By Christina Radish
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Mandy Moore at the premiere of "Because I Said So" held at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, Calif. on January 30, 2007. |
In the new Universal Pictures film Because I Said So, Diane Keaton plays Daphne Wilder, a single mother who raised three girls -- klutzy and adorable Milly (Mandy Moore), stable psychologist Maggie (Gilmore Girls star Lauren Graham), and sexy and irreverent Mae (Coyote Ugly’s Piper Perabo) -- to become the kind of women any mom would be proud to have.
With both Maggie and Mae happily married, Daphne sets out to prevent her youngest, Milly, from making the same romantic mistakes she did, by taking it upon herself to set her up with the perfect man, and going to so far as to place an ad in the online personals to find him. Soon, Milly finds herself choosing between two men -- the responsible architect Jason (Tom Everett Scott) and the free-spirited rocker Johnny (Gabriel Macht) -- as Daphne continues to push, cajole, suggest and nudge her way into Milly’s smallest of decisions.
With Keaton committed early on to the role of Daphne, the filmmakers, which include director Michael Lehmann (Heathers), set out to find their Milly. When 22-year-old singer-turned-actress Mandy Moore gave an amazing reading, she quickly got the part. Moore tells Mediablvd Magazine that her desire to play the part was because of the opportunity it would give her to work with Keaton.
{quote_top}“Meeting Diane, I was completely nervous. I remember walking into Michael’s office during pre-production and shaking her hand for the first time, completely in awe and nervous. I didn’t know how I was going to pretend like she was my mother. I love her so much that she’s on a pedestal, anyway, so I tried to use that. But, just like any other co-star, we got to know each other, and everybody opened up. It was nice having Lauren and Piper there because we just wanted to be gossipy, and talk about shopping, clothes and boys.”
Once they had some time to bond, the four women had to share a scene in their underwear in the film, which Moore admits was a bit awkward and embarrassing for her. “That scene was particularly difficult because we kept going back and forth about who would wear what underwear. Except, Piper was fine. Right off the bat, she said, ‘Alright, I’ll be in a thong. I don’t care.’ Lauren and I were petrified, and kept wondering if we should have body doubles, or just do it ourselves. I’m super self-conscious. What girl really feels comfortable about having her butt on a gigantic movie screen, with everything in full view? But, in the end, we all decided to just dive right in and go for it. I was embarrassed, but it’s over now.”
Like her character, Moore is close to her own family, and even lives with her older brother, Scott, and her younger brother, Kyle, in Los Angeles. But, unlike Milly, the New Hampshire native says that she feels really lucky that their mom is nowhere near as meddlesome as Daphne.
“I know my mom cares, but just not enough to really meddle too much. I have an atypical relationship with my mom for someone my age, I think because I started so young with the music thing, and my parents were always on the road with me. So, at a time when I think I should have been rebelling, like in high school, they were actually my best friends. They were the people I was closest to, since they were on the road with me, and they were going through this crazy roller coaster experience with me. My mom has never been a big meddler. She’s not extremely opinionated, or at least she doesn’t voice it to me. She’s let me come into my own, by myself, and I think that’s a testament to what my parents did, in terms of raising us.”
Having had the privilege of working with a veteran like Keaton, Moore says that working with actors of that caliber definitely makes it harder to find projects that she’s passionate about. “The last couple of years, I’ve really been focused on acting. I feel really lucky because great projects keep coming my way. I look at the script, the character and everybody involved, like the other actors and the director. I just go with my gut feeling, when I find something where I feel like, ‘Yes, I want to sink my teeth into that.’”
{quote_middle}Moore is also returning to her music, having recently finished a two-year process of writing and recording her next album, set to be released in April or May. “I co-wrote the whole record with everyone from the Weepies and Lori McKenna to Rachel Yamagata and Chantal Kreviazuk, who are singer/songwriters that I just have so much admiration and respect for. It’s a really organic record that is folky pop. I completely threw myself headfirst into recording the record, and it has probably been the most creatively fulfilling experience I’ve ever had doing anything. It’s been a passion project. It’s a completely different side of me, musically, than people are expecting, or have come to know from my past efforts.”
To record the album, Moore spent two months, this past fall, at a studio in Woodstock, New York, so that she could be away from a big city, like Los Angeles. “I love fall on the east coast. A friend of mine had recorded at the studio in Woodstock and said it was the most inspiring place, and it was. It was this old monastery that has been converted into a studio with a 45-foot ceiling and floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking the Catskills. Every day, I was watching the leaves change a little bit more, and singing this music that was so personal and so vulnerable. It was just the coolest experience.”
Carrying a journal and a pen at all times, Moore says that she writes down whatever is going on in her mind, which inspires lyrics for her songs. “I don’t necessarily sit down and write lyrics. It’s more just free-form writing. I write a lot on airplanes because it’s completely isolating. There’s no one to talk to and nothing to do. And, a lot comes out when I sit down with the people that I’m co-writing with. I talk to them about what I’m going through and what I want to say, and it just happens. Every song on this album came about in a completely different, yet organic, way.”
{quote_bottom}Moore is looking forward to the release of her new album because she thinks that it really defines who she is now. “It’s my words. It’s what I’ve gone through, in the past two years of my life -- the ups and downs, love and heartbreak, and figuring out who I am, amongst everything. It’s really telling of who I am and the path that I’m headed on, hopefully.”
