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Independent, industrious Parker PoseyActress currently starring in 'Personal Velocity'
By Todd Leopold
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Put Parker Posey to work. Please. Sure, the actress appears to be enjoying a successful career -- she's currently starring in the independent film "Personal Velocity," which is gradually opening around the country in December, and she's just done another film with director Christopher Guest, for whom she acted in "Best in Show" -- but finding roles never gets any easier. Though she is generally associated with low-budget independent films, the actress Time magazine once called "The Queen of the Indies" (a title she loathes) is not fussy. "I'll do anything," she said in an interview with a roundtable of reporters in an Atlanta hotel suite. "I'm trying to work." It is almost a compulsion for Posey, 34, a self-described "working actress" who has appeared in seven theatrical films since 2000. (That's not even including her turn in this year's TV movie "Hell on Heels: The Battle of Mary Kay" and a role in last year's TV miniseries "Further Tales of the City.") If it's "Josie and the Pussycats," fine; if it's something meaty such as "The Anniversary Party" or "Velocity," all the better. She acts as easily as she breathes. "I'm just a natural at it," she admitted. She recalls a monologue from Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night." The 15-year-old Posey was playing drug-addicted matriarch Mary Tyrone, and as she started her speech, she went blank. She lost herself and started to cry. "I was so ashamed," she recalled. But a nearby teacher knew her acting had power. "Look around," Posey was told. "Everyone's crying with you." 'Revealing yourself to yourself'"Personal Velocity," written and directed by Rebecca Miller (playwright Arthur Miller's daughter), is a triptych of character studies about women in New York City and upstate.
It also stars Kyra Sedgwick, as an abused working-class mother, and Fairuza Balk, as a punkish 20 something who flees a shocking crime. Posey plays Greta, an editor for a Manhattan book publisher. Greta is a Harvard-educated underachiever, gliding along at the lower rungs of her business and living comfortably, if uncertainly, with her graduate student husband. One day, a hot author takes a shine to her and asks her to edit his new novel. From then on, Greta's career takes off -- but perhaps at the expense of her soul. She has an affair with the author, wrecks her marriage and struggles to come to terms with her distant relationship to her wealthy father. Posey said she was able to get into the part easily. "I've seen that girl. I've known that girl," she said. "But what I really like about her was being able to portray a character who is a couple things at once. ... It's that kind of thing where you're so self-conscious you're revealing yourself to yourself all the time." Filming on "Personal Velocity" went quickly, she said. The movie was shot on digital video, there was no rehearsal, the set was loose and friendly, and Posey was finished in six days. That contrasted greatly with her experience on "Scream 3," which -- though enjoyable -- had plenty of frills and free time. "There would be actors on cell phones between takes," she said. "That would never happen on an independent film." 'My sacred space'Posey's next role, in Christopher Guest's "A Mighty Wind," was not quite as natural as that of Greta. She plays a member of the "New Main Street Singers," a band from the early days of folk music. She learned how to play the mandolin to do the part. (Guest's own band, Spinal Tap, appears as "The Folksmen.")
"A Mighty Wind," which is scheduled for a spring premiere, will be Posey's third film with Guest and his improvisational crew -- including Michael McKean and Eugene Levy -- after "Waiting for Guffman" and "Best in Show." She relishes the opportunity to work with that cast. "That's like my sacred space, my joy," she said. Guest tends to work outside the studio system, making his movies on a shoestring and then lining up a major for distribution, so once again Posey is working with the independents. She laments the pigeonholing, especially since it appears that challenging roles and big-budget films seldom co-exist in today's Hollywood. "My agent said, the studio system is more open to you now that you've done 'Josie and the Pussycats,' " she said. "To them, it's like the relative who didn't make it to the wedding or the family reunion -- the outsider. "So I hope that changes, but I don't know," she said. "[I have] this career [with independents], and I have a whole separate career [with the studio system], and they never cross over."
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What I really like about her was being able to portray a character who is a couple things at once.
