Drew Turney
After seeing the pixie-voiced Juno Temple in a slew of indie movie roles like the sexually charged sci-fi “Kaboom”, the grungy comic strip Southern Gothic of “Killer Joe” and Linda Lovelace’s teenaged best friend in “Lovelace”, suddenly she pops up as Selina Kyle’s (Anne Hathaway) partner in crime in “The Dark Knight Rises”.
So is she an indie star, or the dependable support act in increasingly high profile projects? When you meet Juno Temple, the first thing you notice is her native accent, a plummy British lilt.
The second thing is that the woman who once spoke the immortal line ‘Dude, it’s a vagina, not a bowl of spaghetti’ to a man performing cunnilingus on her can be anything to anybody.
Moviehole.net sat down with the 24 year old to talk about her new movie “Afternoon Delight”, in which she plays no-nonsense stripper McKenna.
You’ve never traded solely on your looks or sex appeal, even here playing a stripper.
My approach is always just to be human. The women I’ve always thought were the sexiest and most beautiful have absolutely no fucking idea that they are.
The important thing with an actress is to not be afraid to not be perfectly beautiful because I’m never going to be that. I’m never going to be an Elizabeth Taylor, so I’m not going to try and be one.
Besides that, it’s just fun to play a character My next film is Magic Magic, and I had a layer of green makeup under my foundation every day to make me look sick. I look terrifying, and it’s fantastic because you just get more and more freaked out by this disintegration of this creature and I love that. It’s the whole point – it’s acting, it’s not you.
So you look for stuff that’s very different to what you are in real life?
Absolutely, but I think it’s important to find a little bit of you that you can give to the character and looks shouldn’t be that thing.
It’s also really important for moments where you aren’t feeling so confident. Like for example, in Afternoon Delight where I have to just take all my clothes off and bang the shit out of someone on camera. Until the camera starts rolling you’re really nervous, and then the camera starts rolling, your character doesn’t give a shit so neither do you. I find that very liberating. Any thought that you have in your head about Juno being naked goes away because you’re no longer Juno naked.
You’ve done that a few times too. Does it get easier?
It’s about a comfort level that people create around you. The first take is always awkward because you have to kind of figure out each other’s rhythm. But a sex scene is also weirdly less nerve wracking than having a complete nervous breakdown and weeping for hours on camera because it’s so organised. It’s so pre-planned about what shot you need to get and where your hand needs to be. It’s the unsexiest thing to shoot. But like any scene, it’s about figuring out how a character behaves in that situation.
McKenna doesn’t leave the story on the best of terms with married couple Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) and Jeff (Josh Radnor). Do you consider her the villain?
No, absolutely not. She comes in and she’s pretty happy with what’s going on with her life. She’s in control of it. She gets offered a place to stay and she jumps on that – Rachel takes one look at her and thinks she needs to rescue this little creature.
But really, Rachel needs to pause and think about what’s going on in her own life before she can reach out to anybody else. McKenna end up really loving Rachel and Rachel really ends up loving her. They create this wonderful relationship and Rachel really seems like she’s not judging McKenna until that moment when they go to the client together.
McKenna’s kind of this wind that blows in and causes a tornado in their lives. She’s also someone Rachel doesn’t need to have in her life forever – they’re very different people, but they both learn a lot about loving and giving and that’s what they take away.
You usually play very free spirits. Are you attracted to those because you’re like that in real life?
I definitely like to be a free spirit and I think that’s why I’m attracted to those roles. The different girls I’ve played are pretty inspirational to me, so I probably play them and come away being slightly more of a free spirit every time.
So how much of yourself do you tend to bring to roles?
Not too much. I want to be a mystery. The joy of being an actress is creating make believe and learning from it and inspiring people with it. I definitely bring a little bit of myself every time – as an actor you can’t help that. But I always take most of me back home.
