Interview: Emily Mortimer on 'Transsiberian'

Emily Mortimer, 36, first popped onto the radar as Hugh Grant's only decent bind date in Notting Hill (1999). She couldn't compare with movie star Julia Roberts, but she had a cute, unassuming quality; she could grow on you. And she grew on moviegoers throughout the rest of the decade, in Wes Craven's Scream 3 (2000), Kenneth Branagh's Love's Labour's Lost (2000), Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things (2003), Woody Allen's Match Point (2005) and David Mamet's recent Redbelt, as well as switch-hitting between oddities like The Pink Panther and Lars and the Real Girl. If she once had a sweet, shy quality, she eventually shattered it by appearing naked -- and hugely vulnerable -- in Nicole Holofcener's Lovely & Amazing and brandishing a big gun and an even bigger attitude in Ronny Yu's Formula 51. Her role in Brad Anderson's new thriller Transsiberian -- co-starring Woody Harrelson and Ben Kingsley -- draws on all that experience. She plays Jessie, a former bad girl now doubtfully married to a church-going, happy-go-lucky train nut. After a peace mission in China, they take the title train and wind up entrenched in drugs, murder and other unforeseen troubles. The charming Ms. Mortimer recently spoke to Cinematical in an all-too-brief, yet enjoyable phone conversation.

Cinematical: You get to do a lot of exciting things in this movie, but one of the most impressive is running barefoot through the Siberian snow. Were you really barefoot?

Emily Mortimer: We were barefoot, which is an interesting piece of trivia. We were given these horrible fake feet to wear over our real feet in a pathetic attempt to protect us from the cold and the sticks and stones. They were the most disgusting, slimy things ever. They got very sweaty very quickly. They were molded after your own feet, but about 4 sizes too big. It was the least sexy thing ever. We took them off and just went barefoot. We got a lot of sympathy, with cognac and towels. You get a lot of praise for being brave.

Cinematical: Your character Jessie gets to do all the good stuff in this movie, rather than the guy character.

EM: I was amazed by that. The dialogue is in the fist half of the film and then the second half of the film is me running for my life. When you read a script you usually you pay attention to the words, but this was exciting and bizarre. I really felt like I was making a movie on this film. I was hanging off the back of a train and being chased by men with guns. It also becomes a Dostoyevsky novel: the whole thing about getting away with murder. But the great thing about it is it isn't highbrow. It asks some difficult questions and doesn't other to answer them.

Cinematical: That's an interesting concept: being in a "movie."

EM: The one time I ever had that feeling before was Scream 3. It's those kind of genre films that make you feel like you're in a film. Being chased by a man in a mask through these old 1930s mansion with much too much makeup on with a special bra to make my boobs look bigger.

Cinematical: It looked as if you shot half of Transsiberian in a cramped train. Did that add to the "movie"-ness?

EM: Even if we weren't on a moving train, we were on pieces of track that they would manage to commandeer for the movie in far distant reaches of Lithuania. Even when we weren't doing that, we were on a sound stage, but we were on a train. There was one day that they managed to take the sides of the compartment out. Most of the time you'd be in the real space. You'd have a cameraman above you on the bunk bed and a sound man crouched in the closet. It was fantastic. Even the studio we were in could have been a set in one of Brad's movies, falling apart, could have been asbestos, Lithuanian men with weird faces and very inedible food and freezing cold. Everything helps get into the spirit of the film. The thing you don't get is how very smelly it gets with 50 sweaty men.

Cinematical: Going back to bravery, that scene in Lovely & Amazing -- in which Dermot Mulroney scrutinizes your character's naked body and describes all the good and bad parts -- was just about the bravest thing I've ever seen in a movie.

EM: I didn't realize how brave it was until I fell out of bed and started doing it. It was an amazing thing doing that scene and one that I'm forever grateful for. I learned "being in the moment." I never really understood what it was to do that and I hardly have since. It's a difficult thing to do to be in the moment. You keep thinking, "am I in the moment now?" But in that moment, I was brave, idiotic, vulnerable, pathetic, exposed, everything as the character I was playing. I didn't have to act for a second. The whole film I'm so proud of. It was my first taste to get to work with brilliant people who were making something you care about and you're invested in. It's such a nice feeling and it's all too rare. It was a turning point about my feelings of being an actress. I'd always done bad TV miniseries with wigs that looked like they dropped from outer space onto my head. My parents spent so much money on my education and what am I dong? I should be doing something more useful. But that film changed everything.

Cinematical: Was acting something you studied right from the start? How did you break in?

EM: I went to posh schools. I studied Russian at Oxford. I thought I was going to do something worthwhile. But I always did plays. If I looked back and had been honest with myself, I would have ended up doing it anyway. An agent came to one of my plays and I started getting jobs. I started getting these miniseries on the telly. I can remember very early on after leaving school, I did this music video and I had to walk through the streets of Soho wearing this Chinese outfit with a chiffon scarf and chopsticks in my hair. And I ran into this friend of mine. She came running up and asked me what I was up to and then I found out she worked at the United Nations. It was very humbling. But now I've come to terms with my ignoble profession -- and I don't think I'd be good at the U.N.