| By Fred Topel
In Theaters March 10
|
Take a Latina spitfire and an Irish rebel, put them in a movie together and see what happens. Salma Hayek and Colin Farrell heat up the screen in Ask the Dust, a period drama in which poor waitress Camilla and blocked author Arturo Bandini engage in vicious verbal assaults that ultimately lead to passion.
“It was a very, very good combination,” said Hayek. “We worked really well together because we are both very creative but we really trusted each other and we were very respectful of each other. We rehearsed a lot which was a new thing for me. We rehearsed for months. We had a lot of freedom to play around, to improvise so when we got to the set, we were very well in tune. So sometimes I would surprise him and throw something at him that was never been requested and never been planned, and he would brilliantly just catch it and throw it back at me in a way I never expected. Because we’re fighting it was so exciting to work with an actor like that.”
In the duo’s first intimate moment, they skinny dip in the freezing ocean. Even though the scene was shot in an indoor wave tank, the actors could not fight the cold. “It was freezing and I got a little bit of hypothermia,” said Hayek.
Camilla disrobes first to entice Arturo into the water with her. It is an elaborate ruse through which she intends to get revenge for an earlier prank. But if she looks cool and confident in the scene, give Hayek an Oscar right now.
“It’s not comfortable and I was not relaxed at all. I act comfortable but I was not. As a matter of fact, I was in such a state, at one point they said, ‘You have to come out.’ And everybody came like, ‘It’s okay.’ DON’T ASK ME. I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. You’re going to sit here and say I’m okay and you’re not? It’s like everybody came, ‘Are you okay?’ Yes, I’m fine! What are you going to say? Let’s get it over with.”
Ultimately, Farrell got Hayek out of the trailer by acting so silly that she couldn’t be the most embarrassed one on the set. “Out he comes, butt naked from the trailer, jumping, he’s doing a dance. And I started laughing. It was the most ridiculous thing. Everybody started laughing and he did it because of that, to relax me because I was really tense. And then I have to say that he never, when we were doing the scene, he did not once look down. I sometimes talk to guys that I am dressed and they talk to me like this [at her chest]. They don’t know they’re doing it. And Colin, for all his reputation, never took his eyes off mine.”
By the time they shot their second intimate scene, a full on love scene in bed, Hayek completely trusted him. “It was much warmer. It was easier to do the love scene because he’s covering you, so not everybody’s looking at your body. There are certain tricks you can do within a contained environment. It’s an actor that by then I was very comfortable with and I trusted. He’s always on top of me, he’s covering me most of the time so you can really have a tender moment where you’re not freezing, worried that the whole team is looking at you. You have to come to work tomorrow and say, ‘Good morning, everybody’ and they’re not going to be thinking of you. It’s really uncomfortable so at least with Colin I had some sort of trust that he was very protective, like, ‘Put your arm there.’ He’d do it.”
Ask the Dust became such a personal project for Hayek that she started to cry when it was over. Based on the book by John Fonte, she could not even bring herself to read it once she wrapped production.
“I did not read the book on purpose because [writer/director] Robert [Towne] developed the character. Colin read it like five, ten, a million times. It was a choice that I did not read the book because my character in the script I think is different than in the book and there’s more of it in the movie than there is in the book. Then I became so close to this character that when we finished the film, Colin gave me as a wrap present the book, a first edition of the book. So I said I’m going to read it. I started to read it on the plane and I was sobbing. I put it away, I got home and a week or two later, I couldn’t read the book because I missed her so much. And I didn’t get to play her anymore but I put the book away and said, ‘I’ll wait and I’ll read it when I’m not so close to this character.’ I didn’t even notice how close I came to this character.”
Even weeks later, she could not bring herself to crack open the spine. “I thought of this woman who thought that everything’s wrong in her life, that she’s never accomplished anything. And yet she inspired this fabulous book. So I would keep thinking of her and I wish I could go back and tell her, but I can’t. She had such a great spirit but there was so little expectation because that’s all she could afford to expect in life. That she only dies happy. There’s a lot about the character but it doesn’t always happen. But then there are some characters, you really create a relationship with almost as if they were your friends. And you never get to get into their heads again or think like them. They’re gone.”
Ask the Dust opens March 10. |
