With two films -- Rails & Ties and Into the Wild -- playing at both Telluride and Toronto, Oscar-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden is having a busy time of it right now. In Rails & Ties she plays a woman dying of cancer, who finds the opportunity to mother a child in need right as her own life is ending; in Into the Wild, she plays a mother dealing with the disappearance and loss of her adult son. Harden graciously took time out of her busy film festival schedule to chat with Cinematical in a phone interview about both roles, being married to Kevin Bacon onscreen, and balancing her real life as a mother of three kids with a career as an actress.

Cinematical: Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, I know you're swamped being in between Telluride and Toronto, and having two films at both fests.

Marcia Gay Harden: I'm in the car right now, on my way back from a photo shoot. I have to make sure my daughter has everything she needs for the first day of school tomorrow! She has to bring something that exemplifies who she is, and she's struggling with what that's going to be. I told her for me, it would be a pair of Birkenstocks that I've had for 28 years, comfortable and worn down around the toes. We also have a watering can from France that I'm very fond of, but I think the Birkenstocks..
Cinematical: How was Telluride for you?

MGH: Oh, it was great. It was so beautiful there. I don't think there's another fest where I can just go and watch movies. Usually we're stuck in the hotel. It's expensive, though!

Cinematical: You'd never been to Telluride before?

MGH: No, this was my first time there.

Cinematical: What did you see and like at Telluride?

MGH: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Margot at the Wedding, Who is Norman Lewis? – that one was really interesting, and The Band's Visit, I liked that one a lot.

Cinematical: You have two films playing Telluride and Toronto, Rails & Ties, and Into the Wild. Let's start out with Rails & Ties. How did you come across the script?

MGH: Alison (Eastwood) called me, she had the script and most likely had been looking at other people before me. She decided to give me a call and we spoke about it. She wanted to make sure the commitment from other people was passion about the material, that it wasn't just a "job." When I spoke with the producer Rob Lorenz it was about helping Alison fulfill her vision as a first-time filmmaker.

Cinematical: You worked with Alison's father, Clint Eastwood, on Mystic River. How was it different working with Alison versus Clint?

MGH: Well, one doesn't want to compare the two, there's no comparison, they're two completely different people. He's 70, he's at the apex of his career; he's had so much experience as both an actor and a director. She's 30, and she's just at the start of hers. It was our job not to hijack the script, but to open up the process and – she (Alison) knew what she wanted, but to help fulfill her vision for bringing the story to the screen.

Cinematical: What drew you to the script and to the character of Megan?

MGH: I was first drawn to work with Alison, I was excited to be a part of her first film. And then when I read the part of Megan I felt it was a very interesting arc. So many people suffer from cancer – it's hard to even put into words adequately. I liked her way in which she was dealing with her impending death. I felt she had a lot of depth to her, and I liked the hopefulness of the situation. The ending that she's fighting for was a really interesting journey to take. This film was very real to me ... the emotions and the way that she expresses them felt to me like something that I recognize.

Cinematical: Did you call on yourself as a mother in building this role?

MGH: I call on everything. What would it be like to say goodbye to your child? Even early on when Megan's talking to Tom and he says, "How long do we have?" and she says, "days, weeks, months, who knows?" That mourning for all those moments that you'll never share with the people you love – the high school graduation, the weddings – you're mourning not just for yourself but for the people you love, who won't be able to share those things with you. I relate to people and roles that are about the arc of human experience, things that every day people deal with every day.

Cinematical: Did you worry about the film being overly sentimental?

MGH: Always, always. There were things with the writing that I felt were on the nose, and things that needed to be worked on. There are scenes like when they're coming back from the magnetic therapy place, and she comes out with "why didn't we have kids?" and I felt it came to that much faster than was real. It's not really written exactly as we played it, but when we started playing it that way, it worked. It was wonderful, Kevin (as Tom) just got tighter and tighter, as Megan got more wailing and reaching out, it was all about communication and trying to heal at the end of this. When she says, "why didn't we have children?" it's clearly not the first time, they've talked about this many times -- it's the blame, it's the punch. My husband and I do the same thing all the time, you learn how not to push them as quickly but there comes a point where there's that intention to hurt. So there's that similarity.

Cinematical: You've worked with Kevin Bacon before, but not as his wife – how was it different playing at being married? And he does that "man with deeply repressed emotions" thing so well onscreen, I always wonder how he is as himself.

MGH: Alison felt we would be a good matching, a good pairing. He's really open, he's really funny. He's totally different in real life than when he's acting. He's also a musician, so he understands the throughline of the script; Tom's is darker and more reserved, and Megan's is very different. Kevin's performance gave a lot more counterpoint to their emotions.

I've been married many times onscreen, but in this film, Kevin and I felt married, a lot of times it feels like they cast just based on star power or names or whatever. This felt like chemistry. What we worked on was how could we approach it with as much truth as possible. Kevin's performance was not sentimental, and with the way Megan is with Tom, she's very terse and angry with him. Their interactions felt very raw; you know, when people go through these kinds of issues, it just really saps you, it takes something from you, and it's very sad.

Cinematical: Do you struggle with balancing your career as an actress with motherhood? You have the three-year-old twins, right?

MGH: Right, and a nine-year-old daughter. I love being a mother, I hate being a housewife -- the cooking, the laundry -- because it takes away time I could be with my kids. I do have a nanny for the twins from 9-5, and an au pair who's there to help make sure my older daughter gets to activities, but there's no one doing the daily household work, the laundry, the cooking, the dishes. It's a daily, hugely involved job. I'll think, great, I'll get up with the kids at 7, have breakfast with them, then the nanny gets there at 9, and then I can get to work. And it just never seems to work out that way. The nanny gets there, but the little ones still want me, it takes awhile to make the break. And then I'll decide to just throw a load of laundry in, or get distracted with other things, and then all of a sudden it's 4 o'clock, and where did the day go?

You know what I miss? I miss myself, that time to just do things for myself. I used to do pottery, and recently I got out the pottery wheel and threw a couple of pots. That felt good, to get back to that, and I want to do more of that. Telluride was nice, I had a couple days without the kids there. But this is the compromise, I chose this career, but I also chose being a mother, and if that means more stress, I'll take it.

I did take the summer off. We picked blueberries, and we made jam, and planted a garden, and it was great to have that time, to just spend that time with them, but I think it would be wrong to give up something that I love so much.

Cinematical: Let's talk a bit about Into the Wild, tell me about that script and role.

MGH: So many people relate to that film very personally – that he (Chris McCandless) just abandoned his family. But he didn't want to be a part of that materialism, he didn't want to be stamped and sent down that factory line. So many of us just fall in line with what society wants us to be, what our parents want us to be. It's a strenuous exercise to avoid all that commercialism. But how many of us get to go on that spiritual quest?

Cinematical: Was it hard for you to play this character? The parents were not especially likable.

MGH: While I thought that the boy's actions were heinous – and the parents' actions were heinous, I didn't judge them. Don't you think that Sean wrote it such that it's okay if you like them, and okay if you don't? One of the things that Sean did that was really smart was beginning the film with my character and Bill Hurt's characters in the midst of grieving the loss of their son -- it lets you know immediately that Chris' actions did have an impact on them, and made them much more accessible than they would have been if the film hadn't started out that way.

Rails & Ties screens for the public at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 14 and 15, and opens in limited theatrical release December 21. Into the Wild screens for the public at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9 and 11, and opens theatrically September 21.