 |
Actress Felicity Huffman arrives for the 16th Annual GLAAD Media Awards at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles, Saturday, April 30, 2005. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello) |
If you know Felicity Huffman from her role as the harried mom on TV's Desperate Housewives, her newest movie role is really going to surprise you.
Huffman, 42, stars in Transamerica, an unusual movie about family.
The central character is a transsexual man living as a woman and preparing for the final surgery that will change his gender forever. Just before he is scheduled for the long-awaited surgery, the character discovers a teenage son he didn't know existed. The kid's in jail. How these two apparent misfits slowly get to know each other is the centre of the story.
Now get your head around this -- Felicity Huffman plays the transsexual man.
That is to say, she plays a man who is in the process of becoming a woman.
You can get a headache just thinking about the layers of acting involved. What Huffman does in this role is so gobsmackingly good, and so utterly convincing, that well-deserved Oscar buzz has already started around this smallish indie film.
During an interview yesterday for Transamerica, which is being shown during the film festival, the diminutive Huffman says she was initially worried about the subject matter. "I was worried that maybe people couldn't relate," Huffman told the Sun, "but I think Duncan (Duncan Tucker, the writer/director) wrote a very true script, and when it's true it touches the truth in the human soul."
And that truth is all about wanting to be seen for who we really are, who we see ourselves to be.
"She wants to be seen as who she really is. Who hasn't felt she isn't recognized by her family, or by her husband, or at her job? Maybe it's just an actor thing, but who hasn't felt crushingly self-conscious, or ashamed, or that it's just painful being (yourself) in the world? I've certainly experienced that."
For the physical side of the role, Huffman consulted with a woman who coaches men becoming women.
"It usually happens later in life," Huffman said, "when they have the money for the hormones and for the sexual re-assignment surgery. So you turn to a 30- or 40- or even 50-year-old man and say, 'You have to live as a woman for a certain period before the surgery. Starting tomorrow, you have to dress as a woman.'
" (As) women, we use our hands in a conversation, we nod, we follow along. Men stand differently and use their hands differently and give very linear answers. She coaches them on those -- not invisible, exactly, but under-the-wire social cues."
Huffman then jumped up to demonstrate some of the things these men are taught. "You have to be small," she said, making herself physically shrink. "That's because men's hands and shoulders are big, so you cup your hands, and pull in the shoulders. Men take up space. So -- you're on one hip with your chest back to show your boobs, whether they're real or not, and you cup your hands and you walk."
Wow.
"Sorry to just act for you," she said, sounding a bit embarrassed.
Geez. No apology necessary.
Huffman, who is married to actor William H. Macy, has been acting herself since she was a teenager. The youngest of eight kids and the daughter of a former actress, Huffman has worked steadily in theatre, TV and film for many years. She has been in dozens of films, most recently in Raising Helen and Christmas With The Kranks.
But the success of Desperate Housewives has upped her profile in a dramatic fashion. What all the attention means to her, she said, is pretty simple.
"My main experience is that this is a freelance business, and in a freelance business you're always sure your last job really is your last job. With the show comes job security," she said, and she laughed nervously and knocked on wood.
"So I know, God willing, I'm going to have a job for the next two years. And that transforms day-to-day life, because you relax."
