How to Do Jessica Biels Hair in Easy Virtue
Jessica Biel stars in 'Easy Virtue'
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Jessica Biel seems to have two speeds - the girl next door and the bombshell. Recently she attended a screening of her new movie, "Easy Virtue," in the company of several guys, including her boyfriend, Justin Timberlake. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she had a fresh-scrubbed look.
Today, however, talking to the press about the film, she's wearing a form-fitting blue dress. Her hair is parted in the middle, framing a face that's as sculpted as the rest of her. "Ravishing" is a word that comes to mind. It's a look that's helpful for the role she plays in "Easy Virtue," but she's also got to act.
"It was scary," Biel says. "I was nervous. They'd all been to serious drama school. I hadn't been to serious drama school. I felt initially that I was really not prepared to be in this company."
By "this company," Biel means Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas, who play her in-laws in this period piece based on an early Noël Coward play. Biel plays an American race-car driver who impulsively marries their son (Ben Barnes). He brings her home to his crumbling English manor, and his mother takes an instant dislike to her. It's a tug-of-war, the free spirit versus the stiff upper lipped.
Biel, 27, is not exactly known for going toe-to-toe with noted British thespians. Instead of a serious drama school, she received her acting apprenticeship as a teenager on the TV series "7th Heaven." It was a mixed blessing.
"The good: getting comfortable in front of the camera in front of loads of crew people, becoming emotional easily on a set," she says. "I learned about lighting, how to stand up and sit down."
Here she demonstrates, standing up quickly (wrong) and then slowly (right, so the camera can follow her).
She continues.
"The bad: know my lines so well and speak them so clearly for television, the amazing diction. I had to descramble that part. I wasn't allowed to cut my hair. I wasn't allowed to do silly things. I was 16. That was really tough."
Biel graduated from this not-so-serious acting school into the rough-and-tumble world of feature filmmaking. This, too, has had mixed results. She's been in some genre films that were not exactly challenging (a remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Blade: Trinity," "Stealth," "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry") and some smaller films that were more ambitious but were seen by few people ("Ulee's Gold," "The Rules of Attraction," "Elizabethtown").
What turned things around for her, and what probably attracted the makers of "Easy Virtue," was her supporting turn as a countess in "The Illusionist."
"That was a good one for me," she says. "Not anywhere outside of the film community, (but) people inside the film community were like, 'OK, that's cool.' "
To prepare for her role in "Easy Virtue," Biel was instructed by director Stephan Elliott to look at 1930s films such as "Bringing Up Baby." But then he decided that he didn't want her to speak as fast as Katharine Hepburn did in that film, or with Hepburn's clenched-jaw diction.
"We had to slow everything down because no one could hear it," Biel says. "The modern ear, it was just not going to happen. We were definitely concentrating on voice. It was the vibe of 'This is going to be funnier than you expect, more modern than you expect,' and less 'This a period piece with no laughs and no good music.' "
Perhaps surprisingly for someone who has a very contemporary regard for her own assets (and appeared nude recently in "Powder Blue"), Biel says she'd like to do more period pieces because they're challenging and she likes the clothes and the locations. In the meantime, she'll perform in what she calls a summer-stock version of "Guys and Dolls" for three days in July and August at the Hollywood Bowl. And she's awaiting the fate of "Nailed," a David O. Russell film about a woman who becomes a nymphomaniac after she's been shot in the head with a nail. It's still not finished, and no one seems to know if it ever will be.
Asked if she was aware of Russell's notorious meltdowns with his actors (see Lily Tomlin's tirades on YouTube), Biel admits that she was and that it gave her pause.
"I said to myself, 'I'm not going to put up with that, but I want this experience, so I'll give it a shot,' " she says. "I had a great time. He's tough. You want to pull your hair out. But you know it'll be good, so you just have to grab your shorts and go for it." {sbox}
Easy Virtue (PG-13) opens Friday at Bay Area theaters.
To see a trailer for "Easy Virtue," go to links.sfgate.com/ZHBT.
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Source: https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Jessica-Biel-stars-in-Easy-Virtue-3297302.php
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