Melissa George has become one of the most sought after actresses in Hollywood. In Music Within, based on true events, the Australian actress takes on the role of a free-spirited woman who was involved with Richard Pimentel, a civil rights activist instrumental in getting the Americans with Disabilities Act passed.
Playing a Role Based on a Real Person: The woman who Melissa George’s character is based on is no longer a part of Richard’s life and so George wasn’t able to meet with her to discuss the film. “I talked to Richard for hours and hours and hours,” explained George on how she was able to find out everything she needed to know about her character. “We’d just sit on set and just talk about how she was and the stories about her, what kind of woman she was and how she used to wear her hair, favorite boots she wore. And, of course, with the wardrobe fittings, the makeup and the hairstyles and the accent was very important me being non-American. So a lot of research went into it.”
George had a system in place for tracking Christine’s journey from the open relationships of the 1960s to when she wanted a commitment years down the road. “You track it in a way when you’re rehearsing say 20 scenes of Christine, and you look at the journey,” said George. “I always make a graph like emotionally the points I want to hit. I just wanted to make her as fun-loving, free-spirited, two boyfriends at the same time, real representative of the time. God love her cause you couldn’t get away with that today. And I also wanted to make her influential on his life and make her a real support for him so that, therefore, the story makes senses that she was the good woman behind the good man. She was the woman who made him a better man, so I wanted to show that.
I think sometimes women are put into movies to give emotional balance of a film and she was really… You know the scene where she’s wanting a bit more love from him and he wouldn’t give it and she had to make the decision between being with him or being on her own and she took, obviously to go out on her own? I really wanted to hit that scene, and that was the peak of my graph. The rest was her coming back a lot older looking, ‘80s makeup – horrible – that pink lipstick was horrible. And then she was the one who saved his life.”
The Influence of the 1960s: The 60s costumes helped, but George found that understanding the feminist movement was the most important aspect of figuring out Christine’s motivation. “That’s why she was thinking, I want to do something for me. I’ve never done something for me.’ And I think a lot of women in those days went through that thing where I was always following the man around and always doing something for the man, the man, the man,’ so that was a big sign of the times when she broke away and said, ‘I need to be an independent, free-spirited, bra-burning kind of a woman.’”
Life on the Set of Music Within: According to George, things went very smoothly on the Music Within set. “Some films you get onto it’s one thing after another, and it becomes a big challenge,” said George. “Steve Sawalich is so fun and so funny, and Ron Livingston and Michael Sheen -- the whole film was such a pleasure. We were just talking next door saying, ‘Could we have laughed any harder on that set?’
That scene where they’re in the convertible smoking joints in the car and you’ve got Art [Michael Sheen] in the back just loving it, that was very challenging that day because usually you do a Pullman’s process -- what they call it when they put the car on the back of another car so it looks like you’re driving but you’re really not. There’s a reason they do that because you’ve got to focus on smoking a joint, acting, looking left and right. And I got onto set with my brimmy, floppy purple hat and couldn’t see anything, smoking a joint and driving the car for real over the bridge, stopping, going back over the bridge. Okay, we’re going to do another take, take 17.’ I’ve got ash flying in my eyes from the joint (laughing), so that was challenging. I don’t recommend smoking in a convertible with a floppy hat on. I was scared because it was so close on the bridge. You see that wide shot? That’s me driving!
And Amityville Horror -- I don’t know if you’ve seen that film -- but the finale scene where I take the kids and go on a speedboat and I leave Amityville, that was me driving. I can’t believe they let actors do that! Yeah, she’s great. She was an assassin on Alias. She’s really good at shooting guns and doing 360s in cars, this girl is really good.’ (Laughing) And the speedboat is like 1965 or ‘75 and I couldn’t turn to do a circle, so we had to keep doing the take. Well, we’re veering off, but it was challenging.”
Analyzing Her Role: George is fine with the fact her character doesn’t take a political stance like the others in the film do. “She kind of backed away when it got heavy,” explained George. “I wasn’t Richard Pimentel in the movie; he had the political statement to make. But he is such a genius, his character and who he is as a man. It was lovely being the driving force behind that. That was my role in the movie. In other movies I do, she’s the strong, butt-kicking assassin, vampire slayer, whatever you’ve got for me -- I’ve got 5 movies coming out. This was like, you know what? I loved seeing myself in this gentle, giggly, funny, making-out, high-waisted jeans kind of character. I didn’t mind that my character didn’t have the statement in the movie.”
Page 2: Melissa George on Her Upcoming Films and 30 Days of Night
