At 37, Jennifer Jason Leigh delivers more dramatic energy for the customer’s buck than almost anyone laboring in Hollywood today.
Not that she makes it particularly easy for mainstream audiences to appreciate her work.
Leigh’s characterizations are filled with unusual tics, off-putting accents and psychological demons. Her most memorable assignments have included emotionally charged portrayals of unvarnished prostitutes (“Last Exit to Brooklyn,” “Miami Blues”), an alcoholic writer (“Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle”), a reluctant virgin (“Fast Times at Ridgemont High”), a junkie cop (“Rush”), an ugly-duckling heiress (“Washington Square”), a phone-sex provider (“Short Cuts”) and a tortured rock singer (“Georgia”).
With her new film, “eXistenZ,” Leigh just might attract the same kind of attention she received after playing Bridget Fonda’s psycho roommate in “Single White Female,” a yuppie thriller that now plays endlessly on cable TV.
Certainly, the work of writer-director David Cronenberg–as represented by such demanding films as “Crash,” “Dead Ringers” and “Naked Lunch”–usually requires more energy than the average filmgoer is willing to expend in a two-hour visit to the local multiplex. But “eXistenZ” is a stylishly creepy throwback to such sci-fi/horror hybrids as his “Scanners,” “Videodrome” and “The Fly,” and, as such, could attract some of the overflow from “The Matrix.”
In it, Leigh assumes the role of a legendary creator of video games whose latest brainstorm requires that participants be connected to each other via veiny “Umbycord” cables inserted into “Bioport” jacks at the base of their spines. In dialing up virtual reality to the hyper-realistic level of an extended LSD trip, Cronenberg asks the audience to figure out where the imagination ends and genuine terror begins.
In preparing to play game designer Allegra Geller, the Pacific Palisades High School dropout said she sought literature that would inform her character and immersed herself in the world of the cyber-geek.
“I read a lot about virtual reality, and where these games have gone and are going, and I also read about hackers,” said Leigh, the daughter of screenwriter Barbara Turner and the late actor Vic Morrow. “Then, I read philosophers like Hegel and Kierkegaard, existential writers Camus and Sartre, and Dostoyevsky, and stuff from the vanity presses . . . people who want to change the world in a violent way. Those are the kinds of things that Allegra would know and might inspire her, and, for me, it was fun reading.
“One of the reasons that I do a lot of different kinds of pictures is because I learn a lot when I’m doing them.”
Audiences who saw Leigh’s remarkable impersonation of a deeply disturbed–and not very talented–rock singer in “Georgia” might have been surprised to hear that she was asked to take over the role of Sally Bowles in “Cabaret.”
“It was so much fun, and such a good production,” she enthused. ” `Georgia’ was good in a sense because I had to perform in front of thousands of people, but I wasn’t playing a good singer. I wasn’t uncomfortable, because I love singing, but I never had to sing well before.
“We all have Liza Minnelli in our heads, but Sally Bowles actually wasn’t supposed to be a good singer . . . just sort of mediocre. She was never going to make it, but she definitely was better than Sadie in `Georgia.’ “
She credits the production’s musical director with “opening up” her voice.
“He really found my voice,” she said. “I have a good ear and good pitch, but I wasn’t breathing right. Suddenly, you add breath to it and you hear this voice coming out that you didn’t know existed.
“It was really kind of exciting.”
Leigh briefly was part of one of the most anticipated pictures of the summer, Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut.” Her commitment to “eXistenZ” wouldn’t allow her to finish what probably would have turned out to be a prolonged London shoot, but she values the 10 days she spent working on the film.
“It’s very exciting to work with people who inspire you. . . . I’m really lucky that way,” she said. “I was so sad and so shocked when I heard that he died because he seemed so young and so healthy. He was a real mensch. . . . lovely, funny, sweet, gentle . . . all the things you’d never feel about Kubrick.”
Leigh can’t disclose any details about the film, but she said her part was just intended to be a cameo.
“Kubrick wanted me to come back, but I was doing David’s movie,” she said. “Now, I’m not in the movie, but I loved working with him. Sometimes he was really open, to the point that we were improvising, and other times he would actually give line readings.
“It was a small crew, maybe only 10 people. . . . We didn’t do that many takes, the most was about five. I have the experience of working with him, and that’s what I prize more than being in the actual movie.”
As for her reputation for fully investing herself in her characters, Leigh believes acting is “the perfect profession for a shy person, because you can really communicate something, but it’s not through your own ideas or thoughts.”
