Mary
Elizabeth
WinsteadSource

During a press day in New York for 10 Cloverfield Lane, Mary did tons of interview for the film which will be released on March 11. Below are some highlights she did with Film Ink. Click the link to read the interview in full:

On the secrecy of the film: “They sent me the script, but it was this very secretive way of doing it,” Winstead explains. “I got one link, that I could open one time on my laptop, and then as soon as I was finished with the script, it would delete automatically. A lot of times, I read things a couple of times, and really figure out how I feel about it, but this was like one chance. I read it once. Even my agents didn’t get to read it. It was really all on that one read, but I fell absolutely in love with the story, and the characters, and in particular the character of Michelle.”
 
On preparing for the movie: “I read a couple of biographies about women who had been kidnapped, and held captive in small spaces, just to get an idea of what that would feel like, even though that’s not exactly happening to Michelle,” Winstead says, “or at least she doesn’t quite know what’s happening to her. I wanted to understand what that would feel like to be held somewhere and not to be able to get out, and to be suddenly taken away from everything that you know. So I did a little bit of research like that, just to get in her headspace just a little bit, even though this obviously isn’t a true crime film. But it was good to get a little of that perspective.”
 
On being called Mary Elizabeth or Mary: “It was a SAG [Screen Actors Guild] thing, but I didn’t need to do it, I just wanted to,” the actress replies. “I joined SAG at twelve, and I just wanted to sound fancy. That’s really what it was about. If I got in trouble, I’d be called Mary Elizabeth, but on a day to day basis, it’s really just Mary. But as a kid, I thought, like all kids do, that my name was so boring. Mary Winstead sounded so boring to me, so I threw the Elizabeth in, just for good measure.”

MovieHole recently caught up with Mary last month to discuss 10 Cloverfield Lane, directorial aspirations, who she wants to work with next, and more! Be sure to click on the link above to read the entire interview. Below are highlights:

What’s the deal with 10 Cloverfield Lane? Sequel, remake, prequel?

 

The idea that it’s spiritually connected is I think a really good way to put it. It’s very much in the same spirit. It’s very much a bad robot, JJ Abrams mystery box kind of production, they’re very unified in that sense.

Cloverfield really brought the monster movie to a new place and a very human, personal level the way it was shot and acted, and I think this does the same kind of thing. It’s a monster movie in this very small space and reinvents that genre in the same way Cloverfield did.
 
You’re on screen a lot in the film, what were the challenges of that?
 
It was very challenging. I mean, thankfully it was the loveliest group of people and the most laid back environment, because when we were actually shooting it was just so intense, both emotionally and physically.

There were days when I would come home and my whole body was covered in bruises and aching and exhausted because taking on this character’s experience was just a very intense thing.

There’s large sections of the movie where she’s just doing whatever she can to survive and scraping her way out of there, literally crawling and climbing and kicking and screaming, and those aren’t the kind of stunts that you bring in a double for, and sometimes those kind of stunts are more challenging because they’re so emotional.
 
Any directorial aspirations after all the names you’ve worked with?
I would love to. I’m not much of a writer, and my only thing is I don’t know if I could find the material that speaks to me enough that I’d want to take on the whole project.

But it is something I’d like to do if I could figure that part out, if I could find a writer I connect with. Maybe I’ll start with a short film or something and see how it goes.
 
Any directors, genres or styles you’ve yet to tackle that you still really want to?
 
There’s so many. I’ve always been a huge, huge Coen brothers fan. I would die if I was in one of their films I think. Paul Thomas Anderson’s the same. Frances McDormand is a huge hero of mine. So many actresses… I love Sigourney Weaver… there’s a lot of people I would love to be in the same room with and kind of pick their brain.

But there are so many actresses that have played really iconic roles that mean a lot to me, like Frances McDormand in Fargo – that’s what I mean by the sort of movies that allow you to play everything. She’s so funny in that and so real and human and, she’s pregnant but she’s also physical. That’s one of those roles that’s just, to me, perfection.