Caroline Aaron can recall the exact moment she became interested in acting. "It was at camp," she says. "You could either go climb the mountains or be in the bunk show. Not being an athlete, I chose the show." Something about it must have appealed to the young actor, who is still performing all these years later in a wide variety of stage, television, and film projects. After memorable roles in films such as Bounce and Primary Colors, and a stage career on both coasts, Aaron is winning raves for her portrayal of late singer Bobby Darin's older sister Nina in Beyond the Sea, directed by and starring Kevin Spacey. Nina is a complex woman who was revealed in later years to be Darin's biological mother, and Aaron is endearing in the pivotal role, adding to her long resumé of eclectic characters. Following this interview she left for San Francisco to shoot If Only it Were True with Mark Ruffalo and Reese Witherspoon. She also stars in the big-screen adaptation of Call Waiting, playing dual roles she originated onstage at the Odyssey Theatre in 1994.
Above and Beyond: Aaron won the role of Nina after participating in a reading of the screenplay in March 2003 at the Coronet Theatre. Although she didn't know Spacey personally, they had appeared in two movies together (Heartburn and Working Girl) and met briefly in 1983 when she was performing in The Iceman Cometh and Spacey was in Long Day's Journey Into Night. "They rehearsed during the day, we performed at night, and I met him in the green room," Aaron recalls. "Then of course he became Kevin Spacey, and we were sort of not breathing the same air for a long time." The film's casting director, Joanna Colbert, recommended Aaron for the reading. "There was no guarantee at that point that I would do the film, but whenever you get a chance to sit around a table with talent like that, you don't turn it down," Aaron says. "It was the best kind of audition to have, because it wasn't like taking a little piece and having it stand for your whole performance. I got to sit there and do the whole piece." After participating in the reading, Aaron was eager to play the role on film. She says with a laugh, "It was like chasing a boy after I did that reading. I kept checking in, 'What's going on? Are they making the movie? Am I in there?' Over and over and over again."
She ended up winning the role, and in November she was on her way to England and Germany to star opposite Bob Hoskins, who played her husband. "It was truly the best arranged marriage I could have ever asked for," she says. "It was like being a mail-order bride, to travel halfway across the world and then arrive and have your spouse be Bob Hoskins. I had so much fun with him, and I learned so much from him. They always say to get better at tennis you should volley with someone who's better than you, and that's the way I felt all the time. My game was getting better just by being with him."
But what I really want to do: Aaron also has high praise for her co-star and director. "For me, I love being directed by an actor," she says. "There's always the danger when your scene partner is also your director that you're going to be looking into the eyes of your scene partner, and then you're going to see their third eye looking at you going, 'What are you doing?' That never happened, not once, with Kevin. When it was he and I together, face-to-face, he was my scene partner, and never did I feel like I was being watched."
Unlike many actors, Aaron claims she has no ambition to sit in the director's chair. "I have zero desire to do that," she maintains. "It doesn't appeal to me in any way, because it's like being the parent. I want to show up and play in the sandbox and [have someone] tell me when it's time to go home."
Another advantage of having a director familiar with acting was the amount of research Spacey provided to his actors. "There was not a resource that was not given to us," she says. "There were tapes of these people; I saw a tape of Nina on This Is My Life, so I could see her and spend time with her. There were reams of paper and books. It was like getting your Ph.D. in Bobby Darin. [Spacey] was not imperialistic about it—he knew everybody has their own recipe and would get there in their own way—but it was a resource available to us."
Keeping it real: Aaron says she felt a special obligation when portraying Nina to play a fully realized person, not to do an imitation. "When you're pretending, no matter what, you feel a responsibility anyway to be as truthful as possible," she says. "When it's something that's imaginative, you can define that truth. But when there was a truth, and it walks the earth, you feel a responsibility not to imitate in any way but somehow portray with respect." She credits director Mike Nichols with giving her inspiring advice about taking on complex individuals. "He always says, 'You have to make the best case for your character you possibly can. Even if you're a serial killer. Because the point is, when we sit in the dark and watch somebody, to find out what we all have in common as human beings,' " says Aaron. "I've never played a bad guy in the way that everybody from the outside would say: 'They're a monster.' I often get cast as a lovable monster. But it's such great advice. And the next time you see somebody like that in the grocery store, you might not walk by them and dismiss them."
Repeat offender: Aaron has worked multiple times with revered directors Woody Allen, Nora Ephron, and Nichols. While she isn't sure what the magic ingredient is that gets her asked back, she knows she's a huge fan of directors. "I love being directed," she enthuses. "I love being told what to do, in the sense that I find it a very exciting relationship between actor and director. I like to entrust myself to people. I feel that your job as an actor is to express an overall vision. Because of show business, a lot of movies are actor-driven, but I don't think that's the right government for a creative project. In order to be a really good actor, you shouldn't have it always be your point of view. I want to be my spoke at the wheel, and I want somebody else to turn it."