Massachusetts native Julia Jones was in Boston yesterday to promote the DVD release of her film The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1. The film hits DVD and Blu-ray on February 11th and the actress, who plays Leah Clearwater in the franchise, talked about the films, its fans and what else we can expect from her in the future.
The books and films have created its own little fandom called Twihards, die hard fans of Twilight. And just like anything with a huge following, the series does have its haters. I asked the actress what it’s like to be in such a polarizing series, Julia Jones, “You are so much more aware of the Twihards and I think that’s one of the most unique parts of the experience to be part of something people feel so passionately about. There’s this energy you take with you that’s pretty powerful. Those premieres, that’s when it hits me the most or like when you’re far away in another country.” Twihards can be pretty out there and I asked her what the oddest thing she’s seen a fan do, if someone has ever dressed up as her character. Julia, “Someone just sent me a picture, I just started tweeting recently, and someone sent me a picture of their daughter dressed as my character for Halloween. It was so cute, she was so cute. I think the craziest costume I saw was this woman dressed in a nightgown, if you have seen the movie, you’ll understand, and she painted bruises all over her and had feathers stuck to her body everywhere so she was like Bella, the morning after.”
Julia Jones came into the Twilight franchise in the third movie Eclipse. The first two films, Twilight and New Moon were monster hits at the box office. She talked about what it was like coming into an already established franchise, Julia, “It was surreal because there is just no way to know what you are getting into because it is such a unique thing. When I was cast, it felt huge, but I had no idea what that meant in the ways my life would change. It was kinda scary, but that subsided once I got to set and met everybody. They were like hey this is the deal we are all in this together. We kinda operated like a family.” On the differences the second time around, coming in for Breaking Dawn, “It was easier in a lot of ways because the big thing was you already had found your character. You already gotten into her, played her before so there was a lot of confidence. The most scary part was when you’re first doing the film, you’re terrified of the fans. They all have this idea of what this character is like so are they going to accept you or reject you or hate you for ruining their favorite characters and their favorite books. That was a fear. I remember watching Eclipse for the first time before it came out and I was very nauseous because I realized, wait this is coming out, fans are going to be able to judge this. What if they hate it? As an actor you get a script, you get a character and you make it your own. When you’re playing a character based on a book, a wildly popular book, you’re playing a character that belongs to the world. That’s daunting.”
Her character has changed from its Eclipse time to the Breaking Dawn stage, on her character’s development, “When she first comes in, she’s just so angry and sort of raw. It’s almost a state of shock where she can’t process anything. She’s just turned into a wolf and what is that all about and she just lost the love of her life and she’s so alienated, it just comes out in anger. I think in Breaking Dawn, she kinda works through that. She sheds some of her anger. And hopefully you start to feel for her and it becomes justified anger. It was so rewarding because she’s such a great character to play. She just has so many layers and that’s a challenge to play a character that is so miserable and awful and unpleasant. I don’t personally have that much anger, well I do obviously if I can draw from it, but I don’t express it in my own life much. It was hard to learn how to do that. It’s funny, it helped that she physically had this scowl on her face because that can actually make you feel mad.”
I asked her if she had read the books prior to being cast. Julia, “I read the books back to back in a week and a half right when I was cast. One of my best friends is a big Twilight fan and she actually told me about them and how they were being made into movies and she told me the character would be perfect for me. In that scary period when you aren’t sure if people are going to like this, the fact that somebody I knew, a big fan, thought I was right for it, it was very calming.” On the casting process, “You get a phone call like that, asking to audition for something that’s a cultural phenomenon, there’s just not a thought in the world about not doing it.”
The franchise made huge stars out of the lead actors Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner, I asked her if she was hoping something like this could be a launching pad for her own career, Julia (smiling), “I hope so. That’s the plan, that’s the hope.” Not only is the actress quite stunning, but she was Ivy League educated at Columbia and I joked with her asking how she goes from Columbia University to Twilight, Julia, “It’s really funny, one of my good friends from high school, she’s doing her residency at UCLA, when we were growing up here we would all sit around at the dining room table at night and study for Calc AP. When I was prepping for Twilight, we were at a table at her apartment in Westwood (California), she had these thick medical books and I had the Twilight books. The twists along the way are what makes life interesting.”
One of her cast mates that she really enjoyed working with was Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of the legendary Ron Howard). On Bryce, Julia, “I didn’t do a lot of filming with her, but we hung out on set and did a lot of press together. First of all I relate to her, she’s my age, we went to college in New York at the same time, it was easy to communicate with her. But she’s also had all this experience that I was going through for the first time and helped put it in perspective. Watching the way she handles stuff was helpful.”
Before the Twilight franchise, Julia Jones was a model and also studied at The Boston Ballet School from age 4. I asked her if while growing up she ever considered acting as a potential job. Julia, “It was more theater when I was younger. I did theater here in Boston and I thought I wanted to be a theater actress. I got to New York and I was told by a bunch of theater actors that the way to do theater in New York is to do movies in LA. Nowadays it’s awesome cause you can go back and forth.” She did a play almost immediately after working on the films, on the transition from film to theater, “It was so crazy and wonderful. The play was really challenging, I think it was the hardest thing acting wise I’ve ever had to do. I had just been thrown into the Twi-universe (the universe of Twilight) full on and for those 4 months that I was doing that play, it was like a cocoon. Those New York theater people, they don’t really care about Twilight (laughing), so I didn’t get any special treatment and you’re in rehearsal from 9 to 6 and you start doing shows and you’re just sort of removed from the world. It was a nice break and it gave me perspective.”
As an up and coming actress I asked her if there were any actors, actresses or directors she would love to work with, Julia, “There are a lot of people, I really love Marion Cotillard, Jessica Lange. I worked with Quentin Tarantino as a producer of a movie, he’s someone that impressed me to death that I would do anything to work with him as a director. I spent many months auditioning for The New World, which was Terrence Malick, he’s like the other big one I think. I met with him a few times, he’s magical. Bill Condon is incredible, I feel really lucky to have that experience.”
As someone who has dabbled in film, TV, and theater she was asked if she had a preference, “I think I like it like that, I think I like the dabbling. I think part of the reason I’m an actor is because I couldn’t see myself going to a desk every day, the same thing every day. The mediums are so different. There are things you love about theater and film and television. It’s like having totally different jobs. Theater is something you do when you just want to check out, get lost in a world. Film is sort of the middle of theater and TV. TV is sort of a schedule, it’s almost like going to an office. Film is chunks of time.” I asked her if there was a specific genre she would like to do, “There are things I’d like to do now that I‘ve never done. I just did an episode of In Plain Sight, I got to do stunts and work with guns. It was really fun. I would love to do an action film. (laughing) But then I want to do a romantic comedy. I actually don’t watch a lot of TV. I was on ER for a little while and I love John Wells and he has a show called Southland that I would love to do, I would do anything he’s involved with. There’s a lot of stuff on cable that I would love to do.”
For someone in one of the world's biggest pop culture phenomenons, Julia Jones seems so normal and down to Earth. She was friendly and joking and just so relaxed. She joked and called ComicCon the 8th Wonder of the World, took pictures and just seemed like your buddy. She couldn't praise her director and cast mates enough and especially the fans. Expect much more from the beautiful and smart actress.
You can follow her at www.Twitter.com/JuliaRJones and me at www.Twitter.com/Murraymaker
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