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Mira Sorvino talks candidly about improv, Union Square and Oscar

UNION SQUARE directed by Nancy Savoca, written by Savoca and Mary Tobler, with Mira Sorvino, Tammy Blanchard and Patti LuPone. 80 minutes. A VSC release. Opens Friday (July 13). For venues and times, see Movies.


As I walk into the hotel room to interview Mira Sorvino, she’s ripping the paper off a box of chocolates and tucking into a chunk of candy.

She snacks on the sweets throughout our encounter, but not in the voracious way that makes conversation difficult. She’s consistently voluble – talking a mile a minute when she’s excited about something. And nothing can stop the articulate actor from expressing her passion for Union Square.

Director Nancy Savoca was definitely a draw for Sorvino, but the main attraction to the movie was her character. Lucy rides a constant roller coaster of emotions (it comes across as bipolar disorder, though that’s never said explicitly) as she tries to get to the root of major family problems.

“The character is to die for,” says Sorvino, chewing delicately. “You don’t get one written as well as this, with as much range, as much humanity and so many conflicted sides to her. Just when you think you know who she is, she comes up with a new truth or a new aspect of herself.”

On the non-judgemental nature of the film:

Download associated audio clip.

On vocal technique and accent:

Download associated audio clip.

It’s a fiercely independent flick – shot in 12 days on a scrawny budget.

“I remember asking the producer, ‘It’s gonna be a real movie, right?’ I made $90 dollars a day and paid $200 a day to my nanny. So it was a loss financially but a win in a life way.”

Indie filmmaking has always been Sorvino’s passion. She explains that on Amongst Friends, her first film project, she was the assistant producer, casting director, assistant director and wound up acting, too.

“I bought the donuts, I drove the van, I was acting in it. We made it for $60,000, and then it went to Sundance.”

Not surprisingly, given the breakneck speed with which Union Square was shot (who had time for rehearsal?), improv played a big role in its process.

“I love improv,” Sorvino says, slightly smacking her lips. It was American Place Theatre artistic director Wynn Handman who gave her the best improv exercise, known as the character interview. You enter in character, dressed in character and answer questions in character.

More on the character interview:

Download associated audio clip.

She could see that the emotion is what counts, not the actual lines of dialogue.

“Ad libbing helps you find reality. My dad used to say, ‘If you can’t get the dialogue to be naturalistic, change it into your own words and then go back to it. Get down to the nuts and bolts of what you’re feeling.”

Dad is veteran actor Paul Sorvino, the man she thanked when she received her Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite and who could be seen in the audience weeping.

Why her father cried in the audience when she won her Oscar:

Download associated audio clip.

“He gave me all my technique from the time I was eight on,” she recalls, reaching for another chunk of chocolate. “He’d teach me how to prepare emotionally, how to substitute something that did work when something else didn’t.

“‘Don’t exhale before you say the line,’ he’d tell me, ‘because you’re killing your first instinct and going with an intellectual choice.’

“After school performances, the other parents came backstage, and they’d say, ‘Honey, you were wonderful.’ And he’d say, ‘I just have two notes for you,’ and he’d sit me down for three hours and break it down.”

As we’re getting set to part, I can’t resist asking, “Like chocolate much?”

“I like it when I’m tired, and it gives me energy,” she says, reddening slightly. “I have a newborn at home, born May 3. There’s my breast pump over there.

“Or is that too much information?”

susanc@nowtoronto.com

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