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"  It&amp;#039;s so funny the way life is. Soon after I moved to New York for acting school in 1983, a friend of mine and I went to the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and took the audio tour. Diana Vreeland was a special consultant to the institute at the time, and it was her voice on the recording. I just remember thinking what a funny character she was, and her voice left such an impression on me.  SEE LOOKBOOK: BAZAAR 140TH: THROUGH THE YEARS Then about two years ago, I did an interview with Isaac Mizrahi for his Oxygen-network show, and we went back to the museum to see the Chanel exhibit. That led to this long conversation about Mrs. Vreeland. I told him that I had heard her only that one time, so many years ago, and I never saw Mark Hampton and Mary Louise Wilson&amp;#039;s play about her, Full Gallop. He said, &amp;quot;You have got to read her autobiography, D.V.&amp;quot; Then he sent me a copy, which, of course, I never read. One day about a year ago, when director George Hickenlooper started production on Factory Girl (a movie about Andy Warhol cohort and troubled pop icon Edie Sedgwick), I got a call from a friend, actor Cary Elwes. He said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sitting here with my buddy George, and he&amp;#039;s trying to cast the role of Diana Vreeland, and I said, &amp;#039;Oh, my God, Illeana!&amp;#039; and George said, &amp;#039;Oh, my God, Illeana!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; It happens like that for me a lot. I was cast after that one phone conversation. Thank God Isaac sent me that book. I had it in the books-I&amp;#039;m-going-to-read-eventually-when-I-get-the-time stack. And so I read it a few times, and there&amp;#039;s just so much material about her life. She was an amazing woman. I had no idea how long she worked at Harper&amp;#039;s Bazaar. [She began as a contributor in 1936, became the fashion editor six months later, and held that position for 26 years, until 1962.] It was a lifetime of dictating fashion.  I tried to pick out gems from the book so people would get a real sense of who she was. Mrs. Vreeland was like Andy Warhol or Liza Minnelli, one of those faces we always saw in New York that left such a big impression. SEE LOOKBOOK: BAZAAR 140TH: THROUGH THE YEARS She was such a forceful person. I wanted to fight for her and get as much of her personality into the movie as possible, even though she&amp;#039;s in it for just a few scenes. The film is set in 1965, and Mrs. Vreeland, then at Vogue, is the one who tells the Edie Sedgwick character (played by Sienna Miller) that she has to stop with the drugs. It was a very different world back then. When Edie didn&amp;#039;t do that, the fashion industry really closed the iron door on her. Mrs. Vreeland loved Edie and said that she had beautiful skin. (She also said she&amp;#039;d never met anyone on drugs whose skin wasn&amp;#039;t perfect.) But the way it went down, the way everyone turned on Edie, was kind of brutal. In the film, Mrs. Vreeland says, &amp;quot;Oh, well. It&amp;#039;s better than being boring!&amp;quot; And I think she really believed that.  Mrs. Vreeland was so over-the-top yet completely genuine. I didn&amp;#039;t want her to be this kooky character, like a musical-comedy parody. When we were doing a scene, I&amp;#039;d try to insert something she actually said, like her classic &amp;quot;red is the great clarifier&amp;quot; speech: &amp;quot;All my life, I&amp;#039;ve pursued the perfect red. I can never get painters to mix it for me.... About the best red is to copy the color of a child&amp;#039;s cap in any Renaissance portrait.&amp;quot; And I know what she meant. Red is a difficult color to get right! Also, for instance, Mrs. Vreeland at one point hired four assistants who spoke fluent French, so when it came time to cast them, I said, &amp;quot;Hey, listen. Could you make sure to cast girls who speak fluent French?&amp;quot; These were my own little ideas to make the film as accurate as possible. She was such a big figure, and when I say big, I mean she was physically tall, with this black lacquered hair and this booming voice. I don&amp;#039;t really look like her, but I knew I could pull it all together once I got into hair, makeup, and wardrobe. They dyed the front of my hair black and added this black fall to the back, I painted my nails her signature red, and I wore the white kabuki makeup and her famous rouge. She wasn&amp;#039;t beautiful, and I think people automatically think she applied her makeup that way to mask her looks. But that wasn&amp;#039;t her intention. It was a style that she really believed in, and she stuck with it her entire life.  What really helped me get into character, though, was the wardrobe. John Dunn, the costume designer, and I worked to get that right, and I have to say I think Mrs. Vreeland would be pleased. I wore about four outfits. My favorite has to be this Mexican dirndl skirt that she was wearing in this picture I saw. If there&amp;#039;s one thing I&amp;#039;ve learned about fashion from this movie, it&amp;#039;s that a dirndl, with a tight waist and a full skirt, will always look good. All of the clothes I wore were vintage, the real thing. We found this huge ivory necklace that must have weighed 10 pounds and these enormous Elsa Peretti earrings and belt. Ah, the belt was something else. It makes your body look great. In an office scene, I wore a caftan. There&amp;#039;s a famous photo of Mrs. Vreeland wearing a caftan to work. I also wore an all-black outfit with a very high turtleneck and dramatic jewelry. So many lasting trends in America can be credited to Mrs. Vreeland. Red nails are one of them. And she introduced thong sandals to this country. She had this exotic sense of style and so many good ideas in the &amp;#039;50s and &amp;#039;60s that still hold up.  When I was a kid, I&amp;#039;d look at magazines Mrs. Vreeland had worked on and had a clear idea of her aesthetic. In effect, she was saying, This is how I think people should live. In that way, I&amp;#039;m a little bit like her. When I worked with Kevin Bacon (who I met in 1996 on the set of Picture Perfect and worked with again in 1998 on Stir of Echoes), he&amp;#039;d call me &amp;quot;Ask Illeana,&amp;quot; because I&amp;#039;d always interrupt conversations with random advice. I have a little bit of information on almost every subject. If you have a question, I&amp;#039;ll never not have an answer. My favorite words of wisdom are &amp;quot;Women love the blue box&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Never date a man with a loft bed. It&amp;#039;s impossible to look sexy getting into it.&amp;quot;  Mrs. Vreeland&amp;#039;s ideas were more outrageous, though, like &amp;quot;Why don&amp;#039;t you have an elk-hide trunk for the back of your car? Herm\u00E8s of Paris will make this.&amp;quot; No one really does that anymore, except for possibly Martha Stewart. But Mrs. Vreeland was special in that she did it with such wit and with a wonderful sense of humor.  I was surprised to learn how funny she was. There&amp;#039;s this famous caption she wrote for a photo of a nude model lying down with a large black straw hat that read: &amp;quot;Spend the summer under a Big Black Sailor&amp;quot;! In the movie, we show that humor. Whenever actors play real people, I think they&amp;#039;re trying to make it as accurate as possible. When that person is Diana Vreeland, who people remember so vividly, it&amp;#039;s a challenge. I wanted to make sure that anyone who didn&amp;#039;t know about her before they saw the movie got a good sense of who she was from it. She had this entirely original mind and a never-ending font of ideas she got from traveling all over the world. In terms of style, the true originals seem to be disappearing. And I guess this is my way of keeping her memory alive. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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