Keanu Reeves looks noticeably tired after a night out on the town at the Toronto International Film Festival. He’s clearly over any questions about The Matrix and couldn’t find time to get together with his Constantine co-star Shia LaBeouf who was staying in the same hotel.
Reeves says he’s happy doing smaller indie roles, which is why he took the smaller role of the hippie dentist in Thumbsucker, written and directed by Mike Mills. Another of Reeves‘ Constantine co-stars, Tilda Swinton, stars in the film as the mother of a boy (Lou Taylor Pucci) who sucks his thumb. Benjamin Bratt, Vince Vaughn and Kelli Garner also star in the Sony Pictures release.
As the dentist in Thumbsucker, you suggest that people find their “power animal.” Do you have one?
Reeves: “No, I don’t have one.”
Why not?
Reeves: “I just don’t.”
What was it about this script and character that appealed to you?
Reeves: “The writing and the humanity. I really enjoyed where he ended up and the place that he started, and the kind of journey that this guy goes on. I play an orthodontist and am kind of mentoring this young kid. He has some ideas about life and he comes to a place where I guess he knows less, but he knows more at the same time. So it’s relatable.”
Do you think you’re spoofing your persona with this character?
Reeves: “Perhaps if you kind of isolate it like that I guess you could say that. You think it was the history of me as an actor, not that it was just funny?”
Do you miss doing the big studio movies?
Reeves: “In terms of scale, I’d say no. But the film itself and the material itself wasn’t liberating, and you’re just doing it kind of naturalistically. I don’t know that I miss it, but I enjoyed it very much.”
Do you find roles readily available to you?
Reeves: “You just look out for them and try to decide. If I have the ability to decide what I get. I don’t. Writers have to write something and meet the directors and the producers have to want to do it.”
Do you have a grand plan for your career or do you fly by the seat of your pants?
Reeves: “Is there anything in between?”
Are you settled now in your career?
Reeves: “Hmm. You know what, I’ll just say that I’m 41 now and I feel things differently. That seems to have done it. It’s probably cliché, and it’s good and bad.”
You’re playing a troubled mom again, is that something you wanted to do?
Swinton: “Sometimes it takes me three or four films to work things out, and when Mike [Mills] first talked to me about this story I thought this would be another opportunity to go back and look at this thing about–I’m really interested in the idea of identity and how you get to these ideas that we should have to pick one item from any menu and to stick to it for the rest of our lives. Whether it be gender or anything in fact, any element of identify. I’m particularly interested in thinking about that his with the pretense about when you become a mother there is this idea that you are individuated singular self just vanishes. It just isn’t true and of course with in The Deep End she’s kind of happily embracing this role as mother, she’s really going for it, she knows all the lines by heart, she knows she’s got the costume and she’s really doing it well. Then this other self that she has abandoned for so long comes back. The thing with Audrey in Thumbsucker is that she is really fighting the role of mother. She’s sort of embracing it but she’s sort of, it doesn’t really fit as well. She’s in denial about so much and really not looking after herself at all. So, little Miss Fantasy World and is so identified with her son as the mother in the The Deep End so there are great similarities between them. Both of them have these 17-year-old sons coming to the point of sexual activity and leaving them.”
You serve as a producer of this film, too, and you’re involved in a lot of your projects. Do you ever think of directing?
Swinton: “I am sort of always wondering. I’m always hoping that I talk myself out of it. There is a project that I am developing now which I am developing as a producer but there is a question mark in my mind about whether I shouldn’t direct it, so I am trying to kind of keep a bit loose about it. I am hoping that when I get to the wire I will have talked myself out of it and thought of the perfect person to direct it, but I might not, so I might. I really like working with filmmakers and I really like being able to concentrate in the way in which I can on what I do, but who knows? It’s a kind of a bit of an open door for me at the moment.”
Do you think working with Derek Jarman (Caravaggio, Edward II) helped with your directing bug and interest in the craft?
Swinton: “Oh, if I hadn’t met Derek Jarman when I did, I don’t know, it’s kind of unimaginable not having met him. He formed as a filmmaker and he made filmmakers of all of us who worked with him. By the way doesn’t necessarily mean that he made us directors because we are all filmmakers actually, we don’t necessarily have to be directors to be filmmakers and he taught us all that, all of us who worked with him. I was so spoiled by my time with him and it was great to be spoiled that early because it means that I am that lazy about life and I am so determined that it should be that good again and the amazing thing is that it is. When I say he kind of formed me, he kind of just gave me license to ask for what I asked for, it was such a beautiful environment to work in and that’s very spoiling.”
What was it like having Keanu Reeves poke around in your mouth all day?
Pucci: “I have to tell you, he didn’t really know what he was doing with those utensils all the time. It could get quite painful!”
Thumbsucker opened in limited theaters Sept. 16.
