Actress Emily Mortimer takes on Boston, English style.
by Anna Cheshire Levitan • Photographs by Jason Bell


British actress Emily Mortimer is bullish for Boston. Famous for her role in Woody Allen’s Match Point, Mortimer recently filmed two movies in the Hub, Pink Panther 2 and Shutter Island. This September she appears alongside former Beacon Street bartender Woody Harrelson in Transsiberian, a thriller directed by Brad Anderson. Mortimer takes a break from movie mania to dish on the new Hollywood East and what it’s like working with a couple of chaps named Martin (as in Steve and Scorsese) and the legendary star of Cheers.

BOSTON COMMON: You’ve been in town for two movies in the past 12 months. The city must feel pretty cozy by now.
EMILY MORTIMER: In a way, Boston feels like a second home. My husband was born here and went to the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, where my mother-in-law teaches art. It’s been a luxury to be around family, and our son has certainly enjoyed being with his grandmother while I’ve been working here.

BC: Since you brought it up… your husband, the dashing actor Alessandro Nivola, dated Rachel Weisz. Are you friendly with his former flame, that other beautiful British brunette?
EM: I guess he does have a penchant for English girls. Yes, I love Rachel and am always happy to see her. She’s incredibly generous, sweet, and funny. We actually went to the same girls’ school in London but in different years.

BC: Alessandro isn’t the only American obsessed with British girls. Hollywood goes bonkers for any woman who speaks the king’s English, from Kate Winslet to Helena Bonham Carter to Helen Mirren to Tilda Swinton.…
EM: We definitely get the benefit of the doubt as English actors, because everyone assumes we’ve spent years at the Royal Shakespeare Company and been in a trillion plays. I studied Russian and English, not theater, at university, and happened to do a play while I was there. An agent came to see it and immediately offered me a miniseries, a low-rent Charlotte Brontë spinoff entitled The Glass Virgin. Despite the name, it wasn’t a nudie production or anything like that, but I did wear a ridiculous crinoline and a wig that looked like it had been dropped from outer space onto my head.

BC: So, can Hollywood act? You’ve shared the screen with some of our best and brightest, holding your own against Scarlett Johansson in Match Point.
EM: I’m full of admiration for American actors, because they take their work very seriously and apply themselves. The work ethic is different here. There’s a feeling in England that you should be embarrassed about working hard. You play it down. Working hard is much more accepted in the American culture.

BC: Pink Panther 2 takes place in Paris, yet the majority of the movie was filmed here. Is the Hub a good stand-in for the City of Love, or do you prefer the real thing?
EM: We shot exteriors of the Petit Palais and Notre Dame in Paris, and it pissed with rain every single day we were there. There’s so much pressure to have the time of your life in Paris, kind of like New Year’s Eve. You always feel like you’re not as chic as you should be, not quite as sophisticated. That pressure is off in Boston—it’s a very lovely city, yet much more relaxed. I was quite happy to be back here, where the sun was shining.

BC: Have you had time to kick back and take a walk around the Esplanade, or has it been all work and no play?
EM: Unfortunately, I haven’t strolled around the Charles. However, one afternoon I had a three-hour break from Pink Panther and managed to slip away from our set at the Citi Performing Arts Center. I headed to Newbury Street with my false eyelashes and absurd costume, but was too scared to go into the fancy clothes shops for fear they would call the police. I ended up around the corner at the Borders bookstore and bought lots of books.

BC: In Pink Panther 2, you play Nicole, the delightfully daffy assistant to Steve Martin’s bumbling Inspector Clouseau. What’s it like to work with one of the world’s greatest comics?
EM: Aldous Huxley said, “The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age.” If that’s true, then Steve Martin is truly a genius. He has that sense of taking the ridiculous incredibly seriously.

BC: Andy Garcia, Alfred Molina, and Jean Reno also star in the movie—quite a who’s-who cast.
EM: I don’t think I’ve ever been in the company of so many great actors. It was simply fantastic! Basically, there were a lot of outrageous stunts involving Steve, so we were all background actors, glorified extras, to his physical genius. We sat around in those director’s chairs, exchanging amazing tales about life. At the end of the day, when we were all overtired, we resorted to bathroom humor. One night Steve took all of us to dinner at Sonsie, and we had a blast. Andy Garcia is such a crack-up. He really gets the giggles.

BC: You’ve worked with some of the world’s finest directors—Woody Allen, Wes Craven, and David Mamet. Do they have a common denominator?
EM: They’re all incredibly relaxed, very affable, and easygoing. You are directed much less than you are by directors who have been doing it a shorter length of time. They understand and trust that you, the artist, have all the answers inside. Sometimes I find that hard because I think, For God’s sake, I’m in a Woody Allen film. Surely this is where someone actually tells me what to do!

BC: Now you’re working with Martin Scorsese on Shutter Island. Just how mighty is Marty?
EM: Very! He’s completely in charge of what he’s doing. The world he is creating on film is so deftly and confidently put there that you just become a part of it. And yet he’s the most chatty, adorable guy and so sweet. It’s such a treat being around him.

BC: How about Leonardo DiCaprio, the film’s leading man?
EM: Same thing—he’s extremely easygoing, yet working very hard. He takes it very seriously but not in a way that’s tortured.

BC: Based on the Dennis Lehane novel Shutter Island, the film deals with a murder and a hospital for the criminally insane. Does the subject matter ever bring you down?
EM: You know what’s funny—I’ve found in moviemaking that films that are the most depressing tend to have a light atmosphere on the set. You compensate by laughing about it. It’s somehow ridiculous to be standing in a pool of blood, as I am in the Scorsese film—absurd, really. It’s brutal, but less brutal to make than you would think.

BC: On the lighter side, you’ve also appeared in the NBC hit series 30 Rock as Phoebe, Alec Baldwin’s girlfriend. What’s it like to work with the hilarious Tina Fey, the show’s creator and star?
EM: Tina is one of the most impressive ladies I have ever met—she’s so selfaware, so calm. I mean she’s writing, producing, and starring in this show, and she’s got a little kid, too!

BC: Woody Harrelson plays your hubby in Transsiberian, which opens this September. The movie is a thriller à la Strangers on a Train. Woody seems a bit more serious these days than he did in Cheers.
EM: I love Woody! But we couldn’t be more different. He’s a confirmed vegan—a hippie—and incredibly into organics and health, and very sporty. I’m a confirmed meat-eater. My grandparents were pig farmers, so I’m completely besotted by bacon. Woody and I saw eye to eye on practically nothing, apart from the fact that we got on really, really well.

BC: You filmed the movie in Lithuania for three months, in winter… harsh! And we complain about the winters in Boston.
EM: Yes, it was freezing—minus 30—and we had to run through the snow in our bare feet. Everybody got very drunk all the time to get through the cold dark evenings.

BC: Besides making movies, what do you do for fun?
EM: My best girlfriend—she writes comedy in London—and I have written a screenplay entitled The Lucky Ones. It’s about three couples on a miserable skiing holiday. I play a pretentious publisher, very oversexed, who constantly talks about what it means to be an “artist.” My friend plays a demented housewife who has a business making handbags with photographs of one’s children.

BC: With your filming schedule, when did you find time to write?
EM: It’s a funny story. My friend flew all over the world, to wherever I was, to write this project. Pathetically, we can only write in Starbucks—I know, such a cliché—so we’ve been to Starbucks in Madrid, Starbucks in Mexico, Starbucks in Scotland. We should have taken photographs of ourselves in each, because you would never have been able to tell where we were. I can honestly say that Starbucks look the same the world over.

BC: Will you take a break this summer, or is it more, more, more?
EM: I’ve been dementedly working this past year and haven’t drawn a breath. Right now all I want to do is be a 1950s-style housewife and hang out with my little boy Sam.

BC: You actors all say that, but then something happens and you’re back in front of the camera, dreaming of a little guy named Oscar.
EM: I know. It lasts only about three weeks before you’re convinced you’ll never work again, but this year I’ve had a sort of weird addiction—I couldn’t stop, just couldn’t stop, and now, like an addict, I’ve reached rock bottom. I think I have to go to actor’s rehab.

BC: Why not go for the Triple Crown and do a third film in Boston?
EM: Of course! It’s been terrific coming back and forth to Boston. I’ve thought to myself, Oh my goodness, movies are so amazing. I’m given a small envelope for my per diem, which, by the way, is one and a half times what I got paid per week to perform in an Off-Broadway play, and I’m staying at the Ritz Boston Common, ordering room service. What could be better than that? ✦