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"After starring in ultra-low-budget mumblecore flicks LOL, Hannah Takes The Stairs and Nights And Weekends (which she co-directed), Greta Gerwig caught the attention of The Squid and the Whale&amp;#039;s Noah Baumbach, who cast her opposite Ben Stiller in wry comedy Greenberg. Greta delivered the stand-out turn in that film, eclipsing co-star Ben Stiller, and now has a key role in Russell Brand&amp;#039;s Arthur remake. We got on the phone with Greta to chat about her rapidly-advancing film career. How did you wind up getting cast in this film? Was Noah a fan of your mumblecore films? &amp;quot;It was kind of a miracle. Noah and Jennifer Jason Leigh, who co-wrote the script with him, had seen some of my mumblecore-type movies and I think they were interested in me. They auditioned a number of girls, then I auditioned and I did it again and again. At some point I realised, &amp;#039;Oh my God, I might actually get this part!&amp;#039; I couldn&amp;#039;t believe it. I had to get approved by everyone that was producing it, I think that made some people nervous because they were thinking, &amp;#039;Who is this girl? Where did she come from? Why would you put her in your movie?&amp;#039; I really sometimes can&amp;#039;t believe it worked out. I think the alternate world where I didn&amp;#039;t get the part still feels like a strong possibility, even though I know it&amp;#039;s not possible!&amp;quot; The camera holds your face in profile for a long time when the movie opens. Did you know what was going to happen? &amp;quot;No. The script as written starts with my character, but I didn&amp;#039;t know that was how the movie would open. When I saw the cut of the film I couldn&amp;#039;t believe it. That whole opening sequence, I had no idea that that&amp;#039;s what it was going to be like. It&amp;#039;s incredibly beautiful and was such a wonderful opening to the film. I&amp;#039;m glad that it was my face!&amp;quot; Could you empathise with Roger when you first read the script? &amp;quot;I did empathise with Roger. I think Noah said something interesting during one of the interviews, which has always resonated with me: sympathetic characters don\u00E2\u20AC\u2122t need sympathy, unsympathetic characters do. Roger is not easy to love but there is a lot to love because he is so vulnerable and human and I think that I still see him through the Florence glasses. I gather that people find him troubling but to Florence I think she sees someone who&amp;#039;s really trying very hard and through all of his bluster there&amp;#039;s a soft side that he&amp;#039;s protecting.&amp;quot; Florence seems just as vulnerable as Roger - do you think that&amp;#039;s why she&amp;#039;s attracted to him? &amp;quot;Yeah, I think that they are vulnerable. Only Florence has built no defences and Roger has built Fort Knox around himself. I think they&amp;#039;re very similar in a lot of ways in terms of vulnerability, but they react in completely opposite ways. I think there is this perfect connection.&amp;quot; Was it difficult filming the sex scenes with Ben? &amp;quot;The sex scenes were actually very choreographed and staged. It never felt uncomfortable or anything. In some ways they were very quick to shoot, we got two of them very quickly. Noah and Jennifer are very calm people, their sets are very non-hysterical, very quiet-spoken sets. There wasn&amp;#039;t a lot of fussing over it. We shot it like we shot everything else.&amp;quot; You also sing very well in the movie with karaoke and a bit of drunken Paul McCartney, can we expect a pop career or a musical role in the future? &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve never considered a pop career but I&amp;#039;d love to be in a musical. I love musicals. I don&amp;#039;t know that my drunken singing of a Paul McCartney song is going to recommend me, but that&amp;#039;s certainly something I&amp;#039;ve always wanted to do.&amp;quot; New York Times critic A. O. Scott called you &amp;quot;the definitive screen actress of her generation&amp;quot;. How do you react to something like that? &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know how to react because it&amp;#039;s, I didn&amp;#039;t get through the whole piece, I tried to read it but it was kind of overwhelming. I think hearing something like that is impossible to process because the truth is you just do what you&amp;#039;re doing in the moment that feels right and good and honest. If someone says something like that it&amp;#039;s lovely, but it&amp;#039;s impossible to make sense of it in any way. A lot of people said mean things so I guess it balances out.&amp;quot; You&amp;#039;ve got Arthur coming up with Russell Brand and Helen Mirren. How has that experience been? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s been really tremendous. Acting with Russell is like playing speed chess, he&amp;#039;s so quick and so verbose and so &amp;#039;on&amp;#039; everything before you&amp;#039;re there. It&amp;#039;s everything you&amp;#039;d expect with him but he&amp;#039;s so generous and lovely and easy. It&amp;#039;s just a beautiful alchemy - him and Helen and how lovely they are together. I just had my birthday and I got to spend the whole day acting with Helen Mirren.&amp;quot; Is it daunting stepping into Liza Minnelli&amp;#039;s shoes? &amp;quot;It is daunting. All of my gay theatre friends told me that I couldn&amp;#039;t possibly be as great as Liza. I told them, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m not trying to be as great as Liza. Nobody could be as great as Liza. I don&amp;#039;t think that I am!&amp;#039; They&amp;#039;re like, &amp;#039;Good you&amp;#039;re not!&amp;#039; I&amp;#039;m well aware that I will never live up to her but I&amp;#039;m very honoured that I get to play the same role she did.&amp;quot; Greenberg is released on Blu-ray and DVD on 4 October from Universal Pictures. Leave your comments on this post in the space below! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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