CHRIS NEUMER: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me. I appreciate it.
ALISON LOHMAN: Definitely.
CHRIS NEUMER: Particularly considering the quotes I saw attributed to you saying the acting is fun and the publicity is what you get paid for. And I thought, wow, anyone who can come out and say that deserves some kind of credit.
ALISON LOHMAN: It’s true. [Laughs]
CHRIS NEUMER: Now, I was curious, is there any good press? I’ll start out by saying this; I had done a big feature on Rosario Dawson probably a year and a half ago. And she said she almost called off the interview. She said she almost dialed my number to call it off and then thought better of it. And she just launched into a tangent to me about how everyone thought she was bringing down J. Lo’s marriage at the time. And then she said, ‘I realized you weren’t going to ask me anything about Cris Judd, you weren’t going to ask me anything about Ben Affleck, and I thought, okay, I can do this.’ And I thought, ‘Ok, good!’ So is there good press?
ALISON LOHMAN: Um, I guess if you’re dealing with a social-environmental-political issue that could inform people or make people more aware. Like, for instance, I think this movie is a great movie for anybody to see, because it does have environmental — like, just what’s happening right now, with the pollution of the world and the toxic jungle, and understanding nature and humanity. God, it’s so pertinent to now because…
CHRIS NEUMER: Even though it was made twenty-one years ago.
ALISON LOHMAN: …Even though it was made twenty-one years ago, yeah, with war, and my character is a pacifist, and believes that she’ll do anything… To get what you want, you have to understand the other side. So, that’s how she saves her valley, by understanding how the toxic jungle was formed. It’s very similar to what’s happening now, I think.
CHRIS NEUMER: Really? Is anyone trying to understand how the other people think right now?
ALISON LOHMAN: Well, I mean… [Laughs]
CHRIS NEUMER: No, I understand what you’re saying, but you can’t…
ALISON LOHMAN: No, they’re actually not.
CHRIS NEUMER: Okay. But if you’re promoting a movie that has a good message like this, press is good?
ALISON LOHMAN: Ah, yeah, I think press is good. Yeah.
CHRIS NEUMER: But if I were pressing you hardcore about something with Tara Reid then it would probably go the other direction.
ALISON LOHMAN: It would be so boring, and I would not even want to have that kind of conversation.
CHRIS NEUMER: Boring? Interesting.
ALISON LOHMAN: Yeah.
CHRIS NEUMER: Now, are you familiar at all with our magazine?
ALISON LOHMAN: No, I’m not. I’m sorry. I didn’t even…
CHRIS NEUMER: Oh, that’s fine. Troy has a copy or two lying around his office. But, that’s the furthest thing from what we want. We want to talk about the art of acting. But you say it’s boring. And it strikes a nerve with me because it seems that every housewife in Iowa is fascinated by it. It’s the end-all, be-all, of their day.
ALISON LOHMAN: I know. It’s our culture.
CHRIS NEUMER: It is, this is why In Touch and People, well not People, but The Star and things like that are making billions of dollars.
ALISON LOHMAN: Mm. it takes the place of the king and queen, right?
CHRIS NEUMER: One would think.
ALISON LOHMAN: People are obsessed with the king and queen and, I don’t know, people who are wealthy and beautiful, or…
CHRIS NEUMER: Part of the glitterati.
ALISON LOHMAN: Yeah.
CHRIS NEUMER: But to you it’s boring! That’s…
ALISON LOHMAN: I think it’s boring to, I don’t know, I…
CHRIS NEUMER: It’s just an interesting contradiction, not in what you’re saying, but that one’s person’s interest is another person’s boredom.
ALISON LOHMAN: Well, there’s so many… Yeah, exactly. It’s interesting, because there are so many other subjects to be talking about right now. But we are diverted by… I mean, what is that? It has no meaning, no relevance to anything, it’s just… so, I don’t know.
CHRIS NEUMER: Well, the American president has done a lot to spur a lot of different conversations.
ALISON LOHMAN: It’s almost like we need to brainwash ourselves to listen to what’s really happening and not just to the propaganda and what the press shows us.
CHRIS NEUMER: I refuse! I’m just going to read about Lindsay Lohan from now until 2008, that’s it!
ALISON LOHMAN: [Laughs] Will you be happy?
CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, I’m going to be ignorantly happy, I’m going to be full of bliss. Well, okay, let’s jump into this right away, like, I was thinking about doing voiceover work like you did on this one. Because this was your first voiceover experience, correct?
ALISON LOHMAN: Mm-hm.
CHRIS NEUMER: And I was curious, how did this differ from regular looping, that you might do for something that…
ALISON LOHMAN: Oh, well you have to create a character just — I mean, obviously, you have the cartoon image that is creating the movements and the kind of gestures that she makes. Then you have to fit the sound to that. So it’s not like you’re coming up with… I mean, the body’s not there. The body movement, the gestures have already been created for you so you have to kind of match that. So if you have a sound that doesn’t go with that, that kind of clashes with that, then the audience isn’t going to get the full effect of that character. So you have to sort of adapt yourself to that, what Miyazaki created.
CHRIS NEUMER: Now, wouldn’t that be, and correct me if I’m wrong here, I certainly have never been on an A.D.R. stage or anything like that. But this was animated back, as I said, twenty years ago. And it was you fitting a new, American voice to the character. Isn’t that, in principle at least, the same as, well, in terms of voiceover work, the same as you doing something on a soundstage somewhere and then matching your voice to what you did previously?
ALISON LOHMAN: Um…
CHRIS NEUMER: Or am I going very deep there?
ALISON LOHMAN: I guess so, but you don’t remember those movements.
CHRIS NEUMER: You don’t remember? Okay.
ALISON LOHMAN: You remember what you did, but how can you, because you never created that image. Those movements aren’t familiar for you. You’ve never done them.
CHRIS NEUMER: That seems like more of a challenge, then.
ALISON LOHMAN: It is a challenge. It’s almost more of a challenge than… but the other thing that’s not a challenge is when you see her mouth talk it’s not as intricate as if you were trying to match your mouth, because it’s animation.
CHRIS NEUMER: More room for error?
ALISON LOHMAN: Exactly.
CHRIS NEUMER: Oh, well, that’s certainly nice.
ALISON LOHMAN: It’s just kind of like a mouth — I don’t know how to explain it — like the Pac-Man mouth, in a way.
CHRIS NEUMER: [Laughs] Yes.
ALISON LOHMAN: It’s easier to get words out of that. You have more space to, kind of, make up what you want. You don’t have to be so… strict with it.
CHRIS NEUMER: It seems nice. More freedom seems like it’s always beneficial.
ALISON LOHMAN: It is nice, yeah. Definitely.
CHRIS NEUMER: Hm. Well, you mention this, and it sort of taps into something else. How do you — and feel free to answer this for any of your movies — how do you determine what you are going to create in a character that you’re playing?
ALISON LOHMAN: Um, definitely the actions behind the words because somebody can be talking the talk, and then they can… so it’s all about what the actor actually does — if it means anything. It creates that kind of… or how she says it, why she says it. I mean, there are so many different aspects of it. And then, when you’re actually doing the scene, sometimes things happen spontaneously, that it creates itself.
CHRIS NEUMER: Ah, is there an example of something like that, either on this or on another film, that you can give me?
ALISON LOHMAN: Um, I think Matchstick Men was probably a good example, with Nick Cage. Because if you have a great director like Nick, he is so spontaneous that he forces you to be that also, and your character takes on other dimensions that you haven’t previously worked on or studied.
CHRIS NEUMER: Sort of, just in response, you’ve created an almost organic environment and the characters and things are spawned from that.
ALISON LOHMAN: Yes, yes. And sometimes that doesn’t happen at all and you’re relying on what you worked out on your own.
CHRIS NEUMER: On projects that probably will remain nameless?
ALISON LOHMAN: [Laughs] Yes, exactly.
CHRIS NEUMER: Okay. Well, let me ask you this too. You mention Nick Cage, and I read a couple of different things where you mentioned that it was great working with him. Now, I’m always curious when I hear an actor — I’ll say this, I have no training as an actor and the way I look at actors is very similar to the way director Robert Altman looks at them, which is, he says he has absolutely no clue how they do what they do, he has absolutely no clue how they get in the mindset to do what they do, but he has an enormous amount of respect for what it is that they do. Now, what is it that makes somebody a great actor to work with?
ALISON LOHMAN: Um… that you don’t really know what they’re going to do. They have a look in their eye that says, ‘You could throw anything at me and I would be completely open to it.’ They are completely open and responsive to every nuance that you give them, even if it’s a look in the eye, they would give… So they surprise you, I guess.
CHRIS NEUMER: Almost an ability to think in character?
ALISON LOHMAN: Yes, yes. Definitely.
CHRIS NEUMER: Hm.
ALISON LOHMAN: You know, where they don’t necessarily know the lines… Nothing’s too structured. Because then that’s the excitement of it, you know, you want to be in that moment together. Nobody knows what’s going to happen, I guess.
CHRIS NEUMER: Hm. You probably just don’t tell the director that in those words before doing the scene, right?
ALISON LOHMAN: [Laughs] No.
CHRIS NEUMER: Okay. Well, that certainly makes sense. And I’m assuming Nick Cage has that. Are there other people you’ve found who just bring something a little bit different to the roles, that allow you to create your character more fully?
ALISON LOHMAN: Um… Oh, Robin Wright Penn, definitely.
CHRIS NEUMER: What was it that she did?
ALISON LOHMAN: She surprised me. Every scene, each take that she did, was so different. And you could just tell, from the look in her eye, that she was right there in that moment. She wasn’t thinking of the next line and she wasn’t thinking of how she had done the line before, or how she looked in that moment, it was just one hundred percent in that space, in that time.
CHRIS NEUMER: Hm. Much to the horror of…
ALISON LOHMAN: Oh! A good listener! To me, Nick Cage and Robin Wright Penn, you could just see them listening. It makes you feel differently when you’re an actor and someone’s actually listening.
CHRIS NEUMER: Rather than focusing on how they can better themselves, they’re actually focusing on you?
ALISON LOHMAN: Yes. Yes. So, they’re putting their energy onto you. It actually makes them a better actor because that’s what people do when they talk, and vice versa, you get to talk to everybody.
CHRIS NEUMER: It’s ironic that actors actually come off as better the less they try to actually focus on themselves.
ALISON LOHMAN: Yes.
CHRIS NEUMER: Isn’t it?
ALISON LOHMAN: Hm-mm. Definitely.
CHRIS NEUMER: If only all of the soap stars could get that lesson, things would be going forward.
ALISON LOHMAN: [Laughs] I know.
CHRIS NEUMER: All right. Well, here’s another thing for you…
ALISON LOHMAN: But, of course, there’re exceptions to that, right, because you have people who don’t listen — characters who don’t listen. You know?
CHRIS NEUMER: True.
ALISON LOHMAN: And that’s really hard, because it can come off as being bad acting. I don’t know. But that’s like a whole other thing, I guess.
