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Step aside Lindsay Lohan, indie teen queen Camilla Belle is taking on the blockbusters. SHE SPEAKS TO US about fame, eating disorders and having Daniel Day-Lewis as a make-believe Dad
Nineteen-year-old indie “It” actress Camilla Belle has just finished pre-production in Cape Town and has arrived in New Zealand. Here she began filming the prehistoric epic, 10,000 BC, with The Day After Tomorrow director Roland Emmerich. Belle will be playing the lead and while the actress is obviously excited about landing her first “big-budget Hollywood movie”, she was also impatient to get going.
“I just kind of wanted to start already, you know? It’s been a long pre-production process. I mean, they needed it, but…”
By long she means months, and Belle was understandably a “little nervous” about the project. After all, it’s a very different role for the Los Angeles native whose profile has been on the rise ever since teen horror flick When a Stranger Calls brought her to the attention of Hollywood. Up until then, the striking brunette had displayed a penchant for playing dark, broody, troubled teens in low-budget indie flicks – hence the indie “It” girl moniker.
“Yeah, it is kind of different for me,” she laughs. “And it’s kind of difficult to describe. It’s really about this unknown period of time – after the cavemen and before the Egyptian societies. We have to create a whole society of people – how they communicated, how they lived. It’s been really hard trying to develop something that’s believable and unidentifiable at the same time, but we’ve had a lot of fun trying to figure out how things were. It’s been a really creative process but a huge, huge challenge.”
Not to mention a huge, huge boost to her Hollywood profile. Emmerich is a significant force within the industry and while Belle is trying not to “think about that too much”, the astute actress knows he could have chosen anyone. Yet he chose her, despite the
fact that she really only began to pop up on people’s radars late last year when the small indie flick The Ballad of Jack and Rose was released. But Belle is certainly no newcomer to the industry. In fact, she’s spent well over 18 of her 19 years in front of one type of camera lens or another. In classic Hollywood style, the actress got her first break when she was still in nappies.
“My career is a complete accident,” she laughs. “That’s what’s so funny. My mum’s from Brazil and she really had no idea what this whole world was. People suggested that I should go into the business (after she was spotted at a playgroup one day), so she just went and took me into a modelling agency. They booked a job and it just kind of went from there. We ended up really enjoying it and having a good time, but it was just a complete fluke.”
Belle’s first professional photograph was taken when she was just nine months old. Modelling for magazines soon led to television commercials and at five Belle made her acting debut in Trouble Shooters: Trapped Beneath the Earth. Fourteen years and almost as many films later, luck is no longer part of the equation. She’s never formally studied acting, yet she has already worked with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Ralph Fiennes, Glenn Close, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Daniel Day-Lewis.
“The only formal training I had was when I did a summer program at RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) in London,” explains Belle. “It was only for the summer and was for English theatre as well. It’s always just been observation and learning as I go. I watch films and watch the people I work with and take what works for me.”
It’s proved to be a highly effective strategy – so much so that even when she took three years off to complete her schooling, she was able to return last year with a vengeance. Since then she’s had no less than four films slated for release: three edgy indie dramas (The Ballad of Jack and Rose, The Chumscrubber and The Quiet) and the more mainstream When a Stranger Calls. It’s a broad mix of projects with little in common other than the fact that they are all “dark and complex and difficult to play.”
“I’m not consciously looking for those [dark] roles,” she laughs. “They just happen to have been the most interesting so far. I mean, I don’t want to do the same film twice and luckily I’ve been able to [avoid that]. I’d love to do comedy and maybe I’ll find a really great complex role in a comedy, but I haven’t had that opportunity yet.”
Belle’s career so far has been progressing along very nicely and, as the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Credit, of course, has to go to Belle’s mother, who is also her manager. She’s made great acting choices for her daughter and, while Belle is clearly having a bigger say in what she does or doesn’t take on in the future, both women understand intuitively what works for the young actress.
For instance, when Belle read the script for The Ballad of Jack and Rose, she immediately “fell madly in love with the script”. Belle wasn’t daunted by the difficult subject matter, which deals with the suffocating, almost incestuous, dynamics between a father (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) and his daughter. The film’s release in theatres was limited, yet Belle’s nuanced performance received rave reviews and demonstrated her considerable acting abilities.
As for her decision to do The Chumscrubber, Belle agreed for one very simple reason: “It was just so weird,” she laughs. Of her acting choices more generally, Belle explains that “the films I’ve done have just been very challenging. If a film isn’t, then I don’t really see the point of doing it and that’s always my mind set whenever I’m reading a script.”
The desire to “mix it up and keep it interesting” also means that Belle has managed to avoid being typecast – no easy feat in an industry that thrives on labelling people. While many of her peers opt for roles in vacuous comedies or fluffy romantic fairytales, Belle has a knack for sniffing out those intriguing left-of-field parts. Take The Quiet, for example, which is due for release in Australia next year. Belle plays a deaf, mute orphan who moves in with her godparents – brought to life by Edie Falco (The Sopranos) and Martin Donovan (The United States of Leland). Belle learned sign language for the part and admits that it put her into a “strange head space because my character is so lost and so lonely”.
“I think it might just be my weirdest film so far,” she laughs. “It’s pretty dark. It’s about a flawed, strange family where everyone has these dark, dark secrets. While the characters kind of bond on some weird level, no one really knows each other.”
But then she decided to take on teen horror flick When a Stranger Calls. It was a savvy departure from the indie actress’s previous work. The film shot to number one at the US box office and suddenly Belle became the latest buzzword in Hollywood. Initially, however, she had passed on the project because she thought it was going to be some “blood and guts, gory horror movie”. When she learned that director Simon West (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) was planning a classy psychological thriller in the tradition of Wait Until Dark (which starred Audrey Hepburn) she changed her mind.
Since then “there’s been more attention, for sure,” she says. “But I really, honestly, don’t [take that much notice of] it. If someone does recognise me, I’m really surprised. It’s funny, you know, you can do all the indie films you like and get okay reviews and things, but it’s like Hollywood only watches certain types of movies. So when I did Stranger, they were suddenly like ‘oh who’s this new girl?’”
Interest in her, however, is only set to increase. She was recently on the cover of Teen Vogue and has been asked to be the face of hip, urban fashion label Miu Miu. Not that Belle is worried about “that side of the business”. She is who she is and “that won’t change”.
“I think it’s been helpful that I’ve grown up in LA and seen people go through [the rise to fame]. Here you’re surrounded by Hollywood and films and that whole world, so it’s not shocking to me. I’ve kind of been subconsciously preparing myself for it if it does happen, because it can really start your downfall, I think, if you don’t know how to deal with it. I’m lucky, you know, I have my family, my friends, I have people to support me. So sure, there’s been more attention, but it’s nothing overwhelming or too noticeable. Or I try not to notice it if it is.”
Belle has in fact managed to live a surprisingly normal life, given what she does. She attended the prestigious all-girls Marlborough School in LA and her closest friends “have nothing to do with the business”. Besides acting she has a range of other interests that she pursues with equal vigour, including music. She was an aspiring classical pianist until she was 15.
“[Music] is not something that’s, like, a career,” she says. “When I was younger I really did love playing piano and it was really a big passion of mine. Then when I started getting older it just became a hobby and that’s kind of where it is now. It’s just something I’ll pull out once in a while but no, not as a career.”
“The music and the other things I do are just part of trying to live a very normal life, and I think I’ve succeeded,” she says. “What’s kept me going and what’s kept me strong is having that separate, private life with my family and friends, so I’m grateful for that.”
Colleagues use words like “grounded” and “level-headed” to describe the teen. While Belle is all that, these are also characteristics she will need to survive in this business long-term. Hollywood is littered with tales of youths who have gone off the rails because fame came too quickly, too early. Take Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan and the Olsen twins, for example, and their recently reported battles with eating disorders. Many see these struggles as a direct result of fame and the film industry’s preference for extremely thin actresses.
“Sure there’s pressure to conform to certain standards or ideals,” admits the actress. “You can’t really not notice it, because you see it in all the magazines and on the TV shows. It surrounds everyone’s life, especially if you’re living in a big city like Los Angeles, where that’s what it’s all about.
But I really don’t feel any pressure to look a certain way because I just refuse to feel it. I look the way I look and I’m not going to be changing that for anyone else’s satisfaction, or just to fit a mould. I am who I am and if they don’t want that then I’m not the right person for them. Obviously, if there’s a role that calls for looking a certain way, I’ll do it. But when I’m Camilla then I look the way I look and I am my size and that’s just the way it is.”
Besides, her other passions include “cooking and eating,” she laughs. “I love to eat and I love living a really healthy lifestyle. I want to continue with that and I’m not going to give that up just to follow a trend. So I try not to listen to any of that because you only get one life.”
And with her one life, Belle is focusing all her efforts on acting. She graduated from high school last year and there was talk of university – she’s “passionate” about languages and applied to the likes of Princeton, Yale and Edinburgh. But instead she’s decided to take a year off from studying and will “see what I want to do”.
“I’m enjoying what’s been happening so far and I hope to be able to continue with what I’m doing.” By that she means she wants to continue mixing independent films with larger Hollywood fare. “That’s kind of my ideal world. I don’t really think about having a particular type of career, although I do really love the way Kate Winslet has been able to, you know, have the exposure of bigger films but also really work her craft and really explore things in smaller films. But other than that, there’s no conscious plan,” she continues. “I guess my biggest hope for the future is that people will continue to want to see me and won’t get sick of me,” she laughs. Right now, there seems little danger of that.
ILLUSTRATION JOSIE WILEY
