Media Kit - Yvonne = Sarah Walker - Inscris-toi gratuitement et surfe sans pub !
Media Kit - Yvonne = Sarah Walker
| YVONNE STRAHOVSKI: How would you describe your character, Alice? Alice is English. We meet Alice in Australia in a bar where she’s just been travelling for several months around the world and her final stop is Australia, where she meets Brendan’s character Jim. Then we cut to Alice three and half years later and she’s still with Jim. She has grown up a bit over that time and she really wants Jim to grow up too. Do you think audiences will relate to Alice? I do think people will relate to it. Women are generally the first ones who are ready to settle down, have the house, the kids, to grow up and become mature with their partners. How did you come to do the role? I have never had a lead role in an Australian film so this really exciting. I got the script and they hired a little casting studio for me in LA. I went in and put it down with a reader. I spoke to (director) Daina (Reid) over the phone afterwards and she gave me a couple of notes and then I did it again with Brendan (Cowell), who happened to be in LA. What appeals to you about this film? I think the script is really great. It’s got everything that a romantic comedy needs to have and that’s the comedy and the romance. And it’s really touching. I think Pete (Helliar) has tied it all in so beautifully. I really think it’s got an international appeal. What do you draw on when you play Alice? I guess you draw on life experience. You can’t help but reflect back on your own relationships and think about the way you were at particular times with certain people. We’ve all been there in the midst of a breakup where you’re pining for the one you’ve lost and you miss them so badly and wishing things could have been different. Does living, as you do, so far from home help you to understand Alice’s situation? You feel so much more on your own when you’re away from home. You don’t have any family around and you don’t have friends that you’ve grown up with; the ones that you’ve got a good deep relationship and there’s love with. How did you go with the British accent? I know the British accent because I did three years of drama school and we did all the different accents. I’ve got a thing for accents anyway. I love doing them. I speak Polish – that was my first language – so maybe I’ve got a bit of an ear for it. Accents really allow you to delve a bit more into a character because you really transform, it’s not you anymore. It’s not your voice; it’s not the way you sound. When I’m over there (in the US) I sound so American it’s really weird. I don’t have any Aussies around me. But when I come back here I’m straight back into it. I find myself saying things that I haven’t said for two years, little Australian sayings and things like that. What is next for you? I am shooting the second half of the third season of Chuck now. Is filming in Australia very different to your filming experience in the US? There’s obviously a huge difference, but these are two very different projects. When I’m doing Chuck it’s really hard. An average day would be like a 15-hour day. If I’m doing a half day, which is rare, it would be 10 hours. Crew call might be at 6am but I’m there for hair and makeup for an hour and a half, which means I get there at 4.30am, which means getting up at 3.30. It’s hard core. The budget’s much bigger on Chuck, they’re spending something ridiculous per episode, it’s a big Warner Bros studio-supported television series on a major network, NBC. We blow up cars, we’ve got stunts, we’ve got a million different people responsible for different things and the pace is ridiculously fast. We don’t get rehearsals. You basically rock up on set and you have to know exactly what you’ve got to do, bring to the scene, you’ll read it on set. The director will say great, let’s block it, and you shoot and that’s it. So for me, having actual rehearsals on this film is amazing. It’s just been so great to sit down and talk about scenes and where we all want to go with them and to hear Daina’s vision for it. |
