More than just Muriel

On a snowy afternoon here, actress Toni Collette is half an hour late for an appointment, prompting her to say, “You’ve been sitting here so long. You look so bored. Do you want to talk about something else?”

Her concern is disconcerting. Actors are accustomed to talking about themselves -- it would seldom occur to most of them to talk about something else. Collette, however, seems open to anything. At least that’s the way she comes across during a conversation at a swanky, pseudo-anonymous lower Manhattan hotel lobby. And that’s clearly the way she has conducted her career.

“I’ve never had any game plan,” she says. “I think if you were to live your life like that, it would be kind of dangerous.”

Dangerous for her, perhaps. The most recent example of her openness is her work in Sue Brooks’ “Japanese Story,” which opens Wednesday in Los Angeles, about Sandy (Collette), an Australian geologist who has to baby-sit Hiromitsu (Gotaro Tsunashima), a Japanese businessman visiting Australia. Initially, they rub each other the wrong way. Sandy is outspoken, aggressive, independent. Hiromitsu is polite, passive, sexist. However, they are more alike than they realize. Both are closed off emotionally and open up only when they get stranded in the Western Australia desert.

This character-driven story featuring two not A-list actors in an unfamiliar locale is not exactly the easiest sell, as Collette frankly acknowledges, although it was a hit in Australia and has won prizes there. It has also generated awards buzz for Collette’s nakedly emotional performance.

“When we were making it I couldn’t help but wonder who was going to watch because it could be interpreted as being totally depressing, even though I think it’s really uplifting and quite positive,” Collette says, adding quickly that audiences shouldn’t be put off by what seems at first glance to be a culture clash that would mean nothing to Americans.

“Ultimately I think it’s just about people who are very different finding out that they are more similar than they realized,” she says. “Literally I think it could be anyone, but I guess the two cultures that the lead characters come from or represent kind of oppose each other in a perfect way.”

Success in supporting roles

Collette’s character in “Japanese Story” is of a piece with her other work in that she gives herself completely over to it, even when she’s called on to behave less than sympathetically. What is unusual here is that she’s front and center. The most notable previous instance of that was “Muriel’s Wedding” (1994), a hit comedy about an ugly duckling that brought Collette international acclaim. However, Muriel wasn’t the sort of role that could serve as a template for other roles -- or at least, other leads.

So, over the past decade, Collette has made an indelible impression with an assortment of supporting parts, including the lovelorn Harriet in “Emma” (1996); the distraught mother in “The Sixth Sense” (1999); the granola mom in “About a Boy” (2002); and a bitter ex-wife in HBO’s “Dinner With Friends” (2001). What these roles have in common is how vivid Collette is in them. As “Emma” director Douglas McGrath puts it, “There’s a shot at the beginning of ‘Blue Velvet’ of this bright, crystal-blue sky and a piercingly white fence and these luminous red roses. That’s what Toni is like. She’s like that red rose. She stands out in almost everything she does.

“When I met her, she just seemed so natural and unaffected, so true in her manner and so open. I just thought she had a wonderful unmodern lack of cynicism in her face and in her manner, a kind of emotional accessibility that made her intensely appealing. One of the things I love about her is you don’t feel there’s anything between you as a viewer and her as a performer. Some performers put up fronts, but whenever I see her I feel she’s letting you right into that character’s feelings.”

McGrath says the only thing he’d seen her in when he cast her was “Muriel’s Wedding,” and for years that’s who she was to many viewers, especially in Australia. According to “Japanese Story’s” director Brooks, Australians have a soft spot for Collette because of Muriel -- “ ‘She’s one of ours’ sort of thing.’ ” Brooks says that when they were in the middle of nowhere filming “Japanese Story,” a van full of kids drove by the set shouting, “You look terrible, Muriel,” which is a line from the film.

Clearly this image does not put Collette in the same class as such glossy Australian exports as Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett. On the other hand, she’s still big enough now to leave Australia behind. “Toni has been quite successful internationally, and that doesn’t make it easy for Australian films,” Brooks says. “Women get a small window of going off and enjoying the sunshine of the acclaim that they get in their 20s and 30s. I didn’t know that she would want to come back and do what you would call a small Australian film. But I did think that she would see the role and say, ‘This is something that I can really do well.’ ”

Collette doesn’t seem terribly interested in enjoying the sunshine of acclaim (she’s 31). Big films, little films, it’s still the same window. “I come from a theater background,” Collette says. “I left school when I was 16, and I’ve basically been educated through life, through traveling and being exposed and having a job that actually keeps my mind open instead of closed.

“It surprised me when I first came to L.A. It seemed that to grace the cover of a magazine was just as important as doing good work, and that really didn’t sit well with me. I can only work on films that I believe in because I have to live with myself.”

When reminded that she appeared in the blockbuster “The Sixth Sense,” she says she initially wasn’t interested because “action man” (Bruce Willis) was attached, but when she read the script she realized it wasn’t an action-man film. She thought it had a chance to reach audiences in a more profound way.

Characters with substance

It’s this impulse that has kept her away from what she calls “handbag,” or girlfriend, roles. “Japanese Story” is about as far away from a handbag as you can get and still have romance (and sex). In fact, there’s a sex scene in which Sandy is literally wearing the pants.

“There’s a blurring of boundaries that I think is quite interesting,” Brooks says. “I don’t think of her [Collette] like that in life. I do think that she doesn’t play, particularly as Sandy, a femmy, girly person. You don’t really get someone who has to be saved.”

Another career -- and life -- decision Collette has made is not to work so much. Collette says that when she turned 28 and was working on “Dinner With Friends” she hit the wall. “I was so over it,” she says. “I just felt like I wanted to quit acting because I felt like I’d been raped of my own emotional life. I felt like I wasn’t experiencing anything and that it was all being poured through the mouths and lives of other people. I think the key is balance and I think that’s with any career or vocation.”

Collette married musician Dave Galafassi last January and proceeded not to take her own advice, filming two projects, “The Last Shot” and “Connie and Carla,” back to back. She says she won’t do that again, no matter how attractive the roles are. Now she’s going back to Australia, where she’s going to enjoy a new house south of Sydney and try to learn to surf. Then it’s back before the cameras.

“I have feeling there’s a sense of longevity in this career if I want it, simply because I haven’t played the female lead,” Collette says. “I’ve always opted for characters who are challenging to me. They’re all characters, no matter what size they are.”