By Colonel Scott Perry
For her role as Laura in the new Spanish horror film THE ORPHANAGE, Belen Rueda had to draw from personal experience to deliver one of the most powerful and moving performances of the year. The film deals with the disappearance of a child, and Rueda in real life lost a child to a heart disease shortly after being born...
It was this thematic element that attracted Rueda to the film, her first genre picture. After gaining fame as a television actress in her native Spain, Rueda’s star rose in film with a terrific performance in THE SEA INSIDE, for which she won a Goya Award (the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars) for Best New Actress. Nominated again for THE ORPHANAGE, Rueda provides a combination of strength, determination, and elegance while at the same time displaying a fragile vulnerability in the character who returns to the Orphanage she was raised as a child to help others, while searching for her son who vanishes soon after moving back into the estate.
To promote THE ORPHANAGE, Rueda traveled to New York to take part in a special roundtable to discuss the emotional and physical challenges in constructing one of the best performances of the year.
What a powerhouse performance.
Thank you.
Belen in a scene from The Orphanage
What was it that grabbed you about THE ORPHANAGE when reading the script that made you want to do the film?
When I read the script, I didn’t know anyone that was close to this project. The first time I read it, I liked it very much because it’s the only moment that I feel myself like the audience, and when I read the story I couldn’t get up until I finished the script. I think that because it’s a psychological thriller but you are telling the human story about Laura. It’s not only a terror story, it’s a human story because when something like that happens in your life, everything changes. I like this very much because you can see in the story two different ways: the real way and Laura’s way. You can understand the whole thing, the reality of it but the way Laura’s mind worked, you can understand because if something like that happened to you, you wouldn’t know exactly what you are going to do.
How did you approach it, the real way and Laura’s way?
I think that you can see in the film that sometimes she’s on a very thin line between sanity and insanity, but when you go to the other side, it’s not like that. You go little by little to that side and I think it’s important that when you show it, you’re not instantly crazy because that’s not the way it happens. It’s not true. I think for Laura, her only obsession is to find her son. She’s a very strong woman and he’s very good for her life because she can do everything that she wants, about family, about work, and they change the place that they are going to live and she decided that I think that this part of her character worked for this obsession because she arrives at the end of everything. For the audience, it’s a very sad end but I think for her it’s the best.
With the scenes with Roger Princep, who plays your seven year old son Simon, did you film all the scenes with him so that you could feel the loss of him throughout shooting?
No, we had rehearsals for two months before the film. I worked with him before and I was playing with him every day. It was amazing because the director and these children who are working in the movie at first is very good, but after two or three weeks, they are tired, and you can’t do with them what you want. Juan Antonio Bayona is like a child with his energy. When seeing the film for the first time, I had a friend with me and when he saw the scene when I slap Simon, he gave me a look. I went “Wait a minute.” The director was with him for one hour and then put him in front of me and he was already crying. At the end of this moment, I was very embarrassed because I don’t like that face staring at me. It was very sad and I felt that it was not fair but at the end when we finished he told me “Slap me very hard” and I refused. He kept insisting and I slapped him. At the end of this moment when we finished, he suddenly stopped crying and went “It’s OK, did you like it?” (Laughter) I said, “What?” I wanted to kill him because in that moment you can understand that he was playing but you felt that he was bad in that moment when he was crying.
His parents knew the scene was in the movie so did they understand the scene?
His mother was there and she was crying too. He went right up to her afterwards smiling and going “Mommy, Mommy” to let her know he was OK.
What were the challenges that you faced on a physical level while shooting?
First when you read the script you can see that Laura’s mind is changing and is going worse while the time is passing, and I think that the physical nature, your body changes because you don’t sleep, you don’t eat, and you don’t do everything that you do to have a normal life and a normal shape. I asked Juan Antonio if we could do the last sequence at the end of shooting and it was possible. I lost weight and I felt very tired, and wore no makeup.
The way you looked, very haggard and worn, was very convincing.
Thank you. I think in this role it was very important because the damage is, you need to see the damage. It is very important that what you see is also what you feel.
Congratulatons on the Goya nominations, I know you were associated with THE SEA INSIDE, which also received a lot of Goya nominations. Is Spain as awards crazy as it is here in terms of attention from the media?
For me it’s good because in the cinema you work on the movie and after a full year you have to do the promotion. It’s very strange because one year that you don’t work on that and your life continues with another film. In Spain with the promotion I felt I was ready because you are always thinking about something you did one year ago. It was very good because at that moment I was working on the play CLOSER. The film is a little bit different but the play is much harder than the film. I think it was great because I would work on the film and after I was finished, I would talk about it for a long time afterwards when it is released. When you are in the theater, you have to stay with the audience every day and you have to remember to do it. I couldn’t come here because I was working on the theater earlier in the year and the promotion was less hard than it was on Juan Antonio and Sergio who worked all the time on the film’s post production.
Has the film opened in Spain?
Yes, it opened on October 11th.
How was it working with Juan Antonio Bayona on his first feature film? You said earlier that you had rehearsals for two months. How prepared was he on set and how comfortable were you with him while shooting?
It was good because even though it was his first feature film, but it doesn’t look like it is the first film from a director. Even when you are working with him, he was very sure of himself and it was very funny because you can see that he wants to learn all the time. When we were rehearsing all the time, he kept on asking me “What are you thinking at this moment?” He’s always thirsty of knowledge, wanting to know everything because he has to tell you many things but he wants to know what you can get to him. I think it is very good because all the actors that worked with him felt very free with him. For example, at the end of a scene he would say “OK, I have the shot that I want but now we are going to do another one and you can do what you want to do,” and for an actor that’s great.
There are long portions in the movie where you are on screen by yourself. Was that difficult to do where you had nobody to interact with?
Yes. You can see that it was. Sometimes when you don’t have the actors in front of you, you have to imagine someone that you have in your mind and that helps in the process.
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