Actress Eva Amurri

Eva Amurri is brilliant. Her mother Susan Sarandon is still somewhat better-known to the masses, but this is changing: the actress, who first gained recognition for her portrayal of the rebellious Cassandra in the 2004 film Saved!, has been making up rapidly for the time she took off from acting in order to attend Brown University... four years about which she waxes rhapsodic, by the way. Her film The Life Before Her Eyes came out earlier this year, she has a plethora of other projects going through the festival circuit, she works with the UN, and she's fully phenomenal. What follows is a conversation I had with her over the summer. Enjoy!

Hi! How are you?
I’m good. How are you? I tried calling you before, and it said all circuits were busy…

Ah, weird.
But now we’re connected.

Now we’re connected, yeah! I was told that you were traveling just recently. Were you going anywhere interesting?
Well, about three weeks or a month ago I was in Africa for two weeks. It was great. It was with the UN program that I work with. Then I came home, then I went to Miami for an impromptu weekend, and then I came home again, and then I went to the West Coast, which is where I’ve been for the past few weeks.

Wow. All over the place!
Yeah, it’s been crazy, but it’s a lot of fun.

So now you’re back in New York?
Yeah.

You’ve grown up in New York, right? So you’re fond of the city, I guess.
Yeah. I grew up basically half in Italy and half in America, and when I was in America I would be in New York. Unless one of my parents was working somewhere else. [laughs] But then after college I moved back here and not to L.A., which was a very conscious decision. You know, obviously makes things harder for the job that I have.

Yeah. But then again, New York is a hub for so many industries as well, besides acting.
Yeah, that’s what I like about it, and also New York kind of keeps me alive, you know what I mean? [laughter] Keeps me interested in a lot of different things, just the way my friends are. I have hardly any friends in the business; I met them out of college and moved here, so I like that about it. Yeah, it’s nice to go to LA every now and then and see people who I’ve met in work, or old friends, and get some actual work done! [laughs] But it’s nice to come back home and have my real life.

And New York also has a subway.
[laughs] Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

You mentioned the UN program you’re a part of. Could you talk about that?
Yeah, it’s this program called Heroes that I’ve been a part of for basically as long as it’s been started. It’s a pretty young program, and I’m their Goodwill Ambassador, and it’s great. It’s an awareness-building and fundraising initiative that works to aid children affected by HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and a lot of that is through a work system, so we go in and revamp schools that area already there, and we build schools or add classrooms, and we try to reinstate more comprehensive curriculums into certain schools—and feeding programs and things like that, because for a lot of the kids the only meal that they’re eating is their school meal. So we’re trying to make sure that they’re at least getting that. And, really, it’s amazing. Last year I was in rural Namibia and on this last trip I was in South Africa with them up in the mountains, and I love it. I mean, I really love—love, love, love—working with kids and in education, so it’s something that kind of came into my lap and I ran with it. [laughs] And I love it. It’s my favorite thing that I do besides my work, so it’s a really nice experience to have.

So how did you become involved with the project?
Well, they came to me, basically. I’ve always been really interested in education and wanted to do something like that, sort of more—because I’d been doing work with non-profits in high school but I hadn’t really done anything global, and I wanted to do something global, especially after school. So they approached me about it and it just sounded so interesting, like it was right up my alley, and I really liked that it was a program that was just starting, because I like to kind of get involved with things from the ground up, and it’s really fun, I think, to see how something grows. So, yeah, I just kind of signed off on it and now I’m really close to all the heads of the program, which is going to happen when you’re traveling to Africa together for weeks at a time! [laughs] Those long flights, and so on. Yeah, I did a benefit in March for them that was really fun, and, yeah, I’ve just kind of been doing that as my other life when I’m not doing my acting stuff.

Wow, that sounds incredible. So you really contributed to its growth, then.
Yeah, that’s exactly it, because when you’re working with the people that are actually running the program a lot of the time people will talk about what’s working and what’s not working and it’s nice to have a voice in everything.

So you were also working with the program when you were still at Brown?
No, I wasn’t yet. I think it was, like, the week after I graduated was when they approached me about it.

Speaking of Brown, you graduated last year, right?
Yep.

And you took time off from acting to go to Brown, which not every actor chooses to do.
Yeah. It was definitely a difficult decision. Not so much in deciding what I wanted to do—I always knew that I was going to school. It wasn’t really an option. You know, I think it’s really important for everyone to go to college and I wish that more people had the opportunity to go. But it was hard, because I’d just done this movie that was about to come out and people were finally going to see me in a lead part, and to make the choice to get off of that track for four years was a big deal at the time. But I was really happy I did it; I learned so much in college, and not just in terms of educational material. You learn so much about yourself, about how the world works, about how the world doesn’t work, and I’ve always thought that what makes a good actor is experience. You know, if you don’t have any experience to draw from, what are you exactly trying to communicate to people? So it was just going to make my world as an actor so much smaller if I didn’t have even more experience. So I went, and it was great. I loved it. But, you know, it’s definitely hard to—well, actually, I did work. I did a couple movies in the summer between my junior and my senior years, which was so difficult because I had to end up going to do makeup work because I was a month late. I missed a month of my first semester of senior year, so—let alone finding professors that would let me take their class if I wasn’t going for a month was insane. It was insane. I was, like, fielding emails all day from my trailer; I was writing papers and doing makeup work basically until the end of the first semester. It was hell. But it was worth it, it was definitely worth it.

So what two films were the ones that you filmed that summer?
One is The Education of Charlie Banks, which was actually filmed at Brown!

[laughs] Oh, how appropriate!
[laughter] It was crazy. It was really funny, I packed up all my stuff and came home for the summer, and two days later I was packing up my stuff and going back up there because we were filming up there. But it was really cool to see the place in the summer. It was actually the first movie that Brown let film on its campus.

Oh, wow!
Yeah, which is pretty awesome. It’s actually a really cool movie; I’m sad that it’s—it did great at the festivals; it was at Tribeca at least a year ago, and it actually did really well. And it actually won an award for direction or something, and then… I guess it happens with those independents: they kind of drop the ball and then you never see them again.

Well, you never know. It might still get seen yet—could you talk more about the film?
Yeah, the film is sort of a coming-of-age drama. It has Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Ritter and Chris Marquette and Sebastian Stan. And me. [laughs] Sort of a boys’ club. And it’s about the kid who, in high school, witnesses something really violent that this bully does and tells on him, and he always wonders whether or not the bully knew it was him. And he goes to college next year and is kind of about to start dating this girl, me, and he has his best friend from the ‘hood—it’s all based in New York. Then the college is supposed to be like Vassar or something. So he’s up there at school, and this guy, the bully of his youth, shows up at college because of his best friend. And he doesn’t know. And they sort of become friends, but at the same time there’s this huge elephant in the room because nobody knows whether anybody’s told him, and of course the bad boy steals his girlfriend and starts dating me because that’s what bad boys do…

[laughs]
But, yes, it’s good. Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Ritter are really good in it. And Fred Durst directed it, so it’s kind of a novelty thing for that reason, anyway. But so there’s that, and two weeks after I wrapped that I started The Life Before Her Eyes, which came out in May.

Yeah, that one did come out more recently, and in that one you played Maureen.
Yeah.

Who’s a pious Christian, and a total opposite of the main character, Diana, played by Evan Rachel Wood. Right?
Exactly. So it’s a total 180. Just two weeks before, I’d been playing this sort of promiscuous governor’s daughter, upper-class, you know, flirting with everybody. [laughs] And the next week or something I was another person. It was really tough.

Yeah, and Maureen is also really different not only from the role of Mary [in The Education of Charlie Banks], as you said, but also from your role in Saved! as Cassandra, for which you’re known.
Right. That was kind of the appeal, though. That’s why I like to do it. I think the only way actors get bad is when they get bored, and I hope to never get bored. [laughs] I hope to never get bored.

With that in mind, could you also talk about the film Middle of Nowhere?
Yeah. That one I’m really excited about. That one is kind of a coming-of-age almost romantic comedy, I would call it. It’s very funny. It’s with Anton Yelchin—

Oh, he was fantastic in Charlie Bartlett.
He’s amazing. Such a great guy. We really got along well. So the two of us; my mom came and did a small part one of the weeks, and she played my mom— [laughs] we thought it would be fun to work together again; and then Willa Holland, from The O.C., plays my little sister. It’s basically the story about a girl who comes from a not-so-wealthy family, by any means, and she has kind of a bad relationship with her mother, which I’m sure that a lot of teenagers can related to! [laughter] And all she wants to do is get out of this small town that she feels is totally stifling her, and she wants to be a doctor, but she has no money. And she’s not getting any attention from her family. Her father has died, as you find out, and her mother just isn’t really interested in her at all, for whatever reason. And meanwhile there’s this young boy, younger than she is, he’s like sixteen, who’s the opposite. He’s from this very, very wealthy family, but really kind of uncomfortable with himself and with his family. He hates his family too, but he’s kind of a rebel. You know, a rich rebel. And he’s always getting into trouble, and finally the last straw happens and his parents say, “We’re sending you to live with your uncle for the summer and you’re gonna get a job, and you’re gonna live in this Podunk town,” and of course it’s the same town I live in and it’s the same job I’m working at, which is this shitty water park. So it’s one of those things where it starts off and he’s annoying me and he has a huge crush on me and I hate him and he loves me, and to get to have a friendship with me he decides to start to earn money for the summer, because he’s getting paid nothing. He starts selling weed, but he doesn’t have a car, and I have a car. So he convinces me to drive around while he does his drug deals, and we’ll split the profits fifty-fifty.

[laughs] Wow.
So we strike up this friendship, and then we kind of become family for each other. Like a new family.

And then your character gets the money for college.
Well… yeah. There’s a few complications. [laughter] But, yeah, that’s the idea. That’s the idea. But that’s cool, because that’s premiering at Toronto in September, so hopefully someone will buy it there and then it’ll be out in the fall.

Yeah, on IMDb, the plot, which doesn’t mention the boy, just the mother-daughter dynamic—
Sometimes I feel like IMDb is more trouble than it’s worth. I mean, I’ve seen more weird things on IMDb than are true. [laughs] And they have nothing to do with what the story’s actually about, and they don’t even have the actors that are in the movie, and it’s like, “Really.” It’s very misleading.

Well, at the same time, it did show me the cast, which immediately got me excited, because it seems like it’s got a great cast.
Yeah. It’s fun. It was so fun. I mean, when you’re working on these projects, it is so much about the work and about telling the story, but it’s also about the people you meet, like with any job, so when you’re working with somebody that’s really exciting and that you just know you’re going to know forever, that’s awesome. And working on that movie was definitely one of those times. But hopefully I can work with Anton again. I mean, he’s doing all kinds of big stuff. He’s doing Star Trek and now he’s doing Terminator… I’m sorry to sound it out, but am I ever going to see him again!? [laughter]

Oh, yeah, he’s getting all over the place.
He deserves it, though. He’s awesome.

I was wondering—this isn’t directly related to any of your films, but I was wondering if you had any theatre experience or plans to do something in theatre.
Yeah, I would love to do theatre. I would love it. You know, in the past year since I’ve been out of school, I’ve been more focusing on film work, but I would love to do theatre. The trouble with theatre is that I have zero acting training. I have never taken one acting class; I’ve never done—I mean, really zero training. And it’s such a specific community. I mean, you know the theatre community in New York that’s doing all the shows with the same actors booked for stuff all the time, and it has nothing to do with film, and to break into it is kind of difficult. More difficult than people think. [laughs] I mean, obviously, with theatre they’re going to hire people who really know what they’re doing in theatre! Unless, you know, you’re perfect for the part. But I feel like, in theatre, there’s a lot more of auditioning hundreds of times before you get something, which is fine, which I’d be willing to do. But, yeah, it’s definitely a whole different animal that takes experience.

New York’s the perfect place, though, in terms of exploring that world.
Yeah. And, also, doing theatre is such an education. You learn so much doing that. I mean, I say that with every job, but you really do learn a lot, and I feel like it’s something that I should definitely, definitely do at some point.

Right. I mean, it’s so incredibly different from film, but at the same time doing one gives you insight into the other, I would imagine.
Yeah. I think, also that there’s something to be said about how in film it’s as much about your performance as it is about what the editors and directors decide to keep of your performance. Any time you see a movie, it’s like one percent of what that actor did in that role. So in theatre everything you do is all there, it’s completely unedited, and it can be whatever you want it to be, which is cool. And also scary, actually! [laughs] But, yeah, that stuff definitely has an appeal also.

I also wanted to ask about another project you have coming up. You are one of the many awesome cast members of the upcoming New York, I Love You.
Yeah. Yes. That was funny, actually; I got the call about that—I’d known they were doing it because Anton did Brett Ratners’s short for it—

[laughs] You’re both in the movie but you’re not in the same piece!
Yeah! I actually visited him on set, because he called me and said, “I’m in New York!” I was like, “You’re in New York? Yaaaay!” [laughter] And then I saw him on set and he was doing his little thing, and a week later I was in Dallas because The Life Before Her Eyes was in the festival and I got this call and they were like... [switching abruptly into a stern voice] “You need to get on a plane in one hour if you want to do this role in New York, I Love You.” I was like, “Okay! Bye, everybody in Dallas! See you later!” [laughter] And I got on the plane. And this film’s not exactly a sequel but it’s kind of in sequence with the Parisian one, you know?

Oh, yes, Paris, Je t’Aime. It’s the same concept applied to New York.
Yeah, the exact same concept, except in the Parisian one there isn’t really something that ties all the shorts together. They kind of just flow into each other. So in this one they wanted to do something that was more, you know, had sort of a common thread. So they had these little segments in between the shorts that would have a consistent story and at the same time tie in characters from the other shorts, just to make it more cohesive. So I was in that. I was one of the characters in that. But it was just amazing, the different people that I got to work with on these day-long shoots! One day, it was Cloris Leachman and Eli Wallach playing my grandparents, and I was just in heaven. It was the most surreal experience ever. And Eli Wallach is, like, ninety-five. [laughter] And Cloris Leachman’s pretty crazy. But that was amazing, and then another day Justin Bartha was playing my boyfriend and we’re fighting while running around in midtown… it was really, really fun. But, you know, a short shoot, obviously. Everybody only worked for like three or four days.

Oh, yeah. Wow, that sounds incredible.
Yeah, it was so fun. It was so fun, and it was nice to be a part of it, too, because New York is my city. You know? So it was nice to be back.

Where did you shoot? Midtown and where else?
We shot everywhere. I mean, I shot in Williamsburg, and Midtown, the East Village, and… where else… West Village… we shot everywhere. They shot in Central Park, in Prospect Park, they shot in Chinatown… it’s pretty cool.

Oh, yeah, it looks incredible. I’m looking forward to seeing it. It’s coming out next year, right?
Yeah. I think so. Or it’ll probably go to Tribeca Film Festival first, and so on.

Did Paris, Je t’Aime go to any film festivals?
I think it probably went to Cannes, but I’m not sure.

Okay, I think we actually have to draw the interview to a close. Thanks so much; it was great talking to you!
Yeah, no problem. My pleasure. Have a good one!

This ends the interview. You can keep your eye on the surely stellar Miz Amurri by checking her out on IMDb (which is still a very useful website, even if she has her qualms with their willy-nilly way of updating information).