wowOwow - The Women on the Web

03/05/2010 6:00 am

Culture

A Day With Scorsese on Shutter Island, by Jill Larson

The cinematic Old Master only wanted Jill to play this part -- but about this part ...

Editor’s Note: Actress Jill Larson has played the popular character of Opal Cortlandt on "All My Children" for the last two decades, and also has a long list of credits in New York theater, as well as in film and television. But nothing has garnered her as much exposure as a single "shhh" in the new Martin Scorsese film, "Shutter Island," thus proving there are no small parts (and at 5’9", she is hardly a small actor).

I was leaving the "All My Children" studio after 13 hours of shooting Jesse and Angie’s wedding in four-inch pumps and a sequin dress tailored so tight it had to be removed each time I wanted to pee.

As the pitiful Opal Cortlandt, I had been seduced into the hotel’s broom closet, thrown to the floor and locked inside, held in a half nelson with a pistol to my head. As I emoted "Hope? Terror! Hope! Loss!" I watched my granddaughter’s adoptive mother bleed to death with a bullet through the heart.

I was calculating the distance between me and a martini when my cell phone rang. I snapped it open and answered to the voice of Matt, my agent’s assistant. "Please hold for Gary Gersh," he said, probably for the millionth time that day, before clicking me onto "hold." A little frisson of anxiety ran through me. Though I had just finished a day of work, acting opportunities drop dramatically for women over 30, and I was a couple of decades past that. I hadn’t heard from Gary in awhile and my radar was on alert. Why was he calling? "We’re trimming our client list and you didn’t …" ran through my head until I heard Gary’s voice.

"Hey Jill, how are you?"

"Great Gary, Great! How are you?" I returned in that forced, perky voice that I hate.

"Good, good. So listen, you remember that commercial you auditioned for last fall? The one Scorsese was directing – you know, his homage to Hitchcock?"

"Yeah, yeah, I do …"

"Well, he’s directing a picture up in Boston right now, and he’s got a role, it’s small, just a day, no words even, just a little exchange with DiCaprio."

"Yeah?" I’m breathing a little quicker now, anticipating … what? That he’ll suggest I start writing my Oscar speech? It’s an actor thing.

"He’s been trying to cast it locally, but he doesn’t like anyone they’ve brought him, says he keeps thinking of that woman on the audition tape last fall." ME? Scorsese was thinking of ME??… and DiCaprio!?? "So finally he told the casting director, ‘Let’s just spend the money and bring up that woman from New York, Jill Larson,’ so it’s an offer, just scale plus ten, but you’d go up to Boston, they’d put you up, if you’re interested."

"Well yeah, of course, I mean it is Scorsese," My God … Scorsese remembered ME! "Why wouldn’t I be interested, even if it is small. What is it?"

"I’ll e-mail you the script. You take a look at it and let me know. If it’s not your thing, I’ll get you out of it."

"Gary, what is the part?"

"Just read the script and see what you think, then get back to me."

"OK," I said, fully caught up in the mystery of what this tiny role could be.

That night I hurried my daughter through supper and off to bed so I could sit down at the computer to read "Shutter Island," based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River. Hmmm, good credentials, I thought as I started reading. The story was so gripping that I didn’t move, didn’t answer the phone, didn’t even get up to cruise the fridge until I had finished the whole script. In fact, it was so gripping that I forgot to look for MY part.

I went back to the beginning and started to read again – only a couple of female characters (as usual), what could it be? Another page or two and it hits me. I had read that Teddy, the lead character – I assume DiCaprio – gets off the ferry on what seems to be a desolate, savagely overgrown island off the coast of Massachusetts. He hacks his way through the bramble to a massive gate, on the other side of which is a collection of red brick institutional buildings poised on a beautifully manicured lawn and gardens, various people tending them. Teddy’s gaze fixes on "a MANACLED WOMAN working on the roses – pale, middle-aged, her hair RAGGED WISPS, almost BALD. A TWISTING DARK SCAR lies across her throat, ropy and thick as a strand of licorice, the color of OLD BLOOD."