Melissa Leo beat out Julia Roberts to get her very first role in a four-episode stint on All My Children, but Leo's career headed off on a much lower-profile trajectory than Roberts' in the two decades that followed. Her ability to slip into roles has made her a consummate character actor, but it's also kept her from getting the recognition she deserves. Most people, if they know her at all, remember Leo as tough-as-nails detective Kay Howard on NBC's groundbreaking Homicide: Life On The Street. For five seasons, Leo embodied the show's unglamorous, workaday aesthetic, and it eventually cost her the job, when the network brought more conventional TV actresses on board. In the years since, Leo has bounced around in various character roles, including major supporting parts in two Guillermo Arriaga-scripted movies: 21 Grams and The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada. Now, Leo is finally front-and-center in Courtney Hunt's Sundance-winning drama Frozen River. Leo stars as Ray Eddy, a single mother of two boys who gets involved with a young Native American woman (Misty Upham) smuggling illegal immigrants from Canada to the United States. Leo recently spoke to The A.V. Club about the world's cutest director, playing a cop who doesn't sleep around, and annoying Oliver Stone by disappearing into roles.
The A.V. Club: You were also in the short film that was expanded into Frozen River. Is that something you normally do?
Melissa Leo: I do. I have been known for almost 30 years to sort of do whatever comes my way. I think it's lovely that people think I have more work at my beck and call than that, but it's always been touch-and-go after each job finishes. And I love working. You know, now that my son is a young man of 21, I don't have that distraction any longer. I'm even more passionate in these last couple of years, and I think it will go on more and more from here. I just like to be working. So if some students want me to do a student short with them, I'll talk to them and see if I think the kids have something going on. I'm very, very serious about what I do. I think there are a lot of people out there sort of thinking it's anybody's game. You know, "You pick up a camera and you make a movie." My experiences over the years have taught me there's a lot more than that to making a film—there's also getting the film seen, and all kinds of complex realities. I like to be along with the students and give them my two cents about the best way to go about it, in my opinion.
AVC: So in situations where they're inexperienced, you do a lot more than acting?
ML: In a certain way. I think I understand the line between my job and the director's. I have no interest in directing. Not my movie, not your movie, nobody's movie. So I can make suggestions to a director that aren't about direction, but more about practicality. And yeah, oftentimes I'm doing more than just acting. And then there are other times—when you walk on Jon Avnet's set and work opposite Al Pacino, all you gotta do is act.
AVC: How did you get together with Courtney Hunt?
ML: I was at a screening in Chatham, New York. It was a sneak preview screening of 21 Grams that James Schamus set up in his hometown. We had gone to a little after-party after that screening, and Courtney Hunt came up to me. I think she had a little bag with the script in it, that's what I remember, like a little miniature shopping bag. "Will you read my short?" [Laughs.] And I don't know if you've met Courtney, but she's got big blue eyes, and bouncy blond hair, and she's not very tall. She's a cute little thing, basically. Brilliant, cute little thing. [Laughs.] And I took the short home and read it and called her up and said, "When do we start?" We shot the short, she edited it, she showed it to me, and she said, "Wanna make a feature?" And that was the first I'd heard of the feature.
AVC: The film is so particular in dealing with Canada-U.S. border smuggling, and with reservation law. Is that something you investigated, or was that Hunt's job?
ML: Had she not been so thorough in her research, I might have needed to find out more about it. But Courtney was relentless, arduous, in her collecting of information. She was very up-close and personal with the tribal element in that part of New York. Her husband actually comes from that area up there, although he did not grow up in that kind of way. But she'd spent time up there researching the lay of the land and the ways of the people. No, there was no further research for me to do on it.
AVC: Did you talk to anyone who had been involved in this kind of smuggling operation?
ML: When we shot the feature, we had several wonderful Mohawk natives come down from Canada, from a reservation up there. And Misty Upham, who plays Lila, she herself is a Blackfoot Indian from the Northwest, and she talked to one of the guys who was a smuggler. I was not aware of that. The closest I came was in the short when we actually shot in Massena, on the St. Lawrence, where this takes place. And we could see, looking up the river, a steady flow of traffic across the river. Even semis. So I saw it going on even though I never spoke to anybody. And quite frankly, when we were up there doing this short, I was disinclined to be too inquisitive about it. Didn't think that was the respectful way. It was enough that we were there using the land. And then when we shot in Plattsburgh, it's quite a distance from where it actually takes place, and we used the lake rather than the river as the water. So it's not something that goes on there, where we shot.
AVC: Were you comfortable with this role just from the read?
ML: The script was pretty thorough. I think that finding the look for her, with Courtney's guidance and the wardrobe's guidance, was one of the ways into her. But first and foremost, Courtney's script was just so well-defined, who and what my character was. Oleg Tabakov, a Russian director and actor and acting teacher, told us once, "Character is what's on the page—the character as written, and then there's the actor. And they meet this way." [Dances her hands together until they meet, palm to palm.] And that's the character. So something from the script, and something from my own life, and observation, experience, all of that.
AVC: What, for this role, comes from yourself?
ML: A very fine example of exactly what I'm talking about is, there's a moment in the film, a small moment, when Ray has to give her sons lunch money because they're off to school. I remember growing up in Vermont, and I was on a meal plan myself up there, and with my meal-plan ticket and $.50, I could get my lunch. But I had to have that $.50. So Ray goes digging in the couch at one point looking for coins, and a friend of my mom's who's known me since I was born said, "Oh my God, Melissa knew how to play that part!" I didn't make that up. That was in Courtney's script: "Go digging in the couch to look for the change." So she had that idea, that I might have had to scrape for a quarter or two along the way. And those two things together are what make it. If I had information that I could bring to the film, or if I could imagine myself in a situation I may have been in, I would bring that to the table.
AVC: What was it like working with the boys in this movie? When actors are that young, are there things you have to do to help bring the performances along?
ML: Charlie [McDermott, who plays the older son] needed no help whatsoever. Charlie had enough experience that he was capable and confident. In fact, Charlie did a magical thing, which was to turn in a performance very different from what Courtney had imagined, and a far more accurate depiction of a 15-year-old trying to be the man of the house. So Charlie simply came, stood, and delivered. Charlie brought to us his little cousin [James Reilly], who plays the younger brother, who has never acted, who is not particularly interested in acting, and who was only there because his big cousin Charlie was there. [Laughs.] He was darling and sweet. Courtney was very sensitive about him being on the set, and curbed the language on the set when he was present. There are scenes where Charlie, Courtney, and myself are all off-camera guiding him in one direction or another, or scenes where the camera will be at my back and I'm saying to the boy [Mom voice.] "Now say blah blah blah," and the boy says "Blah blah blah." [Laughs.] So he was a handful, but he comes across so beautifully in the film that it sort of teaches you that you really can make a performance finer if you spend a little time on it.
AVC: This is one in a long line of blue-collar women you've played. How do you account for that? Is there something in your background or screen image that naturally leads you to these roles?
ML: I guess there must be. I don't know. Somebody on the outside might be able to tell better than me. I have often been known to say, "I could sooner play a black man then a grown-up lady." You know, just like one of those ladies in an office, somebody's wife or something. That feels like the most distant character in many ways. And why bother? There are plenty of girls who, that's what they do.
AVC: What were the conditions of shooting this film like? Did the extreme cold add to the usual difficulties of making an independent film?
ML: I'm a little bit of a glutton for punishment, especially when it comes to work. I don't mind a bit of suffering. I think it's in suffering that we realize our best selves. I had a wonderful time. I had an opportunity in front of me that nobody but Courtney Hunt thus far has been willing to chance me on. And I was not going to get sick, I was not going to be chilled, and I was going to be in my best condition to turn this performance in. No partying. I'm not much of a partier anyway—it's very tempting and the crew was so fun, but no. I would go right back and wash the mascara off of my eyes, go to bed, and get ready for the next day. I just took it very seriously. I was never, ever uncomfortable shooting. I took care of that. There was no trailer. My agents at one point were saying [Adopts nasal male voice.] "Well, they're not getting you a trailer, so I don't think you should do the job," and I said, "I'm doing the job! I'll never see the inside of the trailer. Never mind." And we would have holding areas in the nearest location, and sometimes we would get so far asunder that the holding area for Misty and I would be the car, the mighty [Dodge] Spirit. We could have the heat on there and we would ration turning the heat on so we wouldn't get too warm, 'cause you don't want that either. I lived with a ski instructor for 10 years, and I learned a lot about being outside all day. I taught a lot to the crew about changing your socks midway through the day, because even if they didn't get wet, you sweat in there. Dry socks, warm feet, very important. It was hard, though. There were people who suffered.
AVC: Do you consider yourself a Method actor? How far do you usually go to prepare for a role?
ML: I definitely consider myself a Method actor, because of my training. I might dispute what people consider a Method actor to be. I think that it's not unlike independent film, which was once one thing and is now actually several different things. We need more than one title, perhaps. Method acting, over the years, has been all sorts of things. I think the root of the acting I do comes from [Constantin] Stanislavski and that handful of Americans who went over and sat at his feet many years ago. And then they all came back and had great schisms among themselves because of what they interpreted it to be. For my money, a Method actor is an actor who has a technique. That has a method. And not one method, but whatever might be required. So a Method actor is always learning. Always thinking, "Oh geez, I don't know how to get there. I need a new tool." I was in a film called Black Irish. I could have come in with an Irish accent. But the Method actor in me wanted a dialect coach so it was an accurate Irish accent. So knowing what your choices and tools are. Sometimes there's no work necessary. You go sit opposite Benicio Del Toro [in 21 Grams] and see if you can't act good. [Laughs.]
AVC: How close a collaboration do you prefer with a director on set? Are there times when you want them to back off and let you do what you do?
ML: I would like to be more engaged in the process then I have been, for the most part, so far. I like the collaboration that Frozen River was. Courtney never ran a script by me to see what I thought for notes, but I felt very much as we worked toward shooting it, and as we shot, and even now as we're out selling the film, that we're working together. I am working with Courtney, not for Courtney. And to get to a place where there's more feelings of working with people in that way is of great interest to me. But I'm very old-school. I like a director to direct me. I like to be the actor. I'm not particularly fond of the hybrid writer-director, or actor-director. You know, there are things that work. On Three Burials [Of Melquiades Estrada], [Tommy Lee Jones] was acting and directing, and he did a damn fine job. [Laughs.] Courtney [Hunt] wrote and directed this film, and it worked out. I just don't think it's the most delicious kind of filmmaking if one is picking and choosing. Writers, directors, actors are all such very different people. I think it's unusual that two of those people are in one human.
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