I never have even spent any time thinking about it. To me, that’s so just the kernel of what they’re going through. It’s never a question of… I mean, to me, it’s so much more than that. Both Aileen and Gilda, I don't think they ever even spent time thinking about that. It’s such a secondary note to their life that I don’t even think about them in those terms. I think of them as people who were just desperate for love. So I don’t think of it. I don’t even think about the idea that I’ve played two characters that are bisexual.
How much discussion was there about the character and how much she’d change over the course of the film?
A lot. John [Duigan] has spent so much time on this project in writing it and doing his research. I mean, he really understands that period very well, and very well from a European perspective, which is very different from an American perspective. I’ve done period films through the same time frame that came from a very different place. That kind of big bang that happened, especially in Paris, with artists and he really dived into them and really provided me with some great materials to really, truly understand what that was like. And I think it was really important for me to understand that because she was never really truly a great artist, even though she was somewhat loosely based on a Lee Miller or somebody like that. She somehow just found herself in the center of what really was happening in Paris at the time, which was really a common thing back then. And how it changes is really important because I think that’s the social commentary of this movie. What that war did to those people, people who kind of went through their lives as artists, was huge. And I think in many ways that’s kind of where her perspective comes from, was being around those kind of people. That’s I think why she views what is happening to her social structure the way she does.
It’s so reflective of now. When was the script written and did it change to reflect current events?
John should answer this, but I think he wrote it like four years before we started shooting. But when we went into our first week of production, the whole Afghanistan of it all was happening. And towards the end of shooting it, the Iraq of it all was happening. So [it was] very, very strange to wake up in the morning and read the newspaper, and then read your sides, then have Gilda say things like, “There will always be war.” It’s very, very strange.
How important is it for people to have a social and political conscience?
I think it’s very, and I think that’s what she discovers towards the end. I think if she went through her entire life not socially conscious, she would have just ended up doing what you think she’s doing, which is just getting by the best way she knows how to. But she becomes socially aware and I think for her it’s different than for Guy and Mia. They are socially aware. Mia because of a personal experience, and Guy because he’s just a very socially aware character who knows that he needs to go out there and be a part of it. But for her, I think it’s because of learning what it’s like to love people and then to learn in order to love them that they’ll have to be socially aware, as well, in order to have them both coincide with each other. It was also the only way that she knew how to be a part of it all, which was very much in her character I think. She doesn’t like the idea of not being a part of it, and to me that was her redemption. That was the only way that you could take a character like that and have her live that way, which sometimes is very selfish, and have her be redeemed - somehow redeem herself through an action like that.
