In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Crazy, Stupid, Love star Julianne Moore talked about working opposite Steve Carrell and how she prepared for her role in the new box office hit.
“You never really know – a lot of it has to do with your chemistry with that particular actor, especially when it’s supposed to be a very familiar relationship. But Steve is somebody I responded to right away,” she recalled about the early stages of production. “You’re always looking for nuances in each other and always mining that connection, really.”
Crazy, Stupid, Love, which arrived in theaters last Friday, tells the story of a husband (Carrell) separated from his wife (Moore) and his exploits as a single man. The romantic comedy also stars Ryan Gosling, Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei and Emma Stone.
“Basically the script starts with what you see on screen with her saying, ‘I want a divorce.’ But you can only imagine that there have been many months or even years that she’ been trying to communicate her unhappiness to him, and finally she can’t take it any more and she has to break it off,” she said, adding that the revelation that her character went to see the latest Twilight movie just to get away from her husband is “so funny” and “incredibly telling about their relationship.”
Moore explained that while she always prepares for a role based on the script, she and the rest of the ensemble cast got inspired to add their own flavor to the movie during table reads and rehearsals. “You come with your own ideas, you go to the table read, you do whatever you can in rehearsals, and then you get on set and try different things. They might say, try it like this or try it like that,” she continued. “You want to put yourself in a position where hopefully something is happening to you in the scene, and then when the camera captures that, it really feels the most real.”
