Sunday was a jam-packed day in the Moviefone Unscripted studio on Main, where you couldn't turn around with bumping into a celeb. Lucky for me, I was hanging out there at just the right time to catch the exquisite Vera Farmiga, who was there to promote the film 'Joshua' with her director, George Ratliff.
Up until this past fall, Farmiga wasn't particularly well known despite having drawn universal raves for her work in 'Down to the Bone.' (For my part, I'd seen in last year's 'Running Scared,' and she was by far the best thing about that movie.) Then came 'The Departed,' and now she's finally in a position to bring attention to smaller films like 'Joshua,' a psychological thriller about a mother who discovers that her son's a "bad seed." (Rumor has it, by the way, that there's a bidding war afoot for this film, with Fox Searchlight currently in the lead. Updated: Fox Searchlight nabbed the film today.)
Farmiga looked lovely as she walked into the studio for the interview -- great jeans, cute little blazer, blond shoulder-length hair -- and I'm such a huge admirer that I made up an excuse to talk to her, like the dork that I am. (Me: "You want some water?" Her: "Yeah, that'd be great, thanks!") The interview itself, in which she and Ratliff chatted with each other about the film, went great. She very openly and easily talked about her desire to have a child of her own, and about the ways in which she and her siblings (she's the second-oldest of seven kids) used to torture each other growing up. It involved long streams of drool. They also talked so much about 'Down to the Bone,' which Ratliff and Scorsese both love and used as their basis for casting Farmiga, that I resolved to rent it the second I get back to New York.
When she introduced herself on-camera, incidentally, I learned that I'd been pronouncing her name wrong this whole time. It's Far-MI-ga, not FAR-miga. I can't quite get used to the proper pronunciation. Sounds a little too much like "formica" -- and Farmiga's way too cool to be associated with fake kitchen countertop material. But maybe that's just me.
