After watching some of the grisly, bloody punishments actress Elisha Cuthbert endures in her latest film, the horror remake House of Wax, it was a relief to see the actress looking fabulously coiffed, immaculately made up, and chicly clad in a satiny corset top from Gwen Stefani‘s L.A.M.B. line (I asked if the top was a gift from the pop singer: “I wish!” the actress exclaimed. “No, I had to buy it.”).
As she sat down to chat about the film with Hollywood.com, she tantalizingly wiggled her digits–one of which bore a massive engagement rock from her fiancé, Trace Ayala, dang it!–and reassured me: “My fingers are all here!” You’ll have to see the film to see what she means; for the rest of her thoughts, go no further.
What was it about House of Wax that first grabbed you?
Elisha Cuthbert: “I knew as soon as I read the script. Every time I take a movie on, I break down the character and know how intense it’s going to be. I think the whole sequence where I’m being chained up in the high chair type bands and what not, people see that for maybe one minute on screen, but it took me four days to shoot it. It’s physically demanding and you know it’s going to be that way because you have to break it up into little parts and be creative. But to stay consistent is the hardest thing, because you want it to work when it gets put together at a later time. Anything that scares me I go for. All the movie choices I’ve made have been like ‘This thing freaks me out–Let’s do it.’ I think a lot of your best work comes from challenging yourself, because you never know what’s going to happen. Although I do have a strong idea of what I want to do before I get there.
Now that you’ve joined the pantheon of Scream Queens, how’d you perfect that terrified shriek?
Cuthbert: “The scream was the hardest for me. To get a really good scream it has to come from a real place. You have to really frighten yourself, and when you really frighten yourself and it comes out. Something happens on the screen. I was really pleased with mine, because I felt like I really wanted to go there with it. Naomi Watts in The Ring, where she turns the guy around in the chair, that’s what I was striving for: a really good scream has to come from deep inside.”
Chad Michael Murray plays your brother–the “bad” twin to your “good” twin. Any sibling rivalry in your own life to draw from?
Cuthbert: “I think anyone who has a sibling knows there are challenges that go along with getting along with people that you live with on a day to day basis. I’m really lucky to have a great brother and sister, and I think the older we get the easier things are. The gaps kind of close. I’m eight years older than my brother, and now we’re starting to understand each other as human beings. My sister and I are four years apart, so were very close: She always steals my stuff. With Chad it was really easy, because we’re the same age. I had to be like ‘How would it be competing with each other all the time?’ My character’s obviously achieving things quicker than his, and it doesn’t make him any better or worse, things just happen to people at different times. I like the character development of it. We see them grow as the movie progresses. We’re watching this horror film, but know what these people are going through.”
Did you have a chance to bond with Paris because you two were the only girls?
Cuthbert: “Yeah we did. We went to dinner and went out a few times. On a whole, Paris really wanted to achieve one of her first movie roles and do a really great job, and I could feel and see that. We ran lines a lot of times, and the more comfy we were, the better it was. We didn’t have a lot of time and the show kind of shows that I came in at the last minute. But while on set we did a lot of rehearsing. I’m really proud of her and she was very strong.”
SPOILER ALERT!
I have to ask: have you ever Superglued anything to yourself?
Cuthbert: “No, I try to stay away from those sorts of things, but I will tell you one thing: I try to act out everything as natural and comfy as possibly, but there is no way to simulate your lips tearing apart. Originally we had this sort of fake glue, prosthetic thing and I can’t ‘act’ my lips tearing apart from each other, so I said, ‘Bring the glue, let’s do this. I don’t want it to look fake.’ We Superglue my lips together, I’m breathing through my nose, and then we tear them apart. I didn’t tear my lips apart–It was more of the moment before pulling them apart when you could see my lips fighting against each other, and you can’t create that no matter how good you are. You can have all the awards and not be able to: it’s physically impossible. So we had to go for it, but that’s what this movie is about, just going for it.”
END OF SPOILER ALERT
How do you think House of Wax compares to other films in the genre?
Cuthbert: “It’s like one of those movies you used to watch when you were a kid. This is not any sort of new horror film. This is what we love about movie making. We amp the gore up definitely to make it an R-rating, but it’s worth it because of that bad sequence I looove so much.”
Are you a big horror fan?
Cuthbert: “Yes, I’ve always gone to see them. A lot of them scared me as a kid–One in particular was Fire in the Sky. Anything that had to do with extraterrestrials scared the crap out of me. Some people like the religion thing, or ghosts and vampires, but the aliens did it for me.”
It’s one thing when you’re on set and you know that nothing is real. What’s like when you’re actually watching the finished movie?
Cuthbert: “It’s scary for me. I watch it and go ‘I was there. I know this happened,’ but you can never underestimate the power of editing, the idea that all of these ideas get put together at the end. Paris’ sequence in the film scared the crap out of me. She did a great job with her sequence, and at the end when everything is coming to a demise, that really impressed me because a lot of it was green screen and you couldn’t really tell. I like to look at the breakdown or the storyboards, but you never know what it’s going to look like until it’s put together and done. When I first saw it, there were moments when I jumped. And thought I was a loser because I jumped in my own movie!”
What scares you in real life?
Cuthbert: “Flying. I think fear comes from a lack of knowledge, for me at least, and the fact that I don’t understand how a 40-ton craft maneuvers itself in the air and I’m a 106 lbs. and can’t lift off in any means. I’m like ‘How am I doing this? It’s unsafe!'”
Do you have rituals or superstitions that you rely on to cope?
Cuthbert: “Oh yeah. I always get on a plane with my right foot first. I pray a lot and always talk to my mom before getting on a flight. But I try not to be a psycho about it. I realize with my job I have to fly, and I kind of bite my lip and go for it, but then there’s always that fear in the back of my mind…I loved everything about the movie except the 15-hour flight to Australia. And then the whole three months I was there dreading that I had another 15-hour flight back to L.A.”
At least you were able to use that for the movie, right?
Cuthbert: “Of course! Where do you think that scream came from?”
