Mendes more than ‘The Girl’
In “The Spirit,” Eva Mendes plays a conniving jewel thief who has managed to kill all 14 of the men she has married.
It’s a fabulous role for any woman, she insists, and especially for her.
“I get to do something here,” she says, meaning something more than stand-around-looking-pretty.
She is good at standing around, slightly off-center, as some leading man’s gorgeous girlfriend or as the voluptuous temptress who gets what she wants. And it has gotten her what she wants: a viable career as an actress.
Only now, she says, “I just want more-layered roles.”
Hence the gun-toting jewel thief in a comic-book noir drama by Frank Miller, who also directed “Sin City.” In “The Spirit,” Mendes joins Scarlett Johansson and Samuel L. Jackson as the targets of the quasi-human superhero played by Gabriel Macht.
Mendes had never heard of the comic, which ran in newspapers in the 1940s. She recalls being intrigued first by her character’s hard edges, then by what was underneath.
To translate those layers from paper to screen, Mendes worked with her trusted acting coach, Ivana Chubbuck, to unravel the role.
“As superficial as she may look and as stereotypical as you may think she is, there’s a lot of pain under there,” she says of the character, whose cop father was killed when she was a child. “And that’s all I needed to give me an excuse to go further with the character.”
Mendes says she spent much of her time leading up to the shoot studying the manners and styles of great actresses of the ’40s. In examining the ways of Ava Gardner, Bette Davis and the like, she came to admire their “almost equal balance of femininity and masculinity.”
“They would be unbelievably polished and put together, but they would say what came to their minds. They were very opinionated,” she says. “And there were actually much better roles for women.”
From the outset, Mendes’ roles have been those that call for “a beautiful woman.” The Miami native decided midway through college that she wanted to act, dropping out of school to pursue the career.
In 2001 she got her first big break, playing Denzel Washington’s girlfriend in “Training Day.” Four years later her profile shot up again after the release of “Hitch,” in which she plays the object of Will Smith’s desire.
“Playing ‘The Girl’ put me on the map,” Mendes says. “You have to build and start somewhere. And I have a plan. It’s not like I’m taking these roles just to work.”
Mendes says she’s particularly proud of the roles she has chosen this year, in “The Spirit” and then in a remake of “Bad Lieutenant” with Nicolas Cage. And she recently finished shooting “Last Night,” an ensemble drama with Keira Knightley.
“So I definitely feel artistically satisfied,” she says.
The birthday bunch
Actress Mary Tyler Moore is 71. Actor Jon Voight is 70. Singer Marianne Faithfull is 62. Jockey Laffit Pincay Jr. is 62. Actor Ted Danson is 61. Singer-actress Yvonne Elliman is 57. Actress Patricia Clarkson is 49. Comedian Paula Poundstone is 49. Movie director Andy Wachowski is 41. Actor Jude Law is 36. Actor Shawn Hatosy is 33. Actor Diego Luna is 29.