Bening was one of the first actors writer/director Ryan Murphy approached about becoming involved with the film adaptation of Burroughs' memoirs. Her character is the catalyst for the majority of the events in the film, and Murphy knew it would take an extraordinary actress to make the mentally unstable character believable without totally alienating the audience. According to Murphy, Bening has wanted to do a film about mental illness for quite a while. "Hers is one of the most harrowing portraits of mental illness I've seen," says Murphy, adding, "She made sure that it was always about the truth."
Bringing Augusten Burroughs’ Story to the Big Screen: Annette Bening wasn’t familiar with the book prior to signing on to star in Running with Scissors. “I read the script first and the script is very much its own entity, and Ryan had such a personal connection to it when he [met with] Augusten. I think that’s probably what Augusten saw. There were people who were more experienced and fancier than Ryan was, and he gave it to Ryan because I think that he felt that [connection]. I saw that when I met with him. I saw that he was someone who really wanted to do something that was funny and entertaining and interesting, that had something to it, but that he had a very strong connection to it.
As an actor, you're really so much serving the director. It is their baby. If you are fortunate enough to be able to work with someone who's got that kind of connection to a piece of material, then it really makes it worth it because you are serving them. I think that's what good movie acting is about. It's about serving some vision that is overall. I think that this movie is very much steered by Ryan. Everyone's performance, because the characters are so kind of eccentric and extraordinary, unless there was some sort of guiding force in there keeping everyone real, it would've been unfortunate. I just didn't want to fall into that trap.”
Turning to Burroughs for Insight Into Playing Deirdre: “He's so interesting. I called him up when I was working on it and this is not his mother in my point of view. …This is an interpretation. This is a fiction and not a documentary about her, but it's clearly inspired by her, and so I had questions. He's so interesting to talk to.
I think that as I've gotten older I've gotten more introspective, and I've always been someone who looked at my childhood and my personal life carefully. As you get older you continue to go back to those stories and when you go back, the way that you see certain events continues to change. Who is highlighted at that Thanksgiving dinner or whatever event you're going back to in your childhood, the main characters change and the themes change and what it all means changes. It's all kind of this ongoing search. It goes on your whole life. I think that he's someone who did it in a really penetrating way for himself and had a life that had a lot of pain to it, where he was not being protected when he should've been protected. He's got a lot to say and he's very articulate and he's very funny. I just find him fascinating as a human being to talk with on just about anything. He's a really interesting person because he kind of went through what he went through and was able to make something of it.”
Dealing with Deirdres in Real Life: Asked how she handles encounters with people like her character Deirdre, Bening stated, “Very carefully.” She also took a careful approach to playing the role of Deirdre in the film. “When I was approaching the part I just so wanted Deirdre to be real in the picture. I didn't want to do it in fact unless I felt from Ryan [Murphy] the same kind of interest in the care of the mental illness part of her character was done. I just had a real aversion to the other way of approaching [it], as something kind of funny or glamorous. I mean, she's a very funny woman obviously. I love that part of her. She's hilarious. But just in terms of playing someone with mental illness, I felt an incredible responsibility to being responsible about that and making it real.
You asked me if I've ever known anyone like that. Yes, I have. I think that we all have. In real life people with that kind of illness are incredibly destructive to themselves often and to those around them, and there is nothing funny about that. But since the story is about something, the story has something really serious to say, I think and I hope - or at least I felt that when I was read it - that it's about someone who's trying to address the story of their childhood. [Augusten Burroughs] lived to tell the tale and tell it with wit and humor and insight, and is really trying to dump that baggage and is trying to live as a grown up. I think that we all have that to a degree, so that's why I wanted to do it.”
Page 2: Annette Bening on Getting Into Character
