Being Catherine Keener Isn’t So Bad

Joan Crawford had it in spades. Linda Fiorentino made it her calling card. And now Catherine Keener’s gift for playing smart, sexy and delightfully nasty screen roles is gaining her a reputation in Hollywood.

In the surprise indie hit “Being John Malkovich,” Keener delivers one verbal blow after another--usually directed at her pathetic admirer Craig, played by John Cusack. Her character, Maxine, an attractive, aloof, neurotic ice queen, taunts Craig with lines such as, “Even if you had me, you wouldn’t know what to do with me.” Her sexy self-assurance at once terrifies and attracts the men around her.

“Malkovich” director Spike Jonze immediately grasped that quality in Keener when he picked her to play Maxine. In a way, it was counterintuitive casting: The usually sexy Cameron Diaz plays Craig’s dishwater-boring wife, Lotte, in the movie. After auditioning more than a dozen actresses for the role, Keener clinched it while reading one particularly snappy exchange at a bar between Maxine and Craig.

“She did it so casually and so unforced,” Jonze said. “It was sort of the quintessential Maxine with a zippy line. She had the ability to play Maxine in a way that she would say the harshest things to somebody, but you almost didn’t know you got stung until afterward. She didn’t do it venomously, which is more interesting than playing those lines as a villain.”

It’s a performance that’s already winning Keener honors: The New York Film Critics Circle last month named her best supporting actress, and she received a Golden Globe nomination for supporting actress as well.

To Keener, “Maxine was like an arsonist setting fires here and there and leaving other people to clean them up. That’s probably why I kept trying to [get close to] Lotte, because I kept thinking, ‘This is not me! It’s not me!’ . . . I’m not the person that can do all of those things!”

Playing sharp-tongued women is not new to Keener. In Neil LaBute’s 1998 film “Your Friends & Neighbors,” Keener played Terri, Ben Stiller’s no-holds-barred girlfriend. Terri is the kind of girl who says what’s on her mind--no matter how hurtful or mean-spirited it may seem.

“Is there any chance you could shut up?” Terri barks at Stiller’s character as they are making love. “[Lovemaking] is not a time for sharing.”

Portraying women who play by their own rules, who defy society’s traditional standards for women’s behavior, appeals to Keener.

“My natural tendency would have been to make [Terri] more palatable to people by making her more diplomatic,” she noted. “That is what women do all the time--soften themselves up--and usually that softening is in the presence of men. Terri was consistent in front of men and women, and I found that really interesting.”

For avid independent moviegoers, Keener is a familiar sight. She has appeared in more than a dozen low-budget films, showing a tremendous range. In “Simpatico,” which opened in Los Angeles for Oscar consideration last month, she plays a not especially bright supermarket clerk who gets caught in a bizarre triangle with Jeff Bridges and Nick Nolte.

But Keener is winning more mainstream fans with the breakout success of “Malkovich”--the film has grossed a surprising $18.2 million so far and won the Los Angeles Film Critics award for screenwriting and New York Film Critics awards for Keener and Malkovich himself (as best supporting actor), as well as four Golden Globe nominations.

In real life, Keener is nothing like Maxine or Terri. There is nothing manipulative or hard-edged about her. In fact, at a recent interview, it was hard to believe that the nervous, ponytailed young woman wearing an oversize, moth-eaten green sweater could be the same razor-edged woman she plays on screen.

“I struggled. I really struggled,” she said about playing Maxine as she picked at her bowl of oatmeal and raisins at a nondescript deli in Los Feliz.

Jonze and Keener were vigilant about making Maxine a multidimensional character and not allowing her to lapse into simple nastiness. “It was easy for me to fall into the trap of just being hard and mean,” she said. “Underneath it all [Maxine] might have had a heart somewhere . . . I think.”

With her thin, tall frame, catlike greenish eyes and high cheekbones, she is attractive in an unconventional way. She’s 40 but looks at least 10 years younger.

“I knew we needed to get her,” said “Friends & Neighbors” director LaBute. “I couldn’t let her go [after the audition]. I can’t even explain what her real beauty is--it’s kind of amazing, you can’t stop looking at her. It was important to have those piercing eyes.”

But many of Keener’s film roles have not been as biting as Maxine or Terri, from Anne Heche’s sweet, lonely, single friend in 1996’s “Walking and Talking” to George Clooney’s wacky, chain-smoking ex-girlfriend two years later in “Out of Sight.” Her roster of performances is what convinced LaBute and Jonze that she could play their respective characters.

“From talking to her and seeing her in movies, she’s a really incredibly perceptive person,” Jonze said. “She has played so many different roles and has done them so naturally. Her style of acting is very real.”

Added LaBute: “If I was looking for a female Christ, she is who I would cast. Catherine draws you in by saying so little. What I have found as a common thread with really good film actors is a comfort zone where they are seemingly doing nothing. There is no wasted energy.”

Keener said she fell into acting quite by accident.

She grew up in Miami, the eldest of five children. She attended Wheaton College in Norton, Mass. Unable to land a spot in a photography class, her teacher suggested she enroll in an acting class. She performed in theater throughout college, with her first performance in a production of Wendy Wasserstein’s “Uncommon Women and Others.” But upon graduation, she moved to New York and worked as an assistant to a casting director.

She never thought of herself as an actress--until her boss told her she had no talent for office work.

“She said to me, ‘You’re not so good as a secretary. Is there anything else you would like to do?’ ” she recalled.

She moved to Los Angeles and began taking acting classes. It was here she met her husband, actor Dermot Mulroney, the man she calls her “coach.”

She was cast in bit roles until “Johnny Suede,” a 1991 film directed by Tom DiCillo and starring the then-little-known Brad Pitt. Her role as the neurotic New York girlfriend opposite Pitt’s flaky character opened doors for her.

It also marked the beginning of her collaboration with DiCillo, who went on to direct her in three more movies, including 1995’s “Living in Oblivion,” in which she starred opposite her husband and Steve Buscemi.

“Johnny Suede” was “the first time that made me feel connected to the material,” Keener said. “Working with Tom DiCillo feels like one big chunk of my career.”

Though she is very pleased with the way her career is going and admits that more scripts are landing on her doorstep, she is philosophical about success in Hollywood. In the end, it really is her family life that keeps her grounded and gives her perspective, she said.

A new mother, Keener is quite content with her quiet home life, her nine-year marriage to Mulroney (the groom in “My Best Friend’s Wedding”) and their home in the eclectic Los Feliz area.

And though she probably has hit the highest point of her 14-year career with the popularity of “Malkovich,” Keener seems unfazed by stardom or Hollywood’s obsession with celebrity.

“Even if you have an innate ability or talent, you need to learn a bunch of other things to deal with the business,” she said. “You have to find a balance between taking yourself seriously enough and not taking yourself too seriously. When people are scrutinizing how you look and what you sound like or how big or small you are, you have to know that it’s not personal.”

And with that she wraps up the interview, politely excusing herself, saying it’s time to go home and feed the baby. Not something you’d expect from Maxine.