Rachel Weisz on Her Character in “The Fountain: “The main character in the present day is, I’d say, she’s a pretty regular person. Like any person who’s being confronted by the fact that they’re going to die much, much sooner than they want to and they’re gonna have to leave their husband behind. That’s who she is. Who she is becomes irrelevant. It’s really how is it that she deals with that and I think that’s the question that I had to ask myself. I think everyone asks themselves how do we deal with it if we were gonna have to go now? Would we behave, would we be able to come to terms with leaving? And so I think she’s brave.
I think she has some nobility. She’s not a heroine; she’s someone who’s struggling to be brave and strong when her life is kind of falling apart. Then in the first section of the movie, she’s Queen Isabella of Spain so she’s regal, and maybe more unknowable, a little more distant, a little less accessible totally.”
“The Izzi character is the crux - the present day is the crux of the film. It’s about her coming to terms with her own death and her life and what it means. And that’s really what the film’s about,” explained Aronofsky, adding, “It’s about does death make us human? If we actually could live forever, would we still be people? And that’s really what makes it and that’s really what the film is about.”
Rachel Weisz on Relating to Her Character: “I don’t think she’s powerful and driven. I think she’s just someone who, like if you or I found out today that we were going to die very, very soon from a terminal disease, it was that that I had to think about. And I’m sure you have thought about death and what it would be like to have to go now. And that’s what I had to think about for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks…
…I read a lot of books about people who had been terminally ill. There was a whole genre [of those books]. I met a lot of patients who were dying. I just delved deep into the world of the experience of dying, and particularly dying before your time. I mean dying of old age, I think, is another thing. But dying as a woman in the prime of your life, as a human in the prime of your life, is a different thing. So that was where I had to delve.
I don’t think she’s powerful or heroic. She’s just someone who’s grappling with that situation and she behaves in a way that I wish if it happens to me, I would be as noble as her. You don’t know how you’re gonna behave.”
After all that, Aronofsky couldn’t resist adding, “All this talk of death. It’s a happy ending – that’s all you need to know!”
Rachel Weisz on Darren Aronofsky: “There are two elements. There’s the direction of acting, which is one thing. It’s performance. And then there’s a whole other thing which is the way he creates and the way he’s written the story and the way that he edits and the way that he uses style and the way that he uses visuals. That’s nothing to do with me.
In terms of what’s different about him, working with him, was in the way in which he… He’s an actor’s director, which is a pretty extraordinary thing. There aren’t many of them around. I don’t think I’ve really come across hardly any before. He rehearses with the actors for weeks before we start filming in detail, using improvisation. And then on the set he definitely pushes actors, everybody, me, Hugh, everybody, further than they’ve ever, ever been in their life before.” Aronofsky interjected with, “We had some fun times.”
Weisz said, “We had some fun times. I mean, Hugh and I would sometimes be sitting there and we’re like crying, you know? We thought we’d given the ultimate we could ever give and he went, ‘Okay, let’s do it again immediately,’ and you’d just do it again and again. I think he pushes you to the point where you’re no longer conscious of what you’re doing and for an actor, that is heaven. That’s what you want.”
“Hugh had this one scene where he had all these boogers hanging out of his nose. It’s not in the film – amazing – he just kept going. I was at the point [thinking], ‘There’s no way I can use this,” said Aronofsky.
PAGE 3: Darren Aronofsky on "The Fountain" as a Graphic Novel
