Julia
Ormond
Ice And Fire
It is faintly ignominious that when Empire arrives early for our appointment at the Ritz, Julia Ormond should be scanning domestic bills and bank statements. One might suspect that celestial beings (her face is luminous) do not need to consider the VAT factor on energy bills but hey, everyone has to live.
"I take solace in not changing and becoming a prat, going off to some strange planet," says Ormond.
The 32-year-old is dressed plainly rather than ostentatiously (a million miles from that Oscar appearance) and is unimpressed with the pomp of today's surroundings.
"People want glamour but perhaps I'm not the right person," she ventures. "I find it very hard subscribing to that image, it's alienating, like tripping. The whole star thing is odd and no one can help you through it."
As the coffee arrives, Ormond reveals herself to be a whole heap more interesting than some stories you hear about her. And it's not merely well-rehearsed charm. She may look like an ice maiden but Ormond's not hot on freezing people out. This hasn't always been the impression she's given to the multiplex punter who thus far hasn't exactly been set alight by her screen roles.
Indeed, career-wise, things can only get a lot better for Julia Ormond. Since the last time Empire met her, she has stalled as the new Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina and the prestigious New York Sunday Times magazine stuck the boot in at about the same time by using her as the anchor for a piece on how Hollywood mindlessly creates stars whenever they feel like it, irrespective of talent. It was a nasty swipe and Ormond was unlucky to be its focus.
"Not letting go of mistakes has been a problem for me since drama school but I've learnt not to get stressed out. I've certainly learnt a lot from my bad experiences. You get incensed when you can't comprehend why on earth people have done something a certain way and you have to go a long way to understand it from someone else's perspective."
Beyond Sabrina, there has been silence from the Ormond camp, the kind one might be tempted to call "eerie". It is a helpful word to invoke when considering her latest role as Smilla Jaspersen in Bille August's adaptation of the soaraway successful Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow. She plays an Inuit ball breaker intent on getting to the bottom of the bizarre death of a young boy who lives in her block of flats in Copenhagen.
"Smilla is so adamantly her own person and I love that. She's got there by being dysfunctional, and we're celebrating the fact she follows her own path and intuition and forgoes social traditions because they're not comforting to her."
Hmmm, sounds a little on the derriere side of the art/arse debate. Whatever, it is clearly a significant new
direction for
Ormond and a million miles from the dewy-eyed, beckoning lip
action of the ingenues she has played before. Guinevere in First
Knight, for example.
"There
were moments on First Knight where I was standing on a ledge
screaming at Richard Gere, `It's behind you!' over and over again
and then they would ask you to do it again and I would think . .
. huh?"
Ormond breaks
into laughter, unimpressed with the memory and clearly keen to
chase more substantial roles. "I'd be interested in playing
a lesbian . . . ' she
announces.
"Frequently if a woman does something edgy or harsh in a
film, it is taken out because an audience can't handle it. That,
or she becomes the villainess - a bitch. There is an awful lot of
stereotyping . . .
But go the other
way and you end up with Greenaway's The Baby Of Macon, where
Ormond's character was subjected to a multiple rape.
"I
think it's probably Peter's worst film. It was a very disturbing
film to do and took me a long time to get my head around
afterwards."
On the broader
issue of women in film, the rise of the female executive producer
like Sandra Bullock and Demi Moore surely pushes things in the
"right" direction.
"Absolutely.
A lot of women complain but we need to get up and do it. Which is
why I set up my own production company (called Indecan). We've
done something called Calling The Ghosts about two Croatian women
and next Harold Pinter is writing a screenplay for us."
Beyond that, we will next see her in Nikita Mikhalkov's The Barber Of Siberia, which she has been filming over most of the last year. ("He was a staggering director so the fact it went for a long time didn't seem to matter.") Indeed, Ormond seems not to be in a great hurry in general.
"In your 30s, there is a moment, you don't realise it, but you bleed into a time when you become aware of your capabilities and accept them. So you become less hesitant."
And with this confidence, in theory at least, comes the comfort of knowing that you don't have to worry about impressing people all the time.
"Some journalists have said to me, `You won't get anywhere if you don't talk about your private life'. But I've never spoken about it and if people don't know about you then at least they can't restrict you as an actor," she explains.
Her face is still and stern for a moment, but gratifyingly laughter quickly creeps back across it.
"So who exactly am I sleeping with?" she mocks, putting paid to any idea that she ever lost the plot.