Elisha Cuthbert on Gaining Knowledge of Abuse Through Research: Was there anything in particular that surprised her during her research for The Quiet? “Well obviously there was a lot of stereotypes of being sexually abused and then obviously getting away from sex altogether. And then there was also a handful that kind of were very overtly sexual after the fact. We actually ended up putting in the script her dialogue about going off and maybe becoming a stripper, and that was kind of stereotypical of maybe the situation or the aftermath. But that’s not all cases.
I was really taken aback by one article that a girl had written. Someone had asked her, because she had a younger sister, ‘Was your sister abused?’ She said, ‘No, she’s not my father’s type.’ I was taken aback by that because I thought that, ‘Wow, this is a girl that is really brainwashed into thinking that her father was giving her this extra attention because she was maybe better or more of her father’s type.’ I thought that playing with that in the movie, sort of playing with her power over her father, was important. So there are a lot of moments in the movie where I toy with him to get what I want, and that seemed very real to me in going through the research. But how could she not assume that her father would abuse her sister as well? It was a psychological thing, too. There were a lot of layers.”
The Relationship Between the Actors Portraying Father and Daughter: Cuthbert described her on and off set relationship with Martin Donovan: “We didn’t do a whole lot of talking, actually. I think for him it was important that he stayed true to his side of the character, which was ultimately, unfortunately, playing a love story.”
The film’s portrayal of incest is markedly different than how most films deal with the subject matter. “Yeah, I’m actually brutally honest and I don’t think that this has been shown in such a way that is so brutally honest. It is a difficult thing to kind of grasp. But our director had told Martin that, ‘You’re not a bad man. You’re in love with your daughter to the point of excess. You understand that that’s wrong, but yet you continue to do the things that you do.’
In my case, I was looking at it as sort of being victimized but coming into an age that I was discovering that this is wrong and asking herself, ‘How do I get out of this?’ She’s not sure, but she’s kind of now eventually understanding that, ‘Okay, I have to stop this.’ So there was two different chemistries going on, yet it was one whole. It was difficult because everything that Martin was playing was difficult for me and everything that I was playing was difficult for him, so we tended to naturally not really do a whole lot of talking.”
Reaching the Point Where a Break was Absolutely Necessary: “I spent a lot of time off the set. I remember getting just really upset and crying and not knowing whether or not I was going to be able to do it - just for myself - because I was just really fighting everything that I was playing. That was a difficult process for me because I had never felt that way before. I wanted to sort of jump out of my character and save her, and I didn’t want that to come across on film.
There were moments where Jamie our director had given me some time to just step away because I had a hard time not crying. I was getting really choked up, and obviously this is something that she was used to and crying wasn’t a part of the package. I was having a hard time and I didn’t want Martin to notice my pain because I didn’t want to make it awkward for him, also.”
Acting Without a Reaction: Many of Cuthbert’s scenes in The Quiet require her to work opposite actors playing characters who don’t respond to her presence. In one particularly difficult scene, Cuthbert leans in close to Camilla Belle’s ear and delivers a lengthy speech while Belle sits there ignoring her. Cuthbert describes how that scene went down: “I was in front of almost if not more than 200 extras in a cafeteria in Texas. It was brutal because it was a lot of dialogue, but it was crucial to get across her feelings of betrayal. It was one of those things where when you’re doing dialogue with another actor, there’s chemistry there and it’s almost like a tennis match. It’s like one line bouncing off another line and this was just me reacting off of absolutely nothing, just trying to find my own beats and my own timing and seeing if that worked. That also played a crucial part in trying to find my own moments in the movie that were my own and had nothing to do with kind of the response of anyone else.”
Cuthbert’s character Nina really has to go it alone. “Exactly. Nina is in a lot of ways, I think, the voice the film because Dot’s checked out, the mother’s checked out, the father’s checked out. Everyone is really out and she’s sort of in. It’s interesting that I’m kind of the voice of everyone else.”
Page 3: Elisha Cuthbert on Choosing to Play Strong Female Characters
