Lisa Cholodenko on working with actors in SF Gate

At SF Gate, Mick LaSalle’s post “Lisa Cholodenko’s inside track to outsiders” is a short but fascinating interview with the director and co-screenwriter of The Kids Are All Right about creating strong women characters and working with famous female actors. But it was working with the adult man in the film, Mark Ruffalo, that provided a unique insight in to the actor/director relationship. LaSalle asked her, "When you talked to Mark Ruffalo about the role, were you talking about unconscious motivations, too? Is it good that the actor knows the stuff that the character doesn't know?"The following is her response:

A: I try not to clog them up with too much psychology, but I do tell them. Whether they want this information or not, it's important that I say, "This is really where you're at in the film, where you start, what you feel you're trying to get, and what's in your way. So I spend some time talking about the character in a more archetypal way, that he's a Peter Pan kind of guy. The good news was that Mark - there's a lot of good news about Mark, he's a great person - he brings a core of sweetness and a lot of good stuff he doesn't have to put on. He had lived in Echo Park, where we shot that house, so he sort of knew that guy, that kind of personality and what that personality looks like and sounds like in Los Angeles.