Oscar winner Diane Keaton (Annie Hall) and Katie Holmes (also known as Mrs Tom Cruise) teamed up to talk about the comedy movie Mad Money at the film’s junket in Los Angeles. The movie follows the adventures of three very different women who work at the Federal Reserve Bank. Keaton’s a janitor, Holmes wheels a cart of money around, and Queen Latifah has the interesting job of shredding worn out money. With Keaton as ringleader, the threesome figure out a way to do something no one else has been able to do - rip off the Bank.
Keaton says bonding with her fellow Mad Money cast members was an easy process. “We were just saying that my feeling about it is that we got to know each other in the makeup trailer,” explained Keaton. “You're spending hours just looking at yourself in the mirror, and you're looking kind of odd at four in the morning. You're thrust into an extremely intimate situation in a very small space, and you're just like close and so how can you not get to know each other? So I think that you kind of work the room. It's like you're preparing for the scene and preparing for who you are with Katie, and who I am with Dana [Queen Latifah] and how do we relate as a threesome together. You sort of get the feel, I think, there, especially if you're not rehearsing which we didn't really have any time to rehearse. There was a little bit, but hardly any time.”
Working with Keaton and Queen Latifah was a real learning experience, according to Holmes. “We talked about things, had great conversations about so many different things. These women are so talented and dynamic, and we were talking about movies and film and the movies coming out. We talked about architecture and interior design and fashion and clothing lines and music and makeup and bras and kids and raising kids and being daughters. It was like a women's fest.”
Keaton added, “I think that we had a real bonding because of our mothers as well. Both Katie and I, the most significant person in my life was always my mother. She was always the person who encouraged me to do whatever I wanted to do. She and I, when I was growing up, she made all the outfits. She would sew them up and I would design them. She was just absolutely everything to me and she was also the greatest audience ever, which I think sort encouraged that overblown personality that I've developed over the years. She was everything to me, and then today I've been listening to Katie talk about her mother and what she meant to her. I think that when you have a mother that is so important in your life, it skews how you feel about women. I've always loved women. I just love them. I feel for them. I've never had that sort of competitive thing with women about men where they'll betray each other, as they do sometimes, for a man. It's always been about the community of women for me because of how much I loved my mother.”
As for their roles in Mad Money, each character is an equally important ingredient in the film. Other than the fact they all wind up working for the same company, none of the characters have much in common. Holmes was intrigued by the role of Jackie, a young woman who spends her time at work bopping around to the beat in her headphones, because it was different from any character she’s played before. “ I was sort of enthralled by her sense of adventure,” said Holmes. “She was carefree, but she had this intelligence about her - or maybe she didn't. She was very abstract in a way and there was a lot to create with her. You could read this role and a million ideas would come to mind. I liked her physicality. I liked the dancing. She was odd and I liked that. She is a kind of forgotten soul, like, 'Oh, there's that girl who everybody thinks is weird and doesn't talk to you.'”
Director Callie Khouri says that Holmes tapped into the unselfconscious side of Jackie, and Holmes admits she had no problem at all dancing around with an iPod in her ear in front of the crew. “You get over that when you're working. It's just part of the environment and so it was fine. I had a good time with it. It was important to me to find the character and what I had to do to make her real for me.”
As their plan to rob the bank unfolds, the women want to steal money just to buy the essentials or, in Queen Latifah’s case, to help out her family. Keaton recalls the early days of struggling from paycheck to paycheck and being broke just like her character, and the one payday that turned things around. “I did The Godfather. That wasn't a paycheck that you'd talk about, and then I went through a very fallow time. It wasn't like suddenly, 'Now I'm in the movies!' and had all these jobs. I had no jobs. Zero jobs. Then I got this commercial for Hour after Hour deodorant.”
“I was struggling around for money. I got that and I thought, 'Ugh.' That thing paid for my life for about three years - that commercial for deodorant. And do you know who went on to be the Hour after Hour girl after me? Susan Sarandon. So these jobs are vital for keeping your future potential alive. That was the greatest paycheck that I ever got. It just kept me in the business.”
Holmes started out working in Hollywood as a teenager and her experience getting that first big check was a lot different than Keaton’s. “I was 17 when I did The Ice Storm. But then when I got Dawson's Creek I was 18. I had just graduated from high school and that was more like, in my eyes, I thought I was making a lot. I did what every other girl who was 18 and from where I was from did, which was I bought jeans and a great sweater that weren't on sale. I thought, 'Wow. I better not buy anything for a really long time. I don't want to let it go to my head.' So that was my big splurge and I still have the sweater. I won't give it up.”
Page 2: On Tom Cruise, Baby Suri, and Handling Fame
