Jennifer Carpenter talks to Tim Nasson about Emily Rose
“I’m addicted to dresses now – I didn’t even know I liked them,” says Carpenter. “I thought I’d live in my jeans and T-shirts forever.” Carpenter, 25, dolled up for the premieres of “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” last week at the Venice Film Festival and on Wednesday in Los Angeles. But she looks pretty ragged for most of her scenes in “Emily Rose,” which opens today in theaters nationwide.
In the film based on a true story, Carpenter plays Emily, a college student who believes she is possessed by demons. Her priest (Tom Wilkinson) is charged with negligent homicide after he performs an exorcism on her and she dies.
Shot in Vancouver last fall and winter, the movie is divided between the court case involving the priest and his lawyer (Laura Linney) and flashbacks depicting Emily’s downward spiral. Unlike “The Exorcist,” this “Exorcism” depends on the actress, not special effects, to convey the freakiness of demonic possession.
“When I saw the rough cut, I was surprised at how it looked,” says Carpenter. “I didn’t know that’s what my body was doing or the shapes it was making.”
The Louisville, Ky., native’s older sister is a chiropractor, so she makes it a point to visit a chiropractor frequently. “But I did see one more often when I was in Vancouver,” she says. Carpenter’s vocal work as Emily is proof that not only does the Juilliard School prepare actors for the stage, it also makes them excellent additions to horror films.
“There are classes for vocal training, so you know the sounds that you’re capable of; you know how to explore your voice,” she says by phone from L.A.
She knew by the time she was 8 that she wanted to act, and even though she’d barely breezed through New York before she showed up at Juilliard, she soon knew she was in the right place.
“My mom and my dad drove me up in a U-Haul van,” she recalls. “I cried for an hour, they left and then I realized, ‘This is where I belong.’ Manhattan is the best campus in the world.”
Carpenter left Juilliard after her third year when she was cast in an Off-Broadway production of the Richard Greenberg play “Everett Beekin” with Robin Bartlett and Bebe Neuwirth. She went on to co-star in “The Crucible” with Liam Neeson and Linney, who later would recommend her for the role in “Emily Rose.”
Carpenter’s biggest exposure prior to “Emily Rose” was in 2004’s “White Chicks.” A modest hit at the box office although critically panned, thefilm earned Carpenter praise for playing a svelte young socialite who’s convinced she’s fat.
“It was actually a blessing,” says the actress, who had been getting mostly dark scripts to consider. “I was excited to go audition and try to make people laugh. And thank God for it because I learned about working in front of a camera, which is a completely different skill.” Despite the seriousness of the subject, Carpenter says the set of “Emily Rose” was not a depressing place.
“Everybody was so great,” she says. “I felt like I was in really good, capable, friendly hands. It was really easy to finish a scene and turn the volume down on all that craziness and just hang out together and then jump back into it.”
Carpenter (no relation to director John Carpenter, who grew up inKentucky) went to Catholic schools in Louisville but wasn’t reared Catholic, and she didn’t take sides in the film’s science vs. religion argument.
“If anything, it just makes you look at your beliefs, whatever they are, and see how much space you’ve left for possibility,” she says. “There was a great line that’s not in the film now, but I think Tom’s character says it, and it was, ‘Faith without doubt is a dangerous thing.’ I think I understand what that means now, whether it’s faith in politics or faith in religion or faith in science. You have to always be open to some more. “The thing that I kept thinking is, if you saw someone pull their own hair out of their head, who do you call? … It’s so unbelievable, it’s hard to believe it’s real. But this is based on a true event.”
