Kate Bosworth plays a drug addict in the new film “Homefront.”
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Kate Bosworth wasn’t going to take the easy route in approaching her character for “Homefront.” She co-stars as a meth-addicted mom who sets her loose-cannon brother (James Franco) after Jason Statham’s retired DEA agent after their kids get into a schoolyard brawl. On a happier subject, Bosworth got hitched this summer to filmmaker Michael Polish, and she couldn’t be more satisfied with their home life.
The last time we spoke, we talked a lot about working as a producer as well as an actress to get projects going. How has that been going?
Well, I produced a wedding. [Laughs] Joking aside, I mean my life changed when I met my husband because he’s a filmmaker, so our life is a constant production of films. He also shoots a lot of my campaigns involved with the fashion side of things that I design. He sees the product that I’ve designed and he thinks about what that campaign will look like and what the films will look like for it. So it’s a continual creative household. When you have your partner, it’s a fast track to things.
In “Homefront,” you’re playing a fairly complex character who’s actually a fully rounded human being, which you don’t see a lot in action fare.
That was the challenge. I get asked a lot if the challenge was the physicality, and I didn’t think twice about portraying someone and being truthful to how she would look. That stripped-down was something that was required by the character and how she behaves and the abuse that she does to herself. The challenge for me was to maintain her dignity throughout the movie and not strip her of it even when she’s unsympathetic and selfish and has terrible behavior. I know James kind of approached his “villain” character similarly, in that when we were standing in front of each other it wasn’t “the villain and the drug addict.” It was a sister and a brother. There’s that vulnerability that was really important to both of us for the characters even though they do despicable things.
Well, she is a drug addict.
Sure, but there’s an easy pitfall to say, “She’s a drug addict, oh well.” There’s this kind of face value or this kind of artifice that you can easily fall into. The challenge was to make sure that the human side to her was present at all times as well as the drugs.
You have that great moment when she realizes the enormity of the events she’s set in motion. It starts off almost like a PTA squabble.
Of course. [Laughs] I mean, I figured that she comes in there every Monday with a problem. She’s an exposed nerve, so anything that rubs up against her — depending on how much she’s been using and how much she has left — it’s going to effect her behavior with people, and it normally would be explosive. Unless she’s with her brother. Her brother and her kid are the two people that she quiets down with.
