Celebrated Living 2007 winter

Rachel Weisz At Her Finest By MARK SEAL BLACK & WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK ABRAHAMS “It made me just want to do comedies,” says Rachel Weisz of the recent birth of her first child, a son, the implications of which, considering the actress’ extremely dramatic career, is surprising. But this being the season of goodness and grace, it’s the perfect metaphor: a move from darkness to light, from femme fatale to funny lady. Therein lies a tale. The raven-haired, porcelain-skinned actress gained fame, of course, for her talent at playing difficult women who revel in making mincemeat of men. First, there was her Broadway role as the conniving art student who dupes her lover in the play and movie The Shape of Things. Then, she won a best supporting actress Oscar for the studentturned-activist whose murder sends her soft-spoken, complacent husband spiraling toward doom in The Constant Gardener. But motherhood sparks major life changes. For Weisz (pronounced Vice), who became a new mother with the arrival of Henry Chance Aronofsky in 2006, she says it made her want to “lighten up.” “I was being offered all of these dramas, and I was like, ‘No, no, no. I want to do comedy,’” she says, calling from New York, having just put the baby to bed. “I wanted to ease back into work. I wanted to try something different than I’d ever done before.” Mission accomplished. Fred Claus is a comedy in which she plays the girlfriend of Santa’s reprobate brother, a repo man who steals what he repossesses, played by Vince Vaughn. Then, in February, she’ll star in Definitely, Maybe, in which a political consultant tries to explain his impending divorce and past relationships to his 11-year-old daughter. Weisz came from England to America on the wings of a dark character named Evelyn, who appears one day at a museum, carrying a can of spray paint. Encountering a young security guard (Paul Rudd in the Broadway production), she seduces him while subjecting him to a drastic makeover that eventually makes a mockery of his life. “Pretty scary chick, huh?” Weisz asks. The role was a long way from what she describes as a happy childhood in Hampstead, North London, where she grew up with one sister, Minnie, now an artist. Her Austrian mother, Ruth, was a teacher turned psychotherapist; father, George, was “an industrialist” who actually “manufactured what he invented; not in the garden shed.” When asked to describe her childhood, she says, “I loved climbing trees. We had a great tree in the garden and I used to climb it.” Weisz learned lessons that would serve her well from her Hungarian grandmother, Kato, who was “very, very petite, very elegant, very chic, on a small budget,” she says. “She always had a manicure and heels. I’m not nearly as groomed as she was. She used to teach us how to eat properly. She could not stand it if we ever ate anything with our hands. We used to go to her house every Sunday. I remember it got a little out of control because we were eating olives, and she tried to make us eat olives with a knife and fork.”

“It was one of those scripts that I read and thought, I have to do this, and I’ll do anything to do it,” she says. She began writing letters to the director, Fernando Meirelles. “I flew around the world to have a meeting. I was very tenacious about it.” Once she won the part, she was off to Nairobi, Kenya, and its Kibera slum, the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa, with more than one million inhabitants. Lake Magadi, with its flock of pink flamingos, is where the cast and crew lived in tents, as there were no hotels, no cities, nothing but open spaces … and need. She became immersed not only in the fictional story, but the sad facts of the country in desperate need. She had visited Kenya many years before as a tourist. This time, however, filming in the Nairobi slum, she underwent a transformation that is prevalent on the screen. She’d never seen poverty on such a massive level. But like her character, who felt most comfortable in the slum, where she could help people, Weisz says she felt most relaxed there, too. Then, it was on to Loiyangalani, where Samburu tribes have lived for thousands of years. It was a region with great beauty, but little facilities, especially for education. True to the film’s spirit of activism, an idea was born. “When we were filming in the shanty town, rather than give money as a location fee, we actually built things in the slum. We built a bridge, fresh water tanks, and restroom facilities, because there was no running water there and there was a badly needed bridge to access one side to the other. So it was kind of about giving back to the community in a really helpful way.” She first saw The Constant Gardener at a screening with two executives from Focus Features and Universal, exiting the screening room excited that everyone “loved it.” Then came Oscar season 2006. Weisz was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, and the drumroll building up to the ceremony began. She was seven months pregnant by the time of the event, where the envelope was opened and Morgan Freeman said, “And the Oscar goes to . . . Rachel Weisz!” “I was just so pregnant!” she says, recalling standing up in her long, black Narciso Rodriguez dress and walking toward the stage, “the baby kicking away. I’d never even been to the Oscars. Then, to have it when you are so pregnant and having to run to the restroom every few minutes. It was just very surreal.” It was also “pretty cool,” she says. “Because I can say to Henry that he went [to the Oscars] and that he won an Oscar.” The reality of the situation they’d left behind in Kenya, however, haunted the cast and crew long after filming wrapped. Just as the film was about something, they felt they had to do something. “The shanty town wasn’t a set. It was a place where we went with a tiny crew, like a documentary. We didn’t dress people in the background in costumes. We interacted with reality.” The film’s producer, Simon Channing-Williams, told his cast he thought the help should continue after the film wrapped. “And we all just said, ‘Yes.’ That was the spirit in the film. That was what the film is really about.”

RACHEL WEISZ Giving Her BestRACHEL WEISZ的最爱 The best gift she's given “What comes to mind is, very recently it was my mom’s 70th birthday. And she always said she wanted a turquoise necklace because she’s got blue eyes. I went to an amazing store in New York called Edith Weber in the Carlyle Hotel. She has all vintage jewelry — very beautiful, beautiful shop. I found this great turquoise necklace and it was her birthday the next day. My girlfriend from London was here, and she took it back on the plane and then I got a taxi to pick it up from the airport and drive it to my mom’s. She got it on her birthday.”

The best gift she's received “At Christmas, my mom always sends me these great nightdresses and pajamas from Marks and Spencer, which I know sounds silly, but they are the greatest. She gives them to me every year; I get a pair of pajamas and a nightdress, and I just always love them. I wear them all year. They’re really comfy and cozy.”

Where she loves to spend the holidays “I grew up in England, and in England everyone celebrates Christmas, you go carol singing — you go around to people’s houses and sing carols, and you go to midnight mass on Christmas Eve. I do go home to celebrate Christmas with my mom. Christmas in London: On Christmas Day, everything stops, like a ghost town. Everybody is indoors having Christmas lunch, having turkey with families. People take it really seriously. It’s like full-on Christmas spirit, Christmas lights, and Regent Street. Everyone goes to watch the lights come on … and Hamleys Toy Store. It’s kind of a tradition; you go and look at the window dressing in Hamleys — it’s incredible. It looks like It’s A Small World, in Disneyland; it’s extraordinary things they put in the windows. It’s really festive in London.”

Where she's going this year “Going to Mexico this year for Christmas and the New Year. I like to stay in the haciendas and then go to the coast. Henry is 16 months. It’s his first time to Mexico. He’s been to Brazil. We went on a holiday for a week to this little island … there are these islands just outside Rio, like a 45-minute plane ride from Rio. There are thousands and thousands of little islands.”

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