Richardson fleshes out tragic role in ‘Tom and Viv’

Richardson fleshes out tragic role in ‘Tom and Viv’

Award-winning, versatile actress stars as T.S. Eliot’s wife
opposite actor Dafoe

By Lael Loewenstein

Daily Bruin Staff

Miranda Richardson has always been a little unusal.

While every other actress has coveted the role of Lady Macbeth,
Richardson chose to play Macduff as her first part. Granted, it was
only a reading of "Macbeth" at her all-girls’ high school in
England, but that early decision to play Macbeth’s nemesis set the
stage for her later career.

"I thought it was the best part," recalls Richardson in her
suite at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. That role and her
second, Autolycus the salesman in "A Winter’s Tale," were, she
says, "a complete mask, so other than me."

That disclosure seems both surprising and logical for the
actress: surprising because she assumed roles so unlike herself,
and logical because she has made a career doing just that.

Richardson, 36, is currently winning raves for her performance
opposite Willem Dafoe as poet T.S. Eliot’s long-suffering wife in
Tom and Viv. That part earned her one of two Golden Globe
nominations this year. At the awards ceremony last Saturday
Richardson lost to Jessica Lange, but she did take home a Golden
Globe for her portrayal of an American journalist in the HBO
miniseries "Fatherland."

She appreciates the accolades, but they are not new to her. Two
years ago she impressed moviegoers and critics with a trio of
stunningly diverse turns in acclaimed films: she played an IRA
terrorist in The Crying Game, a repressed housewife who blossoms in
Enchanted April, and the outraged, middle-aged wife of an
adulterous man in Damage, for which she received an Oscar
nomination. The three performances garnered her a best supporting
actress award from the New York Film Critics’ Circle.

Richardson’s ability to transform herself is striking. But she
downplays her accomplishments with characteristic modesty. "I don’t
think of myself as a chameleon," she says. "Everybody does it,
really, everybody behaves differently in different situations."

In part she has been called a chameleon because she has played a
number of period roles. Enchanted April, Tom and Viv, and the
recently released Century each take place between 1900 and 1930. "I
have one of those faces that is not necessarily contemporary," she
allows. "It’s the same for Willem (Dafoe)."

But the real Miranda Richardson is utterly modern. Richardson
appears younger and decidedly more upbeat than the women she has
portrayed onscreen.

She has made something of a specialty playing women who suffer
greatly, often at the hands of men, but who must conceal their
pain. They tend to have a very strong center but don’t tap into it
until they are thrust into some kind of a crisis or jolted out of
their mundane lives.

"I look for complexity in my characters," she says. And nowhere
is that more true than in her portrayal of Viv Eliot. Suffering
from a serious hormonal imbalance that caused her to erupt in
bursts of inexplicable rage, Viv was misdiagnosed as insane and
sent to live in an institution. Because she so loved her husband
and his work, Viv sacrificed herself to save his reputation.

"She was struggling to find her own voice, but her destiny was
all wrapped up in Tom," she says.

In the way she was tragically misunderstood, Viv is something
like the character Richardson played in her highly praised first
film Dance With a Stranger. In that film she was Ruth Ellis, the
last woman hanged in Britain. Ruth killed her lover in 1955 for
what today might be judged a crime of passion. And Viv might have
been diagnosed correctly had she lived in a different time.

"Viv feels very modern to me," she says. "She feels like a free
spirit and people are trying to tap her down. To me it’s obvious
she isn’t mad. She feels a mixture of rage and paranoia because
people are keeping things from her, and she’s hamstrung."

Although she enjoyed the challenge of playing Viv, Richardson
hopes to play more contemporary characters. And perhaps something
lighter as well. "I’d love to do some comedy," she says.

She would also like to work with Martin Scorsese and Woody
Allen. "And Jane Campion if she’ll have me."

But it seems unlikely that she should have to worry about
rejection. Richardson is very much in demand these days, although
she’s uncertain about her next project.

"It will probably be a picture in Canada," she says. But the
deal hasn’t been signed yet, so she’s not at liberty to say
more.

Although she has been critically praised on both sides of the
Atlantic, Richardson admits that the British don’t respond as well
as the Americans when their stars get too successful.

"Over there if you do too much press, people start to look down
at you."

For now, Richardson enjoys her success and her status as a
successful actress in her mid-thirties, an age when many actresses
complain that there simply aren’t enough good parts available.

"I’ve been fortunate," she says with a smile. "I’m glad people
appreciate my work."