Rebecca Miller, 47, is an actor, artist, novelist and filmmaker.
She's the director of The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, a film based on her novel of the same name. It's about a woman who finds herself surrounded by needy artists and lost inside a marriage. Miller, who is married to Daniel Day Lewis and is the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller, can tell you that Pippa Lee is not autobiographical at all.
Well, emotionally autobiographical, maybe.
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee stars Robin Wright Penn, Maria Bello, Blake Lively, Julianne Moore, Monica Bellucci, Winona Ryder and Zoe Kazan -- that's quite a pack of women.
"They are all waiting for good parts, so it's not as if I had to go and force them," says Miller, who was in Toronto during the film festival to promote her movie. "I think they can trust me because of my previous work.
And I already had Robin, and she's a real magnet for other actors."
Miller's previous films are Angela, Personal Velocity: Three Portraits and The Ballad of Jack and Rose.
Miller says she first became aware of Robin Wright Penn in the 1997 Nick Cassavetes' film, She's So Lovely. "And she was really good in The Pledge.
"Such an interesting actress," says Miller. "And for this role, she was perfect. She's a northern beauty, so fair, and she has a slightly distant quality in those blue eyes of hers."
Wright Penn is Pippa in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, but the story jumps between past and present, and Blake Lively plays Pippa as a very young woman. Weird though that may sound, it works beautifully. (Miller, having never seen Gossip Girl, cast Blake Lively thinking she was an unknown. In self-defence the filmmaker says, "Well, I live in rural Ireland.")
"The past is always with us. We're always carrying memory and fantasy under the fabric of our daily life," says Miller. "In a way, nobody is exactly the right age in the film -- Robin plays late 40s but also her 30s, and Blake plays ages 16 to 21 -- so in a way, you're saying, 'I trust you that you'll suspend disbelief, as otherwise I can't tell the story.' "
Miller and Day Lewis have two sons, who go to school in Ireland. As for protecting them from the celebrity fray, Miller says, "Whatever you have growing up becomes normal for you. I know from my own childhood. My children are in a family of actors and artists and writers. There are a couple of scientists in there, too!"
Indicating the media-heavy atmosphere of the film festival, she continues, "We don't expose our children to much of this. They have no experience of celebrity, except on the occasions when someone asks about their dad. Which they think is kind of stupid."
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