Supporting Benjamin Button

by Angela Walker

One of the riches of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is its supporting cast. Well-established actress Julia Ormond, up and coming star Taraji Henson, and the three actors playing Benjamin’s father figures talked recently about their roles in the film and how it affected them personally.

Why did you get involved with the project?

Jason Flemyng (Thomas Button, Benjamin’s father)
    It’s quite a brilliant project, and we were lucky to sneak aboard it. I think I speak for all of us when I say that as young actors when you start your career in film you dream about being part of these great films. You see It’s a Wonderful Life, Forrest Gump, or whatever it is that flips your switch, and you think, “Oh, man, I would love to be involved in that.” To actually be involved in a movie like that is such a thrill for all of us.

Taraji Henson (Queenie, who takes Benjamin in as an infant)
    What intrigued me the most about Queeni was the ability to love unconditionally. When you love like that, race and disability all go out the window because that love, that drive, that heartbeat, is the driving force. I thought it was so beautiful that they made her African-American.

We all know what was going on in the world in the early 1900s, even in New Orleans. I thought New Orleans was the most liberal place in the world and you could go down there and mix races, but it really wasn’t. Things like that happened in the French Quarter, and whatever happened there stayed there. Once you left the French Quarter, you were back to blacks over here and whites over there. It wasn’t necessarily that liberal.

She was able to see past color and his exterior. Queenie was used to taking in the unwanted, and unfortunately what happens to these elders is they get dropped off at these homes and no one is there to visit or to really care for them. You always see these investigative reports where they go behind with these cameras, and you can’t imagine how these elders are being treated, because people are there just to collect a check. Nobody really cares. I thought it was so refreshing to put this on the screen and show this place where elders could go and be really cared for.

Julia Ormond (Caroline, Daisy’s daughter)
    For me, there’s something about the expansiveness of the film that takes you through so much that one person will react very strongly to one part of it and somebody else will react very strongly to another part.

What I like about it is the courage to have a movie that is expressive as life and all of these people are coming in and out and giving him their wisdom, and how that shapes him and makes him who he is.

How similar are the characters to your own personalities?

Jared Harris (Captain Mike)
    I’m useless at drawing, so that part is not close. But it reminded me of long-lost weekends with uncles and cousins. I knew guys like that really well, so that part was really familiar.

Jason Flemyng
    I don’t think it could be further from me. I was desperate to do it, but I think it was a bit of a stretch to think of me as the father of Brad Pitt, by anyone’s imagination. I think it was very brave casting. I was thrilled to do it. But that’s the fun part of acting, to take roles that are as far as possible from us.

Mahershalalhasbaz Ali (Tizzy Weathers)
    What’s great about it is it isn’t like you. The specificity of costume and wardrobe and make-up – dialects and accents and so forth. That gave us so many tools to pull from that it helped it not be about us. It’s something we talked a lot about. As you got to know each one of these characters, you saw how different they each were in the story, and how rich these characters were. That reflects life in general.

Everyone has their individual story. There are qualities of ourselves that probably come out because they can’t help it when you play your part. I think you and I both, if we talk about that long enough, we’ll find similarities between us, and it’s the same way playing a part. If you’re fortunate enough to have the time and direction and the script to transform. That’s the goal of an actor – to be a transformational actor, and I think this piece lends itself to that type of work.

This film has such a gentle treatment of race. What are your impressions of that?

M Ali
    In a certain way, I feel like I can only imagine that time; it was 80 years ago. I think a lot of the things we see on the surface of racism would disappear in this kind of situation (cooking for the elderly and nursing them) because sincere friendships bring people together. I think a lot of racism comes out of plain ignorance. You don’t know this person, so you develop an opinion about what this person may or may not do.

It’s always when you get to know someone that those things just go away. When you have those people in the years of wisdom and the last years of life, you’re cooking for them and serving them food. Those things are important to them. How they get through the day. In this case, their own families aren’t doing that for them. They look at you in a different way because they’re depending on you. As long as you’re treating them with love and sincerity, I think friendships and love will bond there. That’s the beautiful thing when you have different cultures and races together, that can create an atmosphere where people can become friends.

That doesn’t mean that people may not get away from that when they leave their situation, but I think we can change and get a broader perspective from having experiences with different people.

Without this film being any kind of religious film, there seems to be a spiritual depth to it. What do you think people will walk away from it with, and what are they going to be thinking of?

Jared Harris
    The smart thing David did was he told the story unsentimentally and he doesn’t try to lead you through the experience that he wants you to have. He’s not pulling the strings with the music swelling and the camera sweeping in. He lets you access the story according to your own experiences of your life and lets people respond to different things in it. Different elements of the story vibrate with different people. We’ve been talking with people and different things come out. People walk away from it with different moments being the ones that stick out. Different characters, messages, and themes from the story prevail.

That’s because he had the confidence not to try and tell you to have this and only this experience.

What stuck out for me the first time I saw it is this sort of thing that life is fleeting. But the life spans from the end of the first World War to the time that Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans. When you think of the span of history that encompasses in a single life, that’s enormous. The change is enormous.

Each character is such an original story, and it made me think that each person’s journey through life is an original story and is unique to that person. No one else will have that journey through life that you will have.

I started talking to my mother more about that. She grew up in Cardiff during the second World War. She was telling me stories about how every evening they’d go down into the bomb shelters. The Germans were coming and bombing the docks and city. They’d go out at the end and see who had survived. They’d see some houses that got hit and some didn’t. They’d go around and try to pull out the people who had survived. If they survived, you took them into the house and looked after them. It was a nightly occurrence.

All the time her father was away at the war and they were waiting for him to come back, so it was just herself, her mother and her two brothers huddling under the stairs. It was called a bomb shelter, but it was really just a broom cupboard under the stairs. If you got hit, really, it would be no protection at all.

I took for granted this amazing story that she has. No one is a supporting character in their own life – everyone is a main character in their own life.

Julia Ormond
    Everybody is reacting in different ways. Hopefully it will bring people in in terms of loss and love. We’ve heard stories about 11-year-olds going with 70-year-old grandparents.

Taraji Henson
    I’m not a very religious person, but I am a very spiritual person. I believe Queenie is a very spiritual person because she knew he ended up on her steps for a reason. He could have ended up anywhere, at the bottom of the river if the father didn’t re-think it. Even the mother, she knew on her deathbed, that the father didn’t have what it took to raise his child, and she said in her last dying breath, “Please find him somewhere to live.”

So I think she knew immediately when she saw that baby that he was there for a reason. I as the artist knew that if Queenie did not fall in love with that child right away, we would lose the audience and they wouldn’t care for Benjamin.

You put yourself in people’s positions and know they deserve to be loved too. Just because they look like that, does it mean they’re not supposed to be loved? They are living human beings. That’s the one common thread we have. Two, actually. One is we’re all going to die and the other is that God gives us the gift of love, and it doesn’t cost us a thing.

You lost your father recently, and have talked about how the film brought healing for you.

Taraji Henson
    I needed this film. I really did. I was in the height of Hustle and Flow. I think I was in a photo shoot when he called and told me they found a growth on his liver. I didn’t see that coming.

So this character who deals with death, that’s all she knows. I’m a trained actress. I could have made it work, but I think because I experienced my father dying in front of me; he died on me in the room. Something in him knew I was strong enough – that I was the one that could handle it.

I think God was sending me this script. I wish my dad was here, because he said these things would happen in my career. But I believe he is with me. Sometimes we build these defense mechanisms because you have to get through it – we have to build walls because we don’t know any other way. We just do the best we can with what we have.

This project forced me to deal with it. I couldn’t run and hide – I had to deal with it. I started looking at the good things – you have to find the good, even in the ugliest of situations. The one thing that sticks with me, that I’m grateful for. My dad was there to witness me taking my first breath, and I was there to witness him taking his last. So I’m honored and I’m blessed. Clearly, his path had come to an end, but I think he accomplished a lot. He instilled a lot in me and I was able to bring Queenie to life.

©2008 ChristianCinema.com