Alice Eve

Alice Eve has a lot to live up to. Just pass a billboard or see the trailer for ”She’s Out of My League” and you’ll know she is been touted as a ‘Perfect 10’, the highest level in the ‘just-out-of-college-guy’ female rating system. It turns out her character Molly is just that, which is why everyone is surprised when Molly seeks out dating the very average Kirk Kettner, a TSA airport worker.

Alice Eve spoke to Tim Johnson at New York’s glamorous Waldorf Astoria hotel about the relatively unknown cast and crew, working on the next ”Sex & the Cit”y movie, plus tells Moviehole which cast member of ”Sex & the City 2” she went to dinner with.

Tim: So I heard you said you had the acting gene.

Alice: Yes, I did say that once.

Tim: Did your parents discourage you, or did they encourage you to do acting, being actors as well.

Alice: They are actors. They played my parents in the movie.

Tim: I didn’t know that!

Alice: Yeah, they’re my parents, and they wanted me to finish my education. So after that, they were like, ‘You can do what you like’.

Tim: That’s good advice.

Alice: Yeah it was good advice.

Tim: You’re obviously English, and you’ve done a range of accents, including a very convincing Australian accent.

Alice: I did.

Tim: It’s not an easy accent to do either, it’s hard and you did a really good job!

Alice: Oh thank you so much.

Tim: Did you find it difficult?

Alice: I didn’t. You know, because in England and where i lived for a long time there are a lot of Australian people there. So you meet a lot of Aussies and you hear the way they speak and you kind of get used to it.

Tim: In ”She’s Out of My League”, you do an American accent, you spent a lot of time here, how much have you spent here?

Alice: Oh, half my life.

Tim: So you found it easy to do the accent?

Alice: Yeah same thing, I grew up in California, I spent many years here, so yeah it was.

Tim: Just like slipping back in to it really?

Alice: Yeah.

Tim: Do you find fun films like this more plentiful in the US, is that why you moved to Hollywood?

Alice: Yeah there’s just more movies in Hollywood. There’s more varieties of roles, the comedy is broader and more universal. And it’s a better place to be for movies I think.

Tim: And the humor is different in the UK to here, are the English not as playful?

Alice: It’s just a little bit more sardonic, it’s a little bit drier and here it’s just bigger, broader and more physical.

Tim: This character is interesting, because she’s beautiful and she’s called the ‘hard 10’ and I was waiting for her to be bitchy…

Alice: I know!

Tim: Or something wrong with her, but she turned out to be just a nice person.

Alice: I know!

Tim: Is that a dream role, do you read that and go, ‘Wow, she’s perfect!’

Alice: Yep. It is a dream role. It really was a dream role because she’s honest and she’s open and she’s the one with the power, she’s got the money, she’s driving the movie, she’s the girl who wasn’t the guy and that’s rare. It’s almost like the male lead normally is. She had everything, like the male does, usually.

Tim: Then you see the trailer and you’re portrayed as the ‘perfect 10’, is that weird.

Alice: Yeah, a little bit. There’s pressure involved and you just try not to think about it.

Tim: And drive past the billboards in Times Square.

Alice: And put your head down. I haven’t driven past the billboard in Times Square!

Tim: You haven’t? It’s huge!

Alice: Oh good, I will go past.

Tim: You have to, and you can’t turn your head away! Now there’s an awkward moment where your on-screen (and off-screen) parents arrive, and Kirk (Jay Baruchel) ‘arrives’ also. I’m definitely not expecting something like that, but have you had a dating disaster?

Alice: You know that one takes the biscuit. I’ve never had a moment as bad as that!

Tim: I don’t think there is one.

Alice: I don’t think there is one. That is it, basically. That’s about as bad as it gets.

Tim: Was it at all awkward on set?

Alice: Well it’s acting so it’s fine. I think in real life i had to deal with that it would be completely different.

Tim: Kirk, is a very different kind of leading man, how did you find working opposite him?

Alice: It was great, he’s very talented, Jay. He can do the comedy and the drama, he does both. And it was great going to bat with someone who can do all that. It makes the job so much easier, and so it was real privilege.

Tim: When you first read through the script, do you remember what your first thoughts were?

Alice: I was like, oh my God this girl’s amazing. She didn’t have a bitchy side as you say. And I kept turning the pages like, ‘When’s she going to turn, when is she going to do something horrible, when is she going to break his heart?’ And she didn’t and it was like a dream come true.

Tim: I read that you had a problem with Sex & the City.

Alice: I know, someone’s printed that.

Tim: Is that true?

Alice: No, i’ve watched it since I was a teenager. I think what I was doing was going on a feminist rant about women being pitted against women, and used that as an example. But it’s the most wonderful show and it shows modern women. And I think i was using it as an example of the modern woman and modern female relationships and how really women dress for women and I think that’s what I was talking about, but interpreted as something opposite, which it was never.

Tim: Because I was going to ask you if it was a difficult decision, to take a role in ”Sex & the City 2”.

Alice: Yeah it was one of those things where you’re misquoted.

Tim: You play Charlotte (Kristin Davis)’s nanny, and she’s Irish, another accent! Is that a hard one?

Alice: I did some lessons with a dialect coach on that, but once you get the rhythm, once you get the cadence of an accent you kind of fall in to it. That’s the important thing, the energy behind it, and that’s what I got and then I was comfortable.

Tim: How did you find working with Kristen (Davis) and Evan (Handler)?

Alice: Amazing. Yeah I went for dinner with Evan’s family and Kristen was incredibly supportive and she’s very talented. It was special.

Tim: It was comfortable?

Alice: Very comfortable. I was surprised at how comfortable it was. It was so much like and easy set that had been running for years and you walked in to it, and everything was smooth. It was amazing.

Tim: Does being the leading role in ”She’s Out of my League” set you up with confidence to go into something like ”Sex and the City 2”?

Alice: Yeah definitely having been on set for three months and knowing how it works, and you know i’ve made a few movies but nothing can quite prepare you for meeting those four women, and working with them. Someone just said, ‘Is it like the Godfather for women?’ and I think that’s probably true. It is like that and it was like that.

Tim: It’s like a bible?

Alice: It’s like bible, it is.

Tim: And you filmed that in New York?

Alice: Yeah, it was amazing.

Tim: Because that’s a whole ‘thing’, it is it’s own character.

Alice: Yeah, it’s a phenomenon, I mean you know i’ve worked in New York before, i did a play on Broadway, so I spent time professionally here. But it’s funny when you work in New York, you spend a lot of time in the traffic, it’s a lot busier, it’s not like Pittsburgh where you just drive and the streets are yours. One time I found myself having to get out and walk, I think the President was in town and I had to walk five blocks with a huge plant pot that I’d been given, because the car couldn’t get there.

Tim: And so filming in Pittsburgh for ”She’s Out of my League” is obviously completely different.

Alice: They were very welcoming in Pittsburgh (PA).

Tim: You got like half and airport to film in.

Alice: Yeah, we had to go through security every time, we had to go four times a day, take our shoes off, do the whole thing. Because it was in the terminal. And Pittsburgh was much, much easier to film in. New York is amazing and special but you have to get there every day, Pittsburgh people are very welcoming.

Tim: Most of the cast and crew are newcomers on this film..

Alice: It is, yeah we’re unknowns.

Tim: Is that exciting?

Alice: Very, it is because everyone’s fresh and energetic and enthusiastic and wants to give all they can, but halfway through the shoot we switched to nights. So we were doing 6am to 6pm and then we were doing 6pm to 6am. So that was a complete shift, and it’s very hard to wind down when the sun’s coming up. It’s just against your body clock, so we became vampiric when we made it, little vampires.

Tim: Are you all friends now?

Alice: We are. It was like camp when we made the movie, we were all running around.

Tim: Yourself and Krysten ( Ritter) had a great energy together, did that transfer off screen, you two are friends now?

Alice: Yeah we are friends, she’s great. She’s a lot of fun.

Tim: I was expecting the characters to be 2-D in this film, but also Patty ( Krysten’s character), though bitchy, has a real lovable element to her.

Alice: No, that’s true. The characters aren’t 2-D, and the female characters are really well rendered. They’re not just objects, they’re part of the story and they have real relationships. It’s definitely a male and female film. There are the women and there are the men, and there are two story-lines and it’s great.

Tim: And it’s not so traditional.

Alice: I don’t think they’re traditional either, i definitely know when I read the script I didn’t feel like Molly was at all traditional.

Tim: Congratulations, and thanks Alice.

Alice: Thank you and nice to meet you.