Interview with Frances McDormand on her new film – Nomadland – UK Exclusive
Oscar winning Frances McDormand is the most fascinating and enigmatic actor on the A-list right now. Having her pick of the most heavily funded movies, its revealing she chose Nomadland (see the brilliant trailer here) – which she produced as well as starring in – a relatively low budget feature about the Snowbirds – mainly older Americans -who travel the country in RVs and other vehicles, looking for work and sun.
The film opens February 2021, and has already received once-in-a-decade reviews at film festivals. “Chloe Zhao‘s ‘‘Nomadland” is that rare creation that not only lives up to the hype but also makes you forget about it, ” said one reviewer. “This is a gentle, humane and dizzyingly poetic ode to the people on the fringes of American society, the ones who choose to wander and drift across the great Western landscape,” says another. “Frances McDormand gives a performance that is so alive and unguarded that it feels like non-fiction.”
It’s relevant that 63-year-old McDormand is one of the few in Hollywood who manages to preserve a normal life outside the film world, appearing in public only rarely – usually to promote a film – but only if she believes in it. Nomadland is a passion project for McDormand, and for Director Chloe Zhao. “As I get older, the most important thing for me became the environment where my cellular structure feeds. And in that sense, it has nothing to do with bricks and concrete. I love the land.”
McDormand spoke about her similarities to the person she plays in the movie, Fern – a 60-something woman searching for work and identity and opening up to the possibilities of life on the road.
“It’s interesting, because the biggest difference between me and Fern is that I left my house, left behind my working class life when I was 17, and never came back. But in the film, Fern makes a very important decision to align herself with a man who fell in love with her,But she doesn’t create her own destiny until she was 61. I mean, she starts at 61, which I had started at 17. That’s why I don’t think her life is so much like mine.”
“Well, I’ve been practicing the idea of pretending to be someone else for 38 years now. I think there’s always a part of every character which has some resemblance the actor’s life. And in this case, it’s much closer. But I don’t know if I can say she’s just like me.”
As a child McDormand lived a nomadic lifestyle – travelling with her parents. Is this relevant to the nomadic lifestyle portrayed in the movie?
She was adopted with her sister, by the McDormand family, and together lived in Georgia, Kentucky, Tennesee and Pennsylvania. Frances won a place at the prestigious Yale Drama School. It was there …
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