Sienna Miller The Edge of Love Press Conference
What drew you to the role and how does it feel to play another real person after playing Edie Sedgwick in Factory Girl?Sienna Miller: "Well, with Factory Girl I had six months to prepare, and that was fantastic. There was so much research you can do if you’re playing someone who actually existed. But I actually came on to this movie two weeks before we started shooting, so I had no time whatsoever [laughing] to do the preparation that I normally would. [There] was major anxiety occurring, in the two weeks leading up to the day that we started shooting. But I think there’s something really great about playing people who existed, just for the history that you have and the knowledge that you can kind of dip into. And she was a pretty fascinating character, although less pressure than Edie, because not many people know much about Caitlin Thomas."
This is set decades ago – we're two generations away from the people who actually experienced it. So what is your touchstone, especially given the frantic preparation that you did? Was there something physical or did you go try and find somebody who lived the experience? How do you get in touch with another time?
Sienna Miller: "I just think I studied history at school and we studied the war from the English perspective. It was obviously a huge part of the culture. My mother was born during an air-raid in 1943, so I mean she has her own experiences of war. And also post-war England, I think people were affected obviously by that war. But it’s nothing we can really relate to. We’re at war now, but it’s nothing like the war that they were all at then. I think what was interesting about this film to me was the way that people behaved was largely due to the fact that death was essentially imminent. I mean, around any corner you could die and therefore they were all living life to the fullest. And that’s why I think a lot of these situations occurred, because they were living with abandon. They didn’t know, when they were in the pub and they were all having a drink, and a bomb goes off nearby and it goes black and that could have been it. So they’re all living on the edge, and I think that’s kind of mirrored in the title The Edge of Love. I think it’s ambiguous in that sense, because of the backdrop of the war. But obviously nothing I can, thank god, relate to fully, personally."
Did you gain any insight into Dylan Thomas and why these women were so drawn to him?
Sienna Miller: "From what I’ve read about him, he was obviously very charismatic and I think that there’s always something that certain women are drawn to about a tortured artist. He was this fantastic poet, just one of the most brilliant poets that ever lived, and I think people were drawn to that ability to express emotion in a way that most people, normal people can’t express it. I think it’s probably a very alluring quality to be able to describe love in a poetic way, probably good chat-up lines. He wasn’t the most beautiful man by any means, but I guess he had a certain charisma [and] by all accounts was very childlike, and I think people are drawn to that. But I think for a slightly pudgy, not massively attractive man, he did quite well from what I hear."
The title’s really evocative. What does exist at the edge of love?
Sienna Miller: [Laughing] "My god. Whoa. I think love is a really hard thing to define. I think it’s multi-facted. What’s interesting about this film is that you can take these characters and put them in any era and their responses to the situations they’re in would be the same. And it’s a very kind of malleable subject. I’m not sure what happens at the edge of love. I think probably a lack of intelligence. [Laughing] I think people in love tend to be a bit…I don’t know. Yeah, emotions don’t really have the intelligence. I think some people on the edge of love are just going with their heart probably and not their head, I imagine."
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The Edge of Love opens in LA on March 13 and New York on March 20, 2009.
