Thandie Newton: An Anthropologist in Paris

Beautiful Thandie Newton first impressed us as a mystical wild girl in Beloved. She was a sleek jewel thief beside Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 2. Now she takes on the Audrey Hepburn role in The Truth About Charlie, the new re-make of the classic film Charade. The delicate and poised actress was kicking back in jeans and a chocolate colored peasant blouse when we spoke with her at the Four Seasons Hotel in L.A. She loved dancing the tango in the film but admitted that she was a new mom at the time and didn't get to enjoy the Paris nightlife like her co-stars did. She spoke of using her degree in Anthropology to study the characters she plays and to figure out which of co-star Mark Wahlberg's many personalities was making an appearance each day.

TeenHollywood: Talk about your take on this character. What makes your Regina Lambert different from the Audrey Hepburn version?

Thandie: That's a list that could go on and on and on. Any similarities or differences are, for me, accidental. I remember when we were doing scenes and there was a line that I vaguely remember from Charade, even that, I didn't want to go back and look at because it might influence me to do it differently than I would have done.

TeenHollywood: How did playing the role come about for you?

Thandie: Jonathan [Demme] and I worked together on Beloved about five years ago now, and we became really good friends after that film. I would go and stay with his family very often when I was in Europe. And on one of those trips he said 'Come watch a great old movie with me'. So we watched Charade and I heard him say, 'wouldn't that be a great opportunity for an update?' I really did think so, looking at Paris then and now. I said 'yeah, yeah it would'. [He said] 'With you in that role'. I'm like 'oh, please. Whatever'. And I thought he was just talking, fantasizing. Six months later he sent me a draft of the new version that he'd been working on and, before we knew it, we were on the set and I remember pulling him aside often going 'Can you believe we're doing this together?

TeenHollywood: We hear that the script changed a lot on set. Was that difficult or easy for you?

Thandie: It depended. Sometimes it was more challenging. I think we did know that editing was going to be a big part of the film. The other thing that was strange is that sometimes Jonathan wouldn't even be there. He was there but only at the end of a walkie talkie. The scene with Tim Robbins on the big wheel (Millennium wheel), we were in one carriage and Jonathan was in another and there'd be this crackling voice coming through 'that was good. Try it again Thandie, do this' or whatever so we were on our own in more ways than just physically on our own. As usual, I wanted to have an accent and hide behind something, feel like I was playing a part but he said 'be as close to you as you can in these situations'. So that was quite freeing.

TeenHollywood: Mark [Wahlberg] said that the Tango scene was quite difficult for him.

Thandie: (laughing) He was fine. I don't know what he's talking about. Wow. We rehearsed it and then they realized that the music didn't fit with the dance and we had to do it all over again. For Mark and I it started the ball rolling because he wasn't around when we started shooting. He was working on Planet of the Apes and I didn't really see him when he arrived but then we had a tango rehearsal together. That was the first time we actually saw each other and I had rehearsed for a couple of weeks before he got there and I'd danced all my life too. So, within minutes, I sort of have my leg wrapped round his neck and I was doing all these amazing moves and that was the first time we hung out together sort of groin to groin. It was, in a way, a really good way to meet him because of what we were having to do. Tango isn't really something you can use in your life but I wish that I could. I can do it right now. [A journalist volunteers]. You tango? It's like that isn't it? If you are sitting at a table and somebody else does it, it's like 'wow, a connection.'

TeenHollywood: You have a two-year-old. You were a brand new mom during shooting. Did that limit your nightlife in Paris?

Thandie: Mark and I didn't really hang out much. It's a shame. We were in very, very different zones. My kid was four months old when we started. I was still nursing her right through the film. So, when I wasn't working I would go back to the trailer, be with her and nurse or whatever and we didn't hang out on weekends. On Monday morning he would sort of tell me what he got up to on the weekend. It was like having an errant younger brother or older brother who's getting up to all this stuff that you're not.

TeenHollywood: How was working with Mark?

Thandie: We had very different approaches to our work. I like to talk about stuff, especially as Jonathan doesn't rehearse anything. Always, I'm analyzing and Mark doesn't want to talk about it. He just wants to do it. It was quite alarming but also a very good lesson. I think, in a way, it's more brave to just go into something blind. I really do like him enormously but he's a lot of different people.

At the end of the movie I was still figuring out who he is from one moment to the next. I was never convinced that the person I was hanging out with was who he really was. I would say to him, when we knew each other better, 'Who are you going to be today?' Because I think he realized that I was on to him. You just have to look at his life and the things he's done and where he finds himself now, it's not really surprising that he's such a... that he has alter egos.

TeenHollywood: You have an Anthropology degree from Cambridge. Is that useful in your work?

Thandie: Very useful. I went to university and I thought 'I don't want to read English or Drama or what I've been doing'. When I was looking at the prospectus for Cambridge University there was the Anthropology degree and I thought 'this is it. It's a departure from everything I've been doing. It has nothing to do with acting or the arts'. As it turned out it just made me feel so much more entitled to play people from different parts of the world because with that degree you're looking at humanity as a whole. Just after that I worked on "Jefferson in Paris." One of my papers was about the European expansion in the New World and the slave triangle in West Africa so I knew about it and, it gave me a rootedness and it was very useful. I would honestly say, if you aren't able to go to acting school, read Anthropology because it gives you another kind of experience which is really useful in tackling roles.

TeenHollywood: What in your life in your anti-drug or natural high?

Thandie: Not drinking! Precisely not doing those things is what is a high. Being in situations where other people might be and you're not and realizing that you're just as happy, just as alert, just as alive and that that's all you doing that. It allows you to also feel really there, really alive. Because I was nursing, I wasn't drinking or smoking. Also, I've got to get up at six in the morning. I couldn't have a hangover. It would be a disaster.

TeenHollywood: How do you feel about your level of stardom in the industry right now?

Thandie: It's very hard to have a perspective on it. I don't do it to have power. In order to think in those terms you have to be in competition with other people. I think that I'm fortunate in that I can have a role like Reggie in Truth About Charlie which is a very substantially budgeted film and that they trust me to do that but, at the same time, I just finished a film that was teeny tiny. I love that. I'm darting off doing all kinds of things. Maybe I'm just buzzing around the outskirts [of Hollywood]. But it feels good. I'm working regularly on things I really like.

TeenHollywood: What's next for you?

Thandie: I finished a film a couple of months ago called Shade with Gabriel Byrne and Steward Townsend. It's about card hustlers in modern day Los Angeles and I play the organizer of the poker games. They're kind of immoral bad people but it was a good script. It's fun.

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.