The Discreet Charm Of Emily Mortimer
A fellow Brit, I am happy to concede that modesty is a national pastime. As to Emily, throughout our interview she exhibits a reassuringly unassuming demeanor for an actress of her luminosity. From the moment I persuade her to let me buy lunch—arguing, uncertainly, that the magazine will cover it—to the moment I say goodbye, somewhat star-struck and consequently failing to pay at all, she is constantly pulling the rug from under her own feet. Still, the question persists: How can this alumna of movies by Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, who will this year star alongside Johnny Depp and Ben Kingsley (Hugo Cabret), Paul Rudd (Our Idiot Brother) and Owen Wilson (Cars 2), persist in the idea that she is insignificant? Isn’t effacing one’s self a form of concealment, of deceit even?
“I feel like the self-effacing side of me is where I go when I’m not feeling comfortable,” she says, when the subject is broached. “I’ve done it recently in an audition where I had to improvise, and I’m so terrified of that. Anything that I associate with drama school makes me feel very inadequate, because I didn’t go to drama school. I didn’t train or anything.”
It’s worth noting something. In the course of our conversation, Emily has thus far insisted that she’s “lowbrow” while at the same time quoting Joseph Brodsky, and described her painful vacillations over whether to wear a favorite hat when about to be introduced to Woody Allen. During the photo shoot for this magazine, she endeared herself to the make-up artist and photographer with a stand-up riff on her sunburn. But when the subject of her modesty is addressed, she presents it as a tool she uses to get out of awkward situations. In other words, she is being self-effacing on the subject of her self-effacement.
Back to the story.
“I said, ‘I’m terrible at improvising, and you could see them all go…’” She pulls a face inspired by Edvard Munch. “I told them this story about an improvised comedy I was in called A Foreign Affair. I had to play a Russian bride, and I was thinking, ‘I don’t know how to improvise.’ There was a sort of script, and I was going to stick to that. So, we get out there and Tim [Blake Nelson, of O Brother, Where Art Thou?] asks my name, and I say, ‘Tatiana,’ in a bad Russian accent.” (Bad, no doubt, because she spent three years at Cambridge studying the language.) “Then he asks for my last name, and I don’t know… I’m trying mentally to flick through the script, and I’m thinking this is so unfair. Finally, there was this long pause, which ended with me panicking and saying, under my breath, in the most apologetic way, ‘Mortimer?’ And they yell, ‘CUT!’ I tell this story, but it’s not exactly going to inspire someone who’s making a really expensive movie to cast me.”
The story itself might not have vouched for Emily, but the endearing telling of it probably did. Was there a little bit of cunning in that? Whenever the label “self-effacing” is applied in the press, the implication is that what is described may be little more than an act, just one of innumerable ways to pose in the public eye. It’s a cynical notion that goes hand in hand with the assumption that Englishness is never more than an affectation, or a ruse designed to make the opponent drop his guard before being eviscerated by a line from Noel Coward. As the words pour from Emily in a disingenuous tumble, I discover what really annoys me about “self-effacing.” Isn’t it just the moral relativist’s word for honesty? Let’s face it: unless you’re Muhammad Ali, to be truthful is to be modest—and the love of unadorned truth is another trait that Emily identifies as particularly British.