Interview clip with the stars of "Rumor Has It"

Jennifer Anniston & Shirley MacLaine

Jennifer Anniston is Moving On and Moving Up

Sandra Kraisirideja
It’s been a rough year for Jennifer Anniston, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her.

Appearing tan and fit in blue jeans and a sleeveless, black sweater top, Anniston was at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel & Spa recently to promote her newest movie, “Rumor Has It.”

Anniston plays Sarah Huttinger, an aspiring journalist who discovers that her family was the inspiration for the novel, “The Graduate.”

The romantic comedy, directed by Rob Reiner, opens Christmas Day and also stars Shirley MacLaine, Mark Ruffalo and Kevin Costner.

Anniston said she signed on for the role because she wanted to do something light and fun.

“It was the first job after ‘Friends’ so I felt it was a nice little delicate step out of the nest. It wasn’t that complicated and I also really thought, as far as these romantic comedies, go, this was interesting; to have ‘The Graduate’ as a backdrop,’ she said.

This year Anniston fell under intense media scrutiny when her marriage to Brad Pitt ended in divorce.

Anniston has stayed relatively silent about what has been written in tabloid and entertainment magazines and for the most part has emerged unscathed and with more public support than ever.

“I don’t think success has anything to do with making me secure with my life. I think my personal, emotional experiences give me the ability to be more secure with who I am,” Anniston said.

“I’ll tell you, at this point, there’s such a freedom in a weird way. You can just say, ‘Here I am. This is it.’ It was like I was saying to Shirley today, ‘Well, I might as well pull my pants down at this point. They’ve seen everything else.’”

Anniston was going through her separation during filming of “Rumor Has It” and her professionalism impressed MacLaine and Reiner.

“I gotta tell you I have never seen anybody with such grace under fire as Jennifer was. I mean I have such respect for her. I never saw somebody exhibiting the kind of strength that she had. There were times when what she was going through applied, in scenes and she would allow that to happen but for the most part, you have to separate those things and do your work, and so she was extraordinary,” Reiner said.

Added MacLaine: “She has come through what must be one of the most painful and difficult requirements of any human being, much less a young person; to live their life in a spotlight like this is so painful. Her emotional discipline is extraordinary and I really want to compliment her for that.”

Anniston credits her mother, who indirectly showed her how not to behave after a divorce.

“I watched my mother be very bitter and very angry throughout a divorce and never let it go and waste the whole second half of her life. So, I thank her for that unconscious sacrifice of what not to do. I think accountability, taking responsibility,” and not playing the victim are also important, Anniston said.

“That’s the real lesson that she’s teaching everybody,” MacLaine added. “She says so in public and certainly in private, ‘Where is my role in this? How have I contributed to this?’....in a very spiritual way instead of blaming and that’s a huge step and really hard.”

When it comes to choosing her next projects, Anniston said she goes by her gut reaction to material. “I don’t strategize and say, ‘Well, I’ve done this. Now I have to do one of these next’. If it’s good and I think I can do it well, then I’ll do it,” she said.

Anniston’s next movie is a smaller independent called “Friends with Money” in which she plays a pot-smoking maid who is the least motivated among her highly successful friends.

“I’m the youngest of the group and everybody’s sort of married and evolved in their lives and I’m pretty much the drifter…and it’s about how we deal with relationships and how money will effect friendships,” Anniston said.

The movie also stars Catherine Keener, Francis McDormand and Joan Cusack. “Friends with Money” is written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, who did “Lovely & Amazing” and will screen at Sundance next year.

“Nicole Holofcener is such a good writer. She captures the human spirit so well on the simplest level,” Anniston said.

Originally posted on ComingSoon.net

Pierce Brosnan discusses the future "Remington Steele" movie

Interview clips with "The Matador" star Greg Kinnear and director Richard Shepard

Greg Kinnear

Richard Shepard

Mexico City steals the spotlight in "The Matador"

Sandra Kraisirideja
Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear may be the most visible stars of “The Matador,” but there’s another character who had as much to do with the look and feel of the movie as them—the location itself, Mexico City.

Writer-director Richard Shepard filmed the entire movie in Mexico City, helping keep production costs under the $10 million budget. At different times the city stood in for Colorado, Budapest, Vienna and Arizona.

“The Matador” addresses the unlikely friendship that develops between an aging assassin, Julian Noble, (Brosnan) and a struggling salesman, Danny Wright, (Kinnear) who meet in a hotel bar in Mexico City. The film opens Dec. 30.

Julian Noble would never be confused with James Bond, but since the two characters handle guns and live dangerously, comparisons are bound to be made.

Brosnan, who also produced the movie under Irish DreamTime, insists he did not latch onto the script hoping to erase his Bond persona.

“I thought it was very play-like and I liked that it was a kind of ensemble of three people. I love the twists and turns and the flamboyance, the sheer vulgarian way of Julian Noble’s mouth. I thought it had good character and I thought it had good heart,” he said.

A matador is the main bullfighter who is given the task of killing the bull. There is a bullfight in the movie, but thanks to some skilled editing, Brosnan did not have to witness one for real.

“I don’t want to see it. Didn’t go near it. The mythology of the bullfighter and the metaphor of it, I thought it was well used in the film by Richard, [but] to actually see one go down, no desire,” Brosnan said.

The production had to take safety precautions while filming because kidnapping is an issue in Mexico City, said Shepard, who had filmed there before. The actors had bodyguards and were discouraged from exploring the city on their own at night.

“It’s a dangerous city in terms of it’s not like you can just walk down the street in the middle of the night and feel free,” Shepard said.

However, the vibrancy and energy of Mexico City had an intangible impact on the set, Shepard said.

“I mean this honestly, I don’t think the movie would have been as good if we shot it in Hollywood,” because of the proximity to the press and the actors’ agents and managers. Shepard said.

“We were down in Mexico. No one wanted to visit us,” and that isolation gave the cast a sense of freedom. “And it was also a story about loneliness and when you’re on location in a strange city it helps,” Shepard said.

“It’s only a three-hour flight, but it feels like a far away place,” agreed Kinnear. “It’s a beautiful, beautiful city, and it’s really a great character in the movie the way David Tattersall shot it, but I think that it felt like, while we were doing it, anything was possible down there,” Kinnear said.

Being in Mexico City certainly had other advantages for the actors.

“By the end of the movie, we didn’t even deal with the margarita mix or any of that stuff anymore; we were just down to the tequila. A couple of Irish guys in a movie together – that’s combustible,” Kinnear said.

While Kinnear and Brosnan were sampling different varieties of tequila, Hope Davis, who plays Kinnear's understanding and supportive wife, was just trying to keep her food down.

“That part was really rough. Thank God I had Greg and Pierce who were so…they made me laugh so many times and really took me out of myself,” said Davis, who was eight weeks pregnant when shooting began.

For scenes in Colorado, Shepard had to create a snowy landscape in a suburban neighborhood.

“You try getting snow in Mexico City in April,” said Shepard, who had a snow making machine driven in from L.A. “We used all the ice in Mexico. You couldn’t get a margarita in Mexico that night,” he added.

One night the whole neighborhood and the local mayor came out to watch the actors filmed in the snow, recalled Kinnear.

“All these kids were just looking at us in our big fur coats with snow everywhere, and they must’ve just thought Mars had landed on Earth,” he said.

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