Bittersweet
While most actors would kill for the chance to work just once with famed British writer/director Mike Leigh (Life Is Sweet, High Hopes), actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste has had not one, but three opportunities to collaborate with Leigh. Jean-Baptiste first met the director in 1992 while he was casting the film Naked. Although Leigh ultimately decided not to hire her, he sent Jean-Baptiste a warm letter in which he expressed his interest in working with her in the future.
"I thought, Oh yeah. Right," recalled Jean-Baptiste, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts who at the time was making a meager living as a stage actress. To Jean-Baptiste's surprise, Leigh kept his word and the following year offered her a role in his London play It's a Great Big Shame.
Needless to say, Jean-Baptiste relished her first experience working with Leigh, who subsequently invited her to act in a film he was planning to make. "He said, "I don't know what it's about. I don't know what you'll be doing, but you'll have fun,'" recalled the actress, who eagerly signed on to the then-untitled, unscripted film project, which became Secrets & Lies.
Much has been said about Leigh's unconventional style of filmmaking, in which he and his actors create original characters and storylines through a lengthy rehearsal process.
Explained Jean-Baptiste, "It's extremely liberating because you create a character from scratch. You get to spend an incredible amount of time doing research‹research that most people would look at and say, "My God. These people don't have to do that much work.' But when you look at Mike's films, you can see that there's something different about them. The characters are just a bit deeper than normal. And it also sets you up for your next job, because you go wanting to be fed and you have to learn to feed yourself in the end."
Jean-Baptiste's memorable performance in Secrets & Lies as Hortense, a young woman put up for adoption as an infant who later tracks down her birth mother (Brenda Blethyn) not only marked her film debut, it catapulted her career into the stratosphere. Besides being nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe award for best supporting actress, the movie's success also made her a newly recognizable face to the film community at large.
"[Secrets & Lies] certainly helped me enter the market here," said the actress during a recent visit to Los Angeles to promote her latest film, Nancy Savoca's The 24 Hour Woman. "After the whole Oscar thing, what was very difficult was not quite knowing what to do. There are a lot of things in hindsight I would have done completely different. I was reading a lot of scripts and thinking, This isn't very good... This isn't very good. I was waiting for good material."
While perhaps she's been too picky about her choices, Jean-Baptiste did appear in Noah Baumbach's Mr. Jealousy, Savoca's new film, and the upcoming ABC miniseries The Wedding. Up until the point of shooting Secrets & Lies, Jean-Baptiste told Back Stage West she made a living playing "lunatics or women with deadly tongues." However, her convincing turn as a sweet, collected young woman in Leigh's film changed the way she was perceived.
"At the moment, I'm playing nice girls, which is funny because onstage it was completely the opposite," admitted Jean-Baptiste, who said she'd love to sink her teeth into a wicked screen character.
While not bitter about her current typecasting, Jean-Baptiste did, however, express frustration with the limitations on casting due to race.
"There aren't that many roles for somebody like me to play," said the performer. Frustrated by this lack of opportunity. Jean-Baptiste has been turning to other creative outlets to subsidize her acting. She is also an accomplished jazz musician and composed the score for Mike Leigh's most recent film, Career Girls. In addition, Jean-Baptiste is a playwright. In London, she's performed her one-woman show, Ave Africa, about a young black woman who suffers a nervous breakdown as a result of her inability to cope with racism. She's currently working on her next play, which deals with the morbid issue of infanticide.
Mike Leigh is not the only person who's helped Jean-Baptiste become a stronger actor. Childbirth has also sharpened her abilities. She's found that since having her first baby less than a year ago, she's lost a great deal of fear when it comes to tackling new roles. "I said to my husband, "I'm not scared of anything on earth after going through childbirth.' It does give you a sort of edge. After you've endured that kind of pain, there's nothing you can't do," said Jean-Baptiste, who was pregnant while shooting The 24 Hour Woman, in which she plays a mother of three returning to the work force.
As for advice to young actors, Jean-Baptiste warns that they should enjoy the work, rather than stress about how that work is going to lead to their next job.
"I've met a lot of people that are so badly wanting to "make it' that they don't enjoy what they do," observed the thesp. "They're worried because they don't know what they'll be doing afterwards. How can you concentrate on what you're doing now if you're already worried about the next job? You have to really live in the moment of what you're doing, and that's important because it goes into your work‹always seeking the particulars, being truthful at any cost."
It's an investment that has been paying off for Jean-Baptiste.