You filmed Leave No Trace early in 2017 and it has been nearly a year since it was in festivals. Does it feel like another world ago?
It does, partly because I have shot four other films since then and they have each taken me into very different cultures, time-zones and experiences. But my actual life has quite a lot in common with the life of Tom in Leave No Trace. I have a forest right next to my house and I go there a lot with my dog – though in New Zealand we call it the bush. And I have continued my passion for bees back home. They need a lot of help worldwide right now. I guess Leave No Trace planted a lot of seeds in my life that I want to continue, so yes, it is always with me and always will be.
You spend quite a lot of the film getting rained on in freezing cold forests. Was it as challenging to shoot as it looked?
Yes, but in an unexpected way. We shot consecutively, so when I watch the film I can see myself kind of growing, both inside and outside. But this also meant that as the story in the film got colder, in real life it was getting hotter because the summer was coming in Portland. So as we headed into the icy mountains, it was actually boiling in those [winter] outfits! But when I was in the scenes with Ben [Foster] or the other actors, the feeling of being hot or cold melted away and I just felt the feelings. So I did not really notice if it was hot or cold or windy or raining.
Did you learn real-life survival skills to prepare for the film?
The survival-skills preparation was amazing. The first time I met Ben was in the forest. Our survival-skills teachers took him in first to teach him how to build a hut. I came in an hour later and that was our first meeting. Luckily, his hut did not fall down on us, and we established a great feeling of trust and care in that exercise. [Director] Debra Granik designed the process so that all our rehearsals were just the two of us learning skills together in the forest. It was a great way to develop a relationship so we could express this gentle love story between a father and daughter.
The survivalist lifestyle comes so naturally to your character Tom. How do you think you would fare in her shoes?
Pretty good, I think! I mean, we learned those skills for real. I can build a fire, I can farrow sticks – that’s my favourite skill we learned. I can collect fresh rainwater, identify plants to eat and use for medicine, navigate a path. I have a sense of adventure. Some of these things come naturally because I am from New Zealand and I have spent a lot of time in the bush, but Leave No Trace has certainly lifted my life-skills for ever.
Do you see an attraction to the off-grid life of Will and Tom?
Where I come from it is not so unusual to live like Will and Tom. Maybe not quite so intensely as they do … but being able to spend time in the bush and by the sea and to live simply, away from the internet, climbing trees, reading books and eating plainly, these things are what me and my friends aspire to do in our summer at Christmas-time and through new year. I am vegan so I live pretty simply and mindfully anyway.
You are from a family of actors and screenwriters. Did you always see yourself entering the business?
No, I hated acting when I was a kid, even though I did it sometimes. It was a part-time job that enabled me to buy Bratz dolls and stuff. It was relentless in my family. My parents, my three siblings, are all actors, writers, directors – even my 91-year-old grandmother is an actress who is still working. She and I share an apartment downstairs, away from everyone else in the family. Acting, acting, acting – it was the last thing I wanted to do. But when I was 13, I played a real-life person called Louise Nicholas in a film called Consent and I realised that acting is a pathway to be able to tell a story that will make a difference. Louise is still a mentor and friend for me.
One of the film’s most memorable scenes sees you handling a hive of honeybees with your bare hands. How scary was it?
Not so much scary as amazing … I think the bees are what have left the deepest mark on me from Leave No Trace. Standing there in front of the hive and feeling the warmth and hearing the noise of that hive was a deep experience for me. These little creatures had the power to band together and kill me if they decided to. I just had to trust them as they settled on my bare hands, and be open to their power. Watching them work together in such an intricate pattern was profound. Actually – it was a lot like watching a really great film crew.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion