Every Oscars has an underdog, and this year’s is Melissa Leo. (Mickey Rourke doesn’t count; he’s more of a comeback.) The 48-year-old New York native, nominated for her leading performance in “Frozen River,” has been steadily working for many years, usually in fairly unglamorous roles, the best known featured in TV’s “Homicide: Life on the Street” and the 2003 film “21 Grams.”
In some ways, “Frozen River” (out on DVD this week) is a continuation – Leo’s Ray Eddy is a hardened, weary woman with more tattoos than makeup – but the award-winning indie has garnered the actress unprecedented attention. She’s gearing up to walk the red carpet, but taking it all with a grain of salt that would make her character proud.
It made me cold just watching “Frozen River.” Were you feeling frostbitten while filming it? It seems like the budget may not have allowed for luxurious trailers
There was no luxurious trailer whatsoever, except the ones you see in the film, which we couldn’t stay in because we were filming in them. We held in the car for the most part. It was pretty tough conditions.
Did you have any reservations about working with first-time director Courtney Hunt?
If there’s a dressing room with my name on it, I won’t say no. Work is work. Courtney was awesome, both as a writer and later as a director. I knew it was a great role, and I knew it was a film that had a lot going for it.
You’ve flown under the radar for most of your career, but starred on “Homicide: Life on the Street,” for four years.
I’m a working actress. I support myself – I don’t have to wait tables that many who call themselves actors have to do. Acting has been my sole source of income for all my adult life. I am known, and not known.
You went to SUNY Purchase, Alma Mater of Parker Pose, Stanley Tucci and Edie Falco. what’s going on with the actors at that school?
I’m not sure how it’s operating these days. There aren’t many people left from when I was there. But the school had been designed very carefully, with learned people from each of the arts, liberal and otherwise.
They were interested in teaching people who were serious about acting. And then once you left, they would encourage you to find a career, if you should be so lucky. And I think it drew a certain kind of people there.”
How much time and energy are you spending prepping for the Oscars?
Whatever will I wear? It is definitely being worked on. I think that’s what the event is really all about – the actors are the entertainment. It’s interesting, because almost all of us actors feel very different from the work that we do. So this presentation of ourselves on the red carpet – as if we and the work we do are one and the same – is fun and fascinating.
You’re longtime friends with Richard Jenkins, who’s nominated for Best Actor for his awesome work in “The Visitor” – do you get together to talk about it?
We’ve been hanging out all over town all year! We run into each other on a very regular basis.
If you win, do you see yourself pulling a Kate Winslet during your speech?
We all get a very sweet DVD, narrated by Tom Hanks, with advice about that.
* “I followed my son’s soccer games for many years while he was in school, and now he won’t let me go to his college games. He’s embarrassed. I don’t know, maybe I’m a little bit – maybe I root, root, root for the home team too much.”
* “The last book I read was “The Alchemist” by Paula Coelho.”
* “It’s not that I don’t like wearing dresses, because geez, I’m a girl, and I love to put a dress on from time to time,” Leo told The Onion. “But I went to [the producers of ‘Homicide’] when we first started and I said, “Okay, you take me into court, I’ll put a skirt on, but you can’t show up to work in a homicide unit in skirts and heels. You’ve gotta have trousers on.”
* “I have a very handsome dog named Zeus. He was the one who accompanied me for the filming of ‘Frozen River.'”
* “I have definitely lost work over the years because my chest isn’t bigger than it is and I don’t have platinum blond hair,” she told the Boston Globe. “Botox – that you would inject something into your face that would make it freeze – that’s kind of the opposite of what we’re supposed to do, isn’t it?”
* “I love to hike the Catskills. I’ve hiked many times with my family and friends. And when I’m in LA, I find ways to do that, too. I try to get out walking as much as I can in. In New York, at least, we can just go out and walk 23 blocks.””