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Rebecca De Mornay Q & A Rebecca De Mornay is known for the intense and varied roles she plays...from the twisted nanny of "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle" to the devilish Milady DeWinter in "The Three Musketeers." Of her latest character, Wendy Torrance, a wife trying desperately to keep her family intact in "Stephen King's The Shining," De Mornay says, "Wendy's story, it's not pretty, and she isn't – ultimately, she's beaten. And it took a lot to play it. I'm sure it took a lot for Steve [King] to write it. But unfortunately, it's not an uncommon story. It's all over the news headlines all the time. I thought it was important to play her and give her the integrity and intelligence she deserves." "This can happen to women in their marriages. Not exactly like this movie, "The Shining," with ghosts and all kinds of other things. But the subtext of the movie can happen and does happen to women who are smart, and not women who look and act just like victims, but who are smart women." "And that is why I thought it was important to play it. And I played her as such. And I think she was written as such, so that we could see that, oh my God, it can even happen to her. And my heart goes out to her. And in the end of the story, she is victorious." De Mornay elaborates further about her role: Q – Tell us about the character you are playing . . . A – She's [Wendy] a very all-American woman, in a very sort of all-American family of the worst kind, which unfortunately exists quite a bit across America. She's a very strong woman and she's very much in love with her husband and her little boy. Unfortunately, a lot of things stand in the way of that. She's fighting as much as she can to protect her family, protect her marriage and to protect herself, and the situation is getting increasingly scary and threatening. Q – Tell us a little bit about the premise of the film . . . A – Our family, the three of us, take on a new residence in this abandoned hotel. This is driven by my husband, Jack's, work. He's a writer, and he wants very much to become a successful writer, and he isn't, yet. We're very low on money, and he takes this job as a caretaker of a hotel in the wilderness where we're going to be snowed in for about five months of winter. We all go there full of hope; our marriage is on this new upswing after Jack's gotten into Alcoholics Anonymous. We decide that would be a good job – he can write undisturbed and I can also continue with my art, I draw in the film – it's going to be a hideaway haven in the snow , so we think . . . Q – What drew you to this part as an actress? A – What I loved about this script was just how much of a metaphor it was for the demons that strike all-American families. The family is in this hotel that seemingly becomes haunted. The real haunting that struck me as an actress is the haunting of rage within individuals and what it does to a family. Rage is a big problem in society . . . people don't know what to do with their rage. It's a haunted hotel, but the real haunting is inside of the people themselves. Somebody once said, the thing about feelings, if you bury feelings it would be fine if you buried them dead, but you bury them alive. And that in a sense is what's happened to Jack. Q – Did having the writer of the story – Stephen King – on the set place any undue pressure on you? A – Stephen King's an absolute delight. He has a kind of childlike sense of wonder about it [the film] as it's being made – as if he hadn't written it at all, which is very charming. |
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