“I just want to hobble in this things,” she sighs toward her shoes. “I mean they’re just stilts really. I knew I was doing interviews today so I’m walking tall. As soon as you walk out that door, I’m going to be hugging my toes. But right now, I’m swaying.”
Swaying has always been a thing with the alabaster star of The Departed and Orphan. Born to systems analyst Mykhailo and schoolteacher Luba in a Ukrainian speaking, Catholic enclave of New Jersey – the actress didn’t learn English until she was 7 – young Vera first came to prominence as part of a world-famous Ukrainian folk-dancing ensemble.
“In Ukrainian culture, dance is very important, very rich in folklore,” she explains. “Our ensemble was based out of New York and we told stories through dance and incorporated ballet and a bit of modern. We toured opera houses all over. We did a national tour of the Ukraine. I was very lucky.”
She set out to train as an optometrist but the thrill of performance had already taken hold. It suits her: she was landing Broadway roles within weeks of graduation from Syracuse University’s School of Visual and Performing Arts.
But dance, evidently, has never left her. In addition to a complex range of emotional grammar, no actor since John Wayne has worked so hard to define characters through movement and stance. Across a series of high profile supporting roles - Autumn in New York, 15 Minutes and The Manchurian Candidate (2004) - she has proved the old conciliatory Hollywood maxim ‘there are no small parts, only small actors’. Every character she plays seems to have a signature pose or a signature walk.
“Absolutely,” she says. “Movement is as important to me as the inner emotional life. It’s something I do acknowledge and try to sculpt. I’ve always been a snooper. I wonder why somebody is moving a certain way. Are they hobbling because they feel bad or because they’re wearing ridiculous shoes like I am right now? How you look is not a superficial thing. You read so much into a person from their hair, from their dress. These are great tools for any actor.”
Her dedication to precision is a key component of her success. When she was starting out, whenever she happened on an interesting script or a role that sounded plum, she put herself in a short film as the character she would like to play.
“My husband was the cinematographer,” she laughs. “I just felt it was far more productive than the traditional audition process. That kind of pressure isn’t realistic. If you’re trying to convey how you’d play a character on screen it makes sense that you’re on screen in the first place.”
Meeting Vera Farmiga you immediately get a feel for her process. She is, as she puts it, ‘a snooper’ who shakes hands and makes small talk with passing waiters and PR girls, the people most Hollywood stars don’t even see.
“I don’t think of myself as remotely Hollywood or even famous,” she says. “I live in Ulster County, New Jersey. I’m such a homebody. I’m one of seven children and my husband is one of seven children. He’s my anchor and my sunrise. We like being home. I’m a very tethered person and I like it that way.”
Her domestic bliss with musician Renn Hawkey (her husband of three years) and their son, Fynn, hasn’t prevented Ms. Farmiga from climbing the slippery pole. Her remarkable turn in Down To The Bone earned her an armful of awards including the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress and a Special Jury Prize at Sundance. She has also been honoured by the National Board of Review, Empire Magazine, the Screen Actors Guild, the Golden Globes and every Critics Association you can name.
She has played leading lady to Heath Ledger, Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio and can now add George Clooney to her list of onscreen conquests. Up In The Air, a whipsmart comedy from Juno director Jason Reitman, stars Mr. Clooney and Ms. Farmiga (in a part written specifically for her) as high flying business travellers whose very French affair coalesces into something less flippant.
“She leapt off the page for me”, says the actress. “To see female desire portrayed in that way, as unapologetic and demanding and what we traditionally think of as masculine. She’s a kind of libertine. Since we started touring this movie I can’t tell you how many middle age women have been whooping for me. I was worried I was going to get booed off the stage.”
The big female melodramatic roles of old may have disappeared but Ms. Farmiga insists that there’s plenty of meat in wife and mother parts if you’re prepared to take them seriously.
“I think I’ve made a career out of playing mothers and wives,” she says. “But the complexities within those descriptions are incredible. I love playing mothers. I love playing wives. I love finding out who they are and how they get the world to accommodate them.”
On that note, she is particularly pleased when I enquire about her role as a pressurised mom in last year’s Orphan, a splendid film that was panned by US critics and adored by their European equivalents.
“I love talking about this,” she says. “I love genre films and it was such an appealing project for me. It read like one of those great Polanski horrors like Repulsion. I was very happy with it. I’m not the kind of actor who ever takes a role for a pay check and I thought it was a genuinely fascinating character and film. I was really surprised by the American critics. All the reviews mentioned that myself and Peter (Sarsgaard, her co-star) were like “real” actors and had no reason or justification making a film like this. It was like we were to blame for something terrible.”
She laughs it off. “I don’t really mind if only a minority got the film. I’m used to it. I used to be a Ukrainian folk dancer, remember?”