| Tea Leoni
Usually the girl in an Adam Sandler movie is a generic hottie who can be the object of his silly affections. In Spanglish, a dramedy featuring an understated Sandler, he gets a costar who threatens to upstage him. Tea Leoni plays his suburban wife, a neurotic mess who causes more trouble with her attempts to solve problems. Giving her daughter tight clothes to inspire her to lose weight, taking the maid’s daughter for a salon day and butting into other people’s problems are among some of the behaviors that result in the character’s mile-a-minute hyperactive speeches of self-justification.
“This was an exhausting character,” said Leoni. “We had the great advantage of not being slammed through a schedule. This was not a two and a half month shoot, this was more like a seven month shoot. And because of that, there were days in between, and sometimes, I’ll tell you, it felt like I was holding my breath until the days in between. Deborah drove me crazy, you know, it’s hard to kick around in those shoes.”
It is no coincidence that Leoni has played several such characters in the past. “I’m drawn to them. There’s no doubt. I think a healthy slathering of neurosis is always fun to work with, and it’s mostly that it gives you this very loaded palette. You have something to start with, you have energy to start with, you have some horrible demon that will speak to you and keep your voice more interesting. A lot of its choices. I think you can choose to make your character. I think I’ve probably souped up a couple of mine beyond what was intended, because I find that energy, the inner conflict is what makes the spin so much fun, what makes it more colorful. I actually can’t imagine playing someone who wasn’t neurotic.”
That said, once the job is done, Leoni doesn’t revisit her roles as an audience member. “I’m not a huge fan of my work. I just mean it’s very difficult for me to watch my work in some ways because I am critical of what I didn’t get across or I thought I was making one point. I remember I saw Family Man at one point and I cringed over my teeth. It was the weirdest thing. I’d worked before, I’d seen my teeth before. I walked away cringing about my teeth. They looked huge to me. But that’s the only real cringing. I get a kick out of some of these women. I get a kick out of the sort of nakedness of putting that turmoil on film. I think it’s funny.”
Leoni herself has a happy marriage to David Duchovny with two children. To ensure good communication in real life, she practices the one thing which she feels her Spanglish character refuses to do: listen. “The one thing I think you must do is, as painful as it is as a parent is listen. And it is actually painful. There are things that you want to not have heard or not have seen. I suddenly get the whole drug campaign. I get it. I didn’t when they used to do the things on NBC, The More You Know. I just thought, ‘What?’ And then when I had kids, wow, staying awake is the hardest job, the hardest part of this. Not just because of the mere exhaustion factor, that’s not what it’s about. It’s like, literally, staying awake for your children and for every need that they might have and having the courage to be available to meet it, to put yourself in a position where you might just fail. I don’t know, that’s what we do around our house.”
Leoni may have been in the best shape of her life for Spanglish. Since one of her character’s neuroses is health, she sported six pack abs and tones running legs which she shows off in several jogging scenes, and one love scene. “I live by a hill. I began walking it and then I began jogging it and then I began sprinting it. I swear to God, I drive by that hill now, even now, and I want to vomit. I can’t even walk it any more. It’s a real treacherous hill. And then I did Pilates partly because I have found that that’s maybe the most genius, therapeutic exercise, whatever, but also I thought perfect for that Beverly Hills, Bel Air white lady. Pilates. Isn’t that what they’re all, you know. And I knew that I wanted that Yoga pose, I knew that I wanted some move, and I really had to find that one. I kept saying to Jim, ‘I’m going to find it, I’m going to find the perfect thing,’ and I guess that was born out of, Deborah’s the most unbalanced person I’ve ever met, so I thought, ‘How funny to put her in a pose that’s all about balance?’ And watch her really struggle with it.”
The husband earns the family’s living in Spanglish, but in Leoni’s home, with two acting parents, they have to coordinate their jobs. “We’re both sort of fair with each other about he’ll go away or work and then I have my time. Sometimes it doesn’t work out as perfectly as we’d like. David’s been doing a lot of writing and he wrote and directed and starred in a film called the House of D, it’s just coming out in March. He’s just written another script that he’ll start preproduction on this summer. Unfortunately he’s in New York now working with Bart Freundlich doing Trust the Man. It’s hard. We work differently. I think there are times where it’s less about schedules where we try and balance who’s doing the more intense stuff. Like, if one of us in the bowels of some very difficult job, then the other could maybe take a lighter fare. I think this is all for the sake of our relationship and the children.”
Leoni also finds time to do charity work with Unicef. “Right now, my father’s on the US fund, my grandmother was one of the founders, so we’ve always been working with Unicef. Mostly my father’s been my liaison through the US fund. I suppose I’m an ambassador of sorts. I don’t know what it is, what the title is. My father and I have set up, within the US fund, an AIDS action committee and Unicef has always been working against the AIDS pandemic, but now were specifically raising funds and really targeting this disease in countries where we’ve been potentially solely as an educational or clean water source. My work for Unicef, I hope and suspect that it will be what I will be doing more of in the future. It’s now fitting and I’m ready and Hollywood’s going to kick me out any day soon, so I think I’ll go over there. But I have a real personal history with Unicef obviously and it’s always been a really strong presence in my life.”
Spanglish opens Friday.
By: Fred Topel |
