Jessica Mansfield and Gill Pringle
The power of an actor truly transforming for a role can never be underestimated, and even though doing it again and again can be tricky, one actress who never fails to impress is Sienna Miller.
From High-Rise to Burnt, Sienna Miller is constantly reinventing herself, with her accents and look almost constantly changing as she throws herself into every new character.
Sitting down to chat to FilmInk with her Live By Night co-star Chris Messina, the British actress explained the thinking behind her ever-changing looks.
“I love looking as different as possible in everything,” Miller reveals. “I think as a woman it’s really essential to look completely different all the time, otherwise it’s so easy for people to just bracket you. So, I’ll be chopping off my hair and dyeing it funny colours or ageing up horribly….”
“And you always do, you are unrecognisable in movie to movie,” Messina weighs in on Miller’s transformative abilities. “If you watch Foxcatcher and then see Mississippi Grind, and then see American Sniper and then see this, there could be a chance that you’ll watch the movie and not know she’s in it until the credits roll.”
In her latest film, Live By Night, Miller’s newest creation is Emma Gould, an Irish vixen in 1920s Boston that gets involved with Ben Affleck’s Joe Coughlin. Yet even though she seems like a stereotype, there’s more to Emma for Miller.
“I just loved everything about this part. I loved that she was struggling so much, I loved that she was so brittle, I loved where she ended up. She’s mask-off at the end. I loved that honesty, you don’t really get characters like that for women of my age.”
Even better for Miller, Emma is Irish, and getting the accent just right for this specific character was extremely important. Who better to teach you, of course, than co-star Brendan Gleeson?
“It’s such a specific dialect, and Brendan is really from that area, so on set I could play with him. I had dialect coaches that I was speaking to, and friends who would tape stuff from Cork or around that area, so it was a work in progress, and we went through some weird regions.
“It’s also so specific to that era, and I love the ‘20s…” she says of the film. “It’s mad what they did with their makeup. Especially the molls. It’s kind of horrendous, it’s such a mask but you instantly feel like you’re in that role. It’s quite a lot to play with. But I really like doing an accent, it’s fun to have something like that to hide behind.”
Live By Night is in cinemas from January 26, 2017
