Shue has nothing but praise for Fanning's work. “It’s astonishing that she’s such a brilliant actress and such a brilliant human being. That’s astonishing. …I think not enough time is taken really talking about her as an actress and how extraordinary that is. She has a great imagination. I think she becomes the people she plays fully. In the moment, she experiences what those characters experience and that’s natural. I think it’s just natural. I think she’s so close to her imagination and she’s so smart and so self-aware for somebody her age, and so confident in her being in such a real way," said Shue.
Life on the “Dreamer” Set: “Well, we were so lucky that we did feel like a family. We really did because we lived in this house for weeks on end. There were horses as you walked from your trailer to the set. There were horses everywhere. And we just had a lot of affection for each other, a lot of respect. I think that translated on screen which is so fun to see, because that’s really what it’s about at the end of the day.”
Elisabeth Shue Plays a Mom Willing to Let Her Kid Fail in “Dreamer:” Shue says she would do the same for her own children as a learning experience. “Definitely. I’m glad that you see that because I think that’s just an important part of parenting that is a difficult part. As a parent, you do have an instinct to want to protect your kids, especially when they start school and you remember all those difficult experiences you had in school. The socialization of human beings is not a pretty one sometimes.
I just love that, in this story, my character knows that as difficult as this experience may be for her and the risk that she’s taking, that she wants her to take that risk and risk failing. I think she knows instinctually that it doesn’t matter what happens, what the result is. It’s really that you have people in your life that share your experiences. The pain that she sees in her daughter is that she hasn’t been able to share her life with her dad yet. So that’s her main goal. And she sees that this horse racing will just be a way to get them to start communicating.”
Elisabeth Shue Explains Her Attraction to “Dreamer:” “I think Dakota. You know, you get this little piece of paper that tells you who’s in it. When I saw Dakota was in it, I really thought I was going to have a teeny, teeny, tiny part because ‘Hide and Seek’ was a pretty small part and I thought, ‘I don't care. I’m doing it because I want to work with her.’ And then when it was her mom, I thought, ‘Oh, it’s going to be a teeny, teeny, tiny mom part I’m sure.’ But I was happy with how much the mom meant to the story so that was sort of an added benefit.”
The part may be small but it’s definitely relevant to the story. Shue said, “She is, and I knew that when I read the script, so I knew that it did matter.”
Elisabeth Shue on Transitioning to Mother Roles: “I sort of made the transition really early on. I played some mother parts five years ago. I still really just look at the parts themselves.
I was very lucky. The first mother part I played…well, I guess I was a mom in ‘Trigger Effect’ but I was a young mom. The most exciting mother part, the most exciting part I’ve ever gotten to play, one of the most, there’s only about three or four, was a mother in a movie nobody saw, unfortunately, because it was on television called ‘Amy and Isabelle.’ It was an ‘Oprah Winfrey Presents.’ It was about a mother and a daughter. The mother was 16 years old and it was the most interesting character and complicated character I’ve gotten to play. So that taught me that it’s not about whether I’m playing mothers, it’s just about who are the people.”
