Patricia Arquette reflects on the “ideal girl dad” director who shaped her career
The best actors in the business aren’t always the most prolific, and that sentiment fully applies to Patricia Arquette, a performer that isn’t appearing in multiple projects on an annual basis, but can always be relied on to knock it out of the park whenever she appears on-screen.
Getting her start in slasher sequel A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Arquette continued proving her talents in a number of different genres ranging from drama and fantasy to thrillers and comedy, before Tony Scott’s True Romance gave her the first iconic role of her career.
Playing Alabama Whitman opposite Christian Slater’s Clarence Worley, the Quentin Tarantino-scripted twisted love story may not have fared well at the box office during its initial run, but long-lasting life as a cult classic soon beckoned. Although she’s hardly been inundating herself with work, Arquette took several important cues from her True Romance director that would help shape her career.
With only six feature film credits to her name in the last ten years, Arquette has never been in any danger of becoming overexposed. But when the careful selection of which parts she plays has led to an Academy Award, three Golden Globes, and a Primetime Emmy for her work on screens both big and small, it’s impossible to argue with the results.
As would be expected given its standing in terms of her career and the pantheon of 1990s cinema, Arquette reflected on how “True Romance was such a pivotal film for me” when looking back at her stint in the spotlight for Vanity Fair, where she praised Scott for being “kind of the ideal girl dad” as a filmmaker.
“Every idea I’d have, he’d be like, ‘That’s a great idea, let’s do that’. He taught me very young; ‘Listen to your instincts, you have very good ideas,'” she said. “‘You know what your character’s doing, make suggestions, they’re good. Try them on screen’. And it’s funny, because he wasn’t like that at all with Christian, but I think that has informed me every single day of my work ever since.”
As one of the action genre’s most stylish legends, Scott was instrumental in popularising the flowing camerawork and kinetic visuals that soon became standard techniques. Whether it was True Romance, Top Gun, Crimson Tide, The Last Boy Scout, Enemy of the State, or Unstoppable, the regular collaborator and close friend of Denzel Washington had an eye for imagery and iconography.
Ironically given the “girl dad” moniker placed upon him by Arquette, Scott only had two children of his own, and they were twin boys. Still, looking at everything his protégé has gone on to achieve since True Romance, his impact has been undeniable.