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Leelee
Sobieski was sick when In Line First attended her press
junket interview for the new film, "Here on Earth." So,
if we get sick, at least we can know we're sick with Leelee's
germs.
"I don't know what I'm saying today," she warned. "I swear,
my mind is so clogged with all this snot running through
my system."
The first thing we asked her about was the hair she collects
from all her co-stars. It turns out, she forgot about
her own tradition on the set of this film.
"I didn't get anybody's hair on this movie because I plain
out forgot," Leelee said. "Even though it was in every
single magazine in the world, I forgot to ask for hair.
It just blew right over my head, and so today I got Josh
and Chris."
She took a Sucrets box out of her purse to show us the
hair. In two separate plastic bags, she had a few strands
of hair from each of her "Here on Earth" co-stars, Chris
Klein and Josh Hartnett, who were giving interviews in
the next room.
In the film, Leelee plays a small town girl torn between
her childhood boyfriend (Hartnett) and a prep school boy
(Klein) living in town to repair the restaurant that they
destroyed. In her own life, however, Leelee said hasn't
had the sort of love portrayed in the movie.
"I've had a lot of crushes and things but I haven't really
fallen in 100% love, love, love, where it's just mutual
and wonderful and beautiful. That hasn't happened yet.
I hope it will, but it just hasn't yet. Not too much too
soon."
The themes of love triangles and unrequited love are not
new to the world of Cinema, but Leelee said there is still
something original about "Here on Earth."
"I think 'Here on Earth' has more of a feel of an older
romantic film, when things were kind of more pure. It
has something very fresh and youthful to it. Since comparisons
are inevitable from people like you," she laughed, "then
I don't avoid them. It's okay if you're compared to another
film.
"Films are going to be different, but a love story is
a love story is a love story and somebody dying is somebody
dying and somebody living is somebody living and an unwed
mother and a pregnant woman and a dying man, it's all
been done before. I don't know, what can you do that's
new? But you can. Everything's been done before and nothing
will be original ever again in life and life is awful
and bad," she said, feigning a tragic expression for the
sake of sarcasm.
An important part of making a love story is dealing with
on-screen kisses. Leelee tried to approach this professionally,
but said it was difficult to get over the awkward situation.
"
A kiss is something that's so personal, even much more
than other acts of intimacy. If you think of the women
who sell themselves on 54th street, they don't kiss. So,
sometimes when you're working you feel like, 'God I'm
just like a woman on 54th street because I'm just giving
away my kisses to all these random people.' There's this
camera that's in your face and you walk around and you
feel like everybody on set, men/women everything, they've
all kissed you because they've all been focusing on that
kiss, on that scene. You walk around and you're like,
'Oh my God, you've stolen my lips.' You just feel kind
of strange. |
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"Let me tell you this one funny thing about the kiss.
We used to do this one kiss at 2 in the morning, and I
was so tired I just had to have some coffee to keep me
awake. Chris doesn't like the taste of coffee, so I would
wear this mandarin lip balm, because he likes oranges,
to make the kisses pleasurable for him. By the end of
the filming I had consumed, like, this pot of mandarin
lip balm. If you put it on my lips now, I'll probably
throw up. I just had so much of this stuff.
"Since he doesn't like the taste of coffee it would be:
cut, coffee, 3 altoids, shoot, mandarin lip balm, shoot,
cut, coffee, three altoids. So, by the end I had had so
many altoids it wasn't a very romantic kiss because the
altoids didn't taste very good. He didn't do anything
for me. He was very clean actually. After every meal he
would go into the hair and makeup trailer and brush his
teeth. So, I felt very secure I was kissing this very
clean young gentleman."
Despite the awkwardness inherent in filming romantic scenes,
Leelee spoke highly of working with her male co-stars.
"Chris Klein, my perception of him: I hadn't seen Election
before I met him, so I didn't know anything about his
acting, nor Josh. I hadn't seen anything that either of
them were in, so I just met them like two guys and they
were both just really nice. I think that Chris and Josh
did a really great job, and I have seen some of the film
because I did the voiceover. I was really surprised at
the chemistry between Chris and I because on set we were
much more friendly. On screen it appeared that there was
this great chemistry between us and so I was kind of shocked
by it. I think he certainly is a good actor."
She also described what appealed to her specifically about
the story.
"Since I'm from New York, when I read the script it was
this whole different little world, and it was away from
the city and it was these really good teenagers. They
were nice kids with good values and I thought it was just
really charming."
Leelee hopes to attend college in between her film projects.
She does not want to stop acting for school, but rather
alternate in between school and work a few months at a
time. To conclude, she described her hopes for playing
a wide range of roles.
"It's more interesting to do a big film and a small film,
a mean girl and a nice girl, and a warm girl and a cold
girl and a girl and a boy. Whatever you're gonna play
it's fun to change. You keep changing and you yourself
keep having new experiences and different ways that people
are treating you and different people that know who you
are and different type of work that you do and then you
keep staying interested." |
