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Close Up: Kelli Garner
Posted by Rob Ortenzi on 11-Jan-08 @ 06:28 PM
ALL THE REAL GIRLSAs far as we know, KELLI GARNER is the only actress to ever work with both Larry Clark (in Bully) and Martin Scorsese (in The Aviator). As if that weren't enough, the 23-year-old also starred in Mike Mills' quirky 2005 comedy (and AP favorite) Thumbsucker and last year's highly stylized indie drama Dreamland. Then how come this girl isn't a household name yet? Well, that's about to change this month when she stars opposite Ryan Gosling in Lars And The Real Girl, a romantic comedy in which the titular "real girl" is either Garner's character or a sex doll Gosling's character passes off as his girlfriend. Make no mistake, though: Garner is totally real in every way. INTERVIEW: J. Bennett PHOTO: LeAnn Mueller Is it true that you were discovered at a bar mitzvah? Yeah, I was. The kid [who was having his] bar mitzvah was a young actor, and his manager was there. My mom had made my dress-it was baby blue-so I looked kinda cute and homemade, you know? I was just dancing around and doing the limbo-and not many of the other girls there were doing that so [the manager] decided to approach me and ask if I was interested in the film business. I just kinda laughed. I was really young, like 14, and I was really into soccer at the time. I was thinking I was gonna maybe play for a while and try to do something with that. But I took his card and a couple of months later decided to give him a call. I went on two commercial auditions-for Starburst and Eggo Waffles-and booked them back-to-back. It was like, "Well, shit. Here we go..." What did you think of the script for Lars And The Real Girl when you first read it? I was like, "I have to do this." I don't think I was the type of actress they were looking for, but I got the script about a year before I even auditioned, and this was one of those magical, blue-moon projects where everyone who read it knew it would be a special film. It's really rare to find a movie that's sincere and real and not just smoke and mirrors. It's a really special, altruistic movie. It just wants to give life and love and meaning and darkness and weirdness. I think the quality that this film captured is one that we often lack as a human race, and I hope people will agree. Have you actually ever met a dude who owns one of those [Real Doll] sex dolls? No, but I like watching Real Sex on HBO and they did an episode about how those dolls are made and how you can choose their hair color and stuff. That was the first I'd even heard of them, and I was like, "Holy shit!" Then the director [of Lars And The Real Girl] told me about this book that I ended up picking up called Still Lovers, which contains portraits of people with their dolls. Did you know those dolls cost, like, $6,000? Not exactly an impulse buy. [Laughs.] Right. In the movie, Lars pays that money not to do what you think he'll do with it. He pays for companionship-and he gets it in this really weird way. I have to say, I was nervous to meet my co-star. [Laughs.] It seems like you're the only person who's ever been in a Larry Clark film and a Martin Scorsese film. How would you compare the two directors? They're like night and day. Larry Clark is infamous in his own way-as a director and a photographer-and that was my first big film. I was 16, maybe 17 at the time. Working with him pushed me in the direction of being the kind of actor I wanted to be, and it was a crazy experience. It was raw and in your face and cameras were rolling when you didn't know they were. By the time I worked with Martin Scorsese, I was leaning more toward the actress that I am-I was a little more seasoned and experienced-but I definitely wasn't prepared to be working with Martin Scorsese. I've never worked on a movie with a budget that big: They rebuilt the Coconut Grove to scale and you're wearing shoes from Italy that were made for your feet. Your wardrobe is from the 1940s and you have security guards following you around because you're wearing hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of diamonds. Leonardo DiCaprio is your boyfriend and then someone tells you to eat ice cream and yells, "Action!" It was epic and terrifying and totally fucking weird. I would imagine that most AP readers would be just as likely to recognize you from the Green Day video you did ["Jesus Of Suburbia"] as any film you've been in. I know! The other day, I was at the Burbank airport and this girl came up to me, like, shaking. She said, "I'm sorry, but aren't you the girl from the Green Day video?" She was obviously a hardcore Green Day fan because she was really excited. What's the best rumor you've heard about yourself? Ooh... The best rumor? I don't really get too many of those, but the one thing I hear a lot is that my chest isn't real. But whoever thinks that must be a fucking idiot-there's a pretty obvious difference. ALT CHEAT SHEET >> Larry Clark aficionados will recognize Kelli Garner from the director's 2001 film BULLY; her next big role was opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese's 2004 Howard Hughes biopic THE AVIATOR, followed by the offbeat indie THUMBSUCKER, alongside Lou Taylor Pucci. This month she stars opposite Ryan Gosling in LARS AND THE REAL GIRL-but you just might recognize her as the psycho-punk girlfriend from Green Day's 10-minute "Jesus Of Suburbia" clip. ALT THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE Kelli Garner's car CD-changer currently features music from Peeping Tom ("I'm a huge Mike Patton fan," she says), Prince, Fiona Apple and Rilo Kiley. "I think I actually might be in love with [Rilo Kiley frontwoman] Jenny Lewis. She embodies everything perfect and fragile and strong. She's amazing to me and fantastically beautiful, too. I've met her a couple times and I'm sure she doesn't remember, but I tried not to stutter." When asked what her first concert was, Garner can't keep from cracking up. "Oh, shit, it's awful," she replies. "It was *NSYNC, but you know what? I'm not gonna lie and say I was too cool for school. I was 15 and I was fuckin' stoked to be there." Garner was equally psyched for her most recent show, when she and a friend waited in line for 12 hours outside of the now-defunct Tower Records in Hollywood in hopes of being among the 200 fans granted entrance to a special Icky Thump release-day performance by the White Stripes. "I got a horrible sunburn, but I was number 164 and my friend was number 165," she enthuses. "And Icky Thump is fuckin' amazing." ALT |
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