INTERVIEW: Amanda Seyfried talks about her new film Chloe

PENNSYVANIA-BORN Amanda Seyfried began modelling locally when she was 11 and turned to acting when she was 15.

In 2004 she made her film debut in hit comedy Mean Girls. Along with supporting roles in Nine Lives (2005) and Alpha Dog (2007), she also landed TV series Big Love, in 2006, and has just wrapped her final episode.

It was her performance as Sophie Sheridan in Mamma-Mia, however, which altered her life forever and she has since shot Jennifer’s Body, alongside Megan Fox, and recently wrapped on Letters to Juliet.

She’ll also be seen later this year in Dear John, an adaptation of the novel by The Notebook author Nicholas Sparks.

In Chloe, directed by Atom Egoyan, she plays the eponymous lead, a naïve and lovesick young prostitute who falls in love with Julianne Moore’s older woman, Catherine.

Kissing Megan Fox in Jennifer’s Body and now Julianne Moore in Chloe. Can it get any better?

Amanda Seyfried Not for a man, it couldn’t get any better. I mean Julianne Moore is pretty stunning.

We’re led to believe that Chloe is very manipulative but at the end it turns out that Catherine is the more manipulative. That must have been intriguing?

AS It is really fun playing a character that is so inconsistent throughout the movie. She is going through something she has never been through before; she is this damaged soul, really pretty naive about who she is.

She learns through prostitution. That’s one way to get to know things about yourself, but it is also a negative world. She is not doing what she wants, and she clearly has nothing and does not feel like she can do anything else.

She doesn’t feel she is worth anything, except when she is performing sexual favours, so you see that and then you see the vulnerability come out when she starts falling in love with Catherine.

This is a whole new world. She becomes a child and also becomes manipulative at the same time. You’re putting all these different moments together and different reactions to Catherine and different feelings about how Catherine is reacting. It so complex and twisting and it was really hard to get it right.

Was the love scene with Julianne difficult for you?

AS It was unnatural - I say that with a grin. Seriously, it is not the type of scene any actor is ever comfortable doing. Any kind of intimacy is strange. It is not your partner; it’s the actor or actress.

I don’t know what goes through my mind when I do these scenes. I am listening to Atom’s technical directions, because things need to be in sync with the camera’s movement.

It was all one shot, too, so you couldn’t piece together the scene at all, which I think is beautiful. I love it when directors do that, with one long shot. It was very difficult. We laughed a lot. The best way to get through it is joking about it.

Julianne was a good co-star. Well, she’s also the best actress but she’s a good co-star in that sense. We’d go through things together. It’s a journey.

Were you worried about the partial nudity in the movie?

AS No, although it was risky. I definitely negotiated my way out of some stuff. It is perfect.

That’s the thing. At the end of the day I knew I would do whatever Atom needed from me in terms of nudity, but I knew he wouldn’t need much because he doesn’t really like to use it that much.

He is a little uncomfortable with nudity. Even though he has made all these erotic dramas he is uncomfortable with it. And that is what he does. He gets it out of the way. I mean some of it is very necessary.

I know a lot of people would disagree with me on that but nudity, I am sorry, is not a big deal. And it is a beautiful thing when it is used in the right way. And Julianne has proved that. She’s stunning.

Did you think of Chloe as a victim?

Yes. Kind of. That’s how she feels the whole way through. She knows what she is doing; she knows she is manipulating the situation but she is only doing that because she feels she needs Catherine in her life.

Catherine is giving her something she has never gotten before in her life and she loves it. She feels she needs that validation because nobody else will validate her existence.

In what way does Catherine validate her?

ASBecause she listens to her. She asks her about her life. She is interested in what Chloe is doing with her husband. Catherine is paying her to do her a favour, so she is paying her to do a job, but Chloe really cares about the outcome. She cares so much.

She has Catherine’s undivided attention and that is powerful; Chloe becomes addicted to that. And the only way she can keep Catherine in her presence is to lie.

What kind of inspiration did Julianne offer you?

ASYou look at her and she is a human being, really cool, and she is real and natural. She just doesn’t put on any front. She is really beautiful and so connectable. She’s accessible and happy in what she is doing. Always glad to be working, and she chooses very carefully, so you know that it is something she really wants to be doing.

She is so focussed, so present but yet that doesn’t get in the way of the connection we had, She’s great and a wonderful person to be around; like, she did not mind giving advice and I know a lot of actresses who find it a chore to be giving advice. I mean she was, ‘Ask me anything you want.’

You can tell she really likes to give advice. She likes to help out and I think that is a wonderful attribute for someone who is so successful - that she wants to share it with younger co-stars because how are they going to learn? We are learning from the best of them. And to do it from Julianne…

Everything must have changed for you after Mamma-Mia!, right?

AS Everything changed. Basically, I started to get all these opportunities. I became known in the world. I can go to any country and certain people will know who I am, because Mamma-Mia! was so widely received. It is amazing.

A movie like that changes so much; I mean I’m on the cover of magazines in the UK. That’s weird. I mean it is great too. Chloe came before Mamma-Mia ever came out, but yes, now people hire me.

You seem surprised.

AS Well, I am very normal looking and when I smile my lip goes funny.

You appear very grounded. What do you put that down to?

AS My mum. Wherever I am at home she sits me down and makes me write back to fanmail and things like that, or else I’d never do it. But when I am done and I see that I have written letters back to people, I feel good. Sometimes they give me questionnaires.

Everyone wants them. They are so greedy (laughs)! But I find things out about myself. Everybody asks me about my favourite food and I keep saying cheese. They ask me these silly questions. I recently got asked my favourite recipe.

What did you say?

ASMy favourite recipe right now would be for pumpkin bars, because everybody loves them. Three layers. I also made a chocolate Mexican cake for a friend’s birthday and it was amazing.

A food critic actually tasted it and said, ‘Oh my God! Is this Mexican?’ and she said it was really good. Food is a bit of a vice actually. I would like not to eat so much.

Really, I tend to overdo it on the sugar, which is not good for you. And I also tend to overdo it on the cheese, which is really not good for you. I’d like to cut dairy out a bit. I don’t smoke, and I don’t drink too much. I do curse a bit but food is an indulgence.

How would you describe your personal fashion style?

ASI like Alexander Wang and Stella McCartney, and I always get told that I should have a lot of designers that I like, because then they might read that you like them. I do wear those two and they’re the only things I spend money on.

You’ve received a lot of scripts since Mamma-Mia, you said, but is there good variety? Actors often complain that after a hit movie they are typecast.

AS No. The only time I was ever typecast was after Mean Girls when I got a lot of scripts for dumb blondes at high school, and I didn’t take any of them! Also most of them were badly written. And also because I knew we were going towards something else.

As Chloe is quite an intense movie, are you now looking for something more light-hearted?

AS I did feel like doing some light-hearted stuff. I make my decisions based on what I could actually do in terms of time and scheduling.

I have Dear John coming out, which is a love story with Channing Tatum. That comes out soon in the UK. Lasse Hallstrom directed, and it’s based on a book by Nicholas Sparks.

Then there is Letters to Juliet, which is pretty light-hearted. I wouldn’t say it was funny but it is a romantic movie. It comes out next May I think in the US. I don’t know about Europe.

What are you doing after those films come out?

AS I don’t know what I am going to do next. Nothing is set in stone and I usually don’t know until one to two months beforehand, sometimes even a few weeks beforehand.

Chloe (15) is out on Friday.