Hollywood has a long history of couples working together. Often it is a vanity project in which the real relationship distracts from the narrative. Sometimes it is an effective gimmick that plays off of the real dynamic of the couple. Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick manage to pick roles where their collaborations are not distracting.
In Pyrates, they were not a Hollywood couple yet so we were seeing a natural relationship bloom. In Murder in the First, Sedgwick showed up in one scene as a conjugal visit for Bacon’s inmate character. Now, in The Woodsman, a heavy drama about a child molester released from prison, the couple had to fight against their real connection to portray two damaged people finding trust in each other after hard times.
“That’s the hard thing, certainly in this case, because we have to kind of erase 16 years of marriage and pretend that we’re just meeting for the first time and just falling in love,” Bacon said. “Look, I mean, that’s what acting is. It’s pretending that something is there when it’s not. So often, you’re called on to do the opposite, you know, you go, ‘Hey, this is Jimmy and he’s going to be your father,’ and you have to pretend that this guy that you are just meeting for the first time brought you up, so in this case it’s kind of like just another kind of acting exercise. So she’s an amazing actress and the good news is that you get in there, you get on the set and you are working with someone that’s really
talented, and you’re throwing the ball, they’re throwing it back at you. You know what I mean? You can play it. I mean, the bad news, on a personal note, is that we tend not to work at the same time. It’s very rare that we do. If you look at how many movies we’ve made, we’ve only done a few together, because what happens is I am, if I’m working, she’s the support system for me. If she goes to work, then that flips, and I become the support system for her, so when we’re both working we’re not really there for each other, you know, because we’re so kind of consumed with what it is that we’re doing. We almost have to come back together as a couple after the job is over.”
Sedgwick added, “It was definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do as an actor is to shoot a scene with my husband in that truck where I’m meeting him for the first time with someone who I’m so deeply invested in emotionally and married to for 16 years. It was for sure the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, probably will ever have to do. So it required a lot of work on the character beforehand and a lot of vigilance in staying very committed to the character. Sometimes when you do a part, the wall between you and the characters can be very porous. You can sort of move in and out of your character’s persona and being. And that just couldn’t happen on this one because of working with him. At the end of the day, you let it go to a certain extent but also it’s something that you have to keep sort of stoked in your belly. I think that what both these characters share for me is a deep shame and I think he for the obvious reasons, but she, though she is the victim of abuse, I think that often as victims we feel somehow complicit in the abuse, that somehow it was our fault. When you hear people that were molested as children from priests and somehow they feel so much shame like it was my fault. Or it’s not even able to be articulated as it is just like this shame and shame is such an intense emotion and it just can drive you. And I think both these characters are really driven by it. So I think that that’s something that was always sort of in the pit of my stomach throughout the weeks of shooting. Ultimately, you know, I’m a grown-up, I’ve been in this business a long time, I’ve got kids. I’ve got to do my stuff. But I also need to keep it there so I can bring it up again the next day at work or whatever.”
Taking the work home with them took a toll on the family dynamic. “Look, in general,
this is not a pleasant place to go to work every day, to be in this guy’s skin, for her to be in the skin of that character, carrying around a lot of shame and a lot of hurt,” Bacon said. “Certainly it’s just not fun. But acting is exhilarating in a lot of ways, when you feel like you’ve done a good job, when you feel like you’ve connected to something emotional. That’s why we do it. But people have asked me if it was hard for me or us to shake it off and I realized that it’s not so much the shaking off that’s hard. It’s the knowing that you’ve got to go back down in it the next day. It’s the, for instance, you come to Friday night when you’re shooting The Woodsman and it’s late, and you wrap and you have a beer. It’s not a full-blown party, because Monday morning you’ve got to be Walter again. That’s where it can sort of take its toll. That being said, when the whole picture is done and they tell me the print came in from the lab and the lab dailies are fine, I’m gone. That guy’s gone.”
Sedgwick added, “It’s great to be together and thank God we had each other but in some ways we were very separate throughout the whole filming even when we were together. We’d go home and sleep in the same bed, and we were there, but it really was, when I really think about it, it was almost like we were in the same space but not together. I don't know if you’re married, but sometimes there are times where one is really together with their partner, and then there are times when you’re both just in your own thing, but you’re there together. Really that’s what it was like during the filming of it. And when the kids would come, we’d be on them clearly, but then they’d go and we’d both be separated. So I think it really takes some getting back together after a project is done.”
That said, the couple never let the feelings of actors overpower the instincts of parents. “They probably feel it on a visceral level, like just on a level,” Sedgwick said. “But when they came for the weekends or when I would go home because I wasn’t in every scene, Kev was. But when I would go home, you were there for them. That’s just the first priority and I’ve been, again, in this game long enough that they come first and even if it’s there, it’s there and they don’t see it. They don’t feel it.”
Ultimately, working together became more of a challenge than working with total strangers, but the actors made the sacrifice so that each would have the opportunity to play a great part. “Having her around did not make it any easier,” Bacon said. “It’s not like I need her to get into something. Having her around was great because she’s the best person to play the part, because there’s not a lot of people that pop into my head, at least, who could be sexy, tough and direct, and also believe that they were going to work in a
lumber yard and be able to drive a forklift or be able to kick some guy around. She’s got that kind of ability, to pull those two sides of woman, and so that’s why I’m glad she did it. And believe me, it took a while to convince her to do it. She read the script and said, ‘I think you should do it,’ and the producer suggested to me, ‘What about Kyra?’ She said,
‘If it was anybody else in this part, I would say yes, but I don’t want to get in the way of you doing your work.’”
Writer/director Nicole Kassell eventually convinced Sedgwick to play the role, and despite the difficulty, she found it rewarding. “Oh, it was an amazing experience,” Sedgwick said. “He’s the best actor I know, so that’s always good. It’s nice to work with a good actor and you know every day when you go to work, you’re going to get something back that’s good.” |
