During a trip to Dallas last week to promote The White Countess, Natasha Richardson sits in her suite at The Mansion having the same thought many a business traveler has had before making that mad dash back to D/FW Airport.
"I wish I could have spent another day in Dallas, because I need to buy some more Lucchese boots. Mine are beginning to wear a bit thin," she says, kicking her current pair up on the coffee table. "If I could get some cowboy boots and a margarita, then I'd feel like I haven't totally wasted my time," she says with a laugh.
In The White Countess, Ms. Richardson plays Sofia, a deposed Russian royal living in exile in 1930s Shanghai. The film marks the final collaboration of the storied Ismail Merchant-James Ivory production team, and during our visit, the 42-year-old actress talked about the famed duo, what it's like to work with your mother and what makes a Russian a Russian:
Question: What attracted you to The White Countess?
Answer: I just fell in love with the part. And the idea of working with Merchant-Ivory. I just thought it was a beautiful, poignant, lyrical love story. I'd always wanted to be in a romantic epic, and I think this is the closest I'm gonna get. It's like a throwback to the Dr. Zhivagos and Casablancas. ... And they asked my mother [Vanessa Redgrave] and my aunt [Lynn Redgrave] to do it as well. And then you get to go to China for three months and have an adventure there. So it was a great offer.
Question: What was adventurous about the trip?
Answer: I nearly died a few times! The traffic is insane there. There's a huge influx of commercialism and money, and the economy has just completely boomed, and maybe the infrastructure hasn't caught up with it. There aren't traffic lights or streetlights, so you often took your life into your own hands trying to get to work at 4 o'clock in the morning.
Question: How did you learn the Russian accent for the part?
Answer: I have a great dialect coach whom I worked with a lot prior to filming. ... But as well as having an authentic Russian accent, I wanted her to be Russian. I wanted to be Russian inside her, with sort of a Russian soul. I did a lot of research, and I talked to a lot of Russian people about what makes that Russian spirit different from an American or an English person's. And a lot of people told me they're quite inscrutable. ... Their emotions are very close to the surface and very quick to change from laughter to tears. So I tried to infuse Sofia with those qualities.
Question: Why is it that English actors like you always seem to be able to do accents, but American actors seem to have trouble?
Answer: I've heard it both ways. I've heard English actors doing American, and their big mistake is they start getting really exaggerated and heavy with it. And I think, "Ah, I don't believe they're an American for a moment." And I have heard Americans try to be English unsuccessfully, but some people, like Gwyneth Paltrow does an excellent English accent. ... If I don't believe an accent, I don't believe a character, and that pulls me right out of the movie.
Question: How is it to work on a Merchant-Ivory production?
Answer: They make films that look so beautiful, with absolute attention to detail. But they're doing it on a shoestring budget.
Question: Was it enjoyable acting with people you know well?
Answer: It's great. I thought it might make me self-conscious, but it didn't. It made me feel really supported. ... It gave us an opportunity to do more work that you might necessarily do had I not known the people involved, because we'd just come back to our hotel room at night and really discuss the scenes.