, and while he stood much taller than many men he acted with, you’d never stare as he walked down the street. Wilkinson looked, in essence, like someone’s granddad, a man who would slip you a cough drop midmeeting and wink.Yet his roles I remember most involved an element of danger so thoroughly fused into that exterior that I spent the whole movie wondering whether this guy was a warm hug or a time bomb. In Michel Gondry’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” Wilkinson has a minor role as the doctor overseeing the memory-erasing procedure that Jim Carrey’s lovelorn Joel desperately seeks. Kirsten Dunst plays Mary, the much-younger assistant who falls in love with the doctor. When he tries to explain that the two of them have a history already, there’s equal parts patheticness and pathos in his performance. Is he predator, prey, or helplessly uncertain how his own work really affects people? He’s not sure, and neither are we.Or there’s the bereaved father in Todd Field’s “In the Bedroom,” a quiet, upstanding Maine father who is being eaten alive by his need to avenge the death of his son at the hands of his son’s girlfriend’s ex-husband. The final half-hour features Wilkinson at his most volatile, a deadpan expression on his face and a pistol in his hand. What’s in his heart is wholly inscrutable not just to the man at the other end of the gun, but to the audience, too. He could go off at any minute — or not at all.The greatest encapsulation of this ability, however, still lies in “Michael Clayton,” with the role of the attorney Arthur Edens (for which he was Oscar-nominated) perfectly tuned for Wilkinson’s abilities. When his monologue ends, we’re pretty sure the man on the phone needs immediate psychiatric help. But he’s gone, suddenly, and when he pops up again, that assumption gets murky. Maybe this guy really has had a blinding moment of insight, a sudden attack of moral clarity. Or maybe not? Edens, it emerges, has bipolar disorder and is typically medicated, and Wilkinson plays this as a man whose mind keeps slipping sideways inside his skull.The effect on the audience is absolutely electric. In one scene, Edens knocks on a window to say hello to Clayton, a sweet smile on his face — surely this guy just needs a nap. In another, just after he seemed moderately lucid, he’s curled in bed, all but rocking back and forth as he talks to a child on the phone about the kid’s favorite fantasy book, seeming desperate to understand. Other people don’t know what to do with him either; a plaintiff seems to harbor both affection for and fear of him, and we get it. He seems equally likely to fly off the handle or offer a cup of tea. “You are a manic depressive,” Clayton says to him, by way of dismissing what seems like an attack of conscience not befitting a legendary litigator. “I am Shiva, the god of death,” Wilkinson replies, no histrionics, just a flat statement of fact. It makes your toes curl.The most chilling scene in “Michael Clayton” comes straight out of the blue, a perfect showcase for Wilkinson’s ability to ride the edge. Clayton is driving the streets of Manhattan to find Edens, who’s gone missing. He spots him walking down an alleyway with a comically giant bag of baguettes, and Edens, delighted to see him, offers him one. His face is childlike and open, vulnerable and generous. We’re almost afraid this man will get mugged for his bread.Then Clooney starts talking about committing Edens to an institution, and suddenly a glint appears in Wilkinson’s eye. “Michael,” he says, in a voice that sounds very different from the one on the recording, “I have great affection for you, and you lead a very rich and interesting life.” This does not seem like a compliment. “But you’re a bag man, not an attorney,” he continues, in a tone of perfect lucidity. Suddenly we’re seeing Edens, the courtroom killer, exactly the lawyer you’d choose to defend a giant corporation in a multibillion-dollar class-action suit. He is about to rip out Clayton’s guts.Calmly, Edens goes on to explain why Clayton’s approach to getting Edens into an institution — the better to control the situation — is completely wrongheaded, given the laws about these things in New York. Everything he’s done is a mistake, and Clayton knows it because Edens knows it.“Well, good luck and God bless,” he concludes. “But I’ll tell you this: the last place you want to see me is in court.” And we, at least for that moment, believe him. More

A versatile actor who also starred in “Shakespeare in Love” and “Batman Begins,” he won acclaim through decades of work in television and film and onstage.Tom Wilkinson, the actor who could turn a manic lawyer, a steel-foreman-turned-stripper and parts small and large into mesmerizing turns, winning Oscar nominations and plaudits for his performances in movies like “Michael Clayton” and “The Full Monty,” died on Saturday, according to a family statement. He was 75.The statement, from his agent sent on behalf of his family, said he died suddenly at home. It did not provide other details.Mr. Wilkinson’s range seemed to know no bounds.He earned Academy Award nominations for his work in “In the Bedroom” and “Michael Clayton” and delighted audiences in comedies like “The Full Monty” and “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”He appeared in blockbusters like “Shakespeare in Love” and “Batman Begins,” and took on horror in “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” history as Benjamin Franklin in “John Adams,” and memory in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”He often did not have the name recognition or sheer star power of the actors he played opposite — George Clooney, Sissy Spacek and Ben Affleck among them. But he drew audiences’ eyes and critics’ acclaim through decades of work in television and film and onstage.“I see myself as a utility player, the one who can do everything,” he told The New York Times in 2002. “I’ve always felt that actors should have a degree of anonymity about them.”To many Britons, though, “The Full Monty,” remains his most beloved performance, as one of the gruff, unemployed steelworkers in Sheffield, England, who scheme to make some money and repair their self-regard by starting a striptease act for the town.In “The Full Monty,” Mr. Wilkinson was among the characters who schemed to earn money by starting a striptease act.Maximum Film / Alamy Stock PhotoMr. Wilkinson played Gerald Cooper, an aging ex-foreman who joins the cadre in part to escape the ornamental gnomes his wife erected on the lawn.But his range extended far beyond comedy, and he was nominated for the Academy Award for best actor for his performance in “In the Bedroom,” directed by Todd Field.Opposite Ms. Spacek, Mr. Wilkinson played one half of a Maine couple struggling in the aftermath of their son’s murder. Mr. Field said he was drawn to Mr. Wilkinson because of his everyman quality.“You don’t typically think that Robert Redford is going to live next door,” Mr. Field told The Times. “But you believe that Tom Wilkinson could live next door. That’s the difference.”A few years later, Mr. Wilkinson was winning acclaim again as a high-powered lawyer who has a breakdown in Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton.” He was nominated for another Academy Award for his performance in that film.By then, Mr. Wilkinson had been acting for three decades, in theater, television and film.He was born in Yorkshire, England, and his parents moved to Canada when he was 4, seeking better work than farming. Their stay lasted only six years, during which time his father worked as an aluminum smelter. The family returned to Britain, where Mr. Wilkinson’s parents ran a Cornwall pub until his father died, drawing Mr. Wilkinson and his mother back to Yorkshire.Information on his survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Wilkinson said his life took a sharp turn at 16, at the King James’s Grammar School at Knaresborough, where the headmistresses “simply decided she would make something of me.”This, he said, “meant being invited round to her house, being taught how to eat, which knives and forks to reach for first.”“We would go to the theater together,” he said. “Having wandered aimlessly through school, suddenly someone took an interest in me.”But he was not drawn to acting until he reached the University of Canterbury in 1967, he said. After college, he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where he discovered that it was possible for “working-class kids from the provinces” to open art galleries, run rock bands, become designers, be actors.“All the things that weren’t cool became cool,” he said. “I saw the young, provincial bohemian and thought, that role can be mine. I’ll be in the arts. You can have a life in the arts. Why not?” More