Five years after her breakout role on Lisa Kudrow’s HBO series “The Comeback,” Toronto-raised actress Malin Akerman still marvels over the big names she gets to work with in Hollywood.
“Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn are two people that I grew up watching, so to have worked with them now, I still need to pinch myself,” Akerman, 31, said in a recent interview to promote the DVD release of “Couples Retreat,” co-starring her and Vaughn.
Josh Duhamel, Anna Paquin, Elijah Wood, Katherine Heigl and Sandra Bullock are but a few other A-listers she’s shared the screen with in recent years.
And then there was that encounter she had with Tom Cruise on the set of “The Romantics,” which co-stars Akerman and Katie Holmes (who is married to Cruise) and recently debuted at the Sundance Film Festival.
“He’s amazing. I mean, wow, that was pretty surreal,” said the tall, leggy blond, decked out in a zebra-print dress.
“I think I blushed from my toes up to my head. I was really nervous meeting him, and then after a few minutes we started chatting. He’s so nice, so personable and really is larger than life. It’s Tom Cruise, you know!”
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Akerman moved to Toronto with her family at age two and started modelling three years later. At 17 she won the Ford Supermodel of Canada search, then studied psychology at York University.
Soon after, Akerman moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting and got her first big break in 2005, playing a model/actress on “The Comeback,” about a washed-up sitcom star (Kudrow).
Her resume has ballooned since then, with turns in such comedies as “The Heartbreak Kid” with Stiller, in “27 Dresses” with Heigl, and in “The Proposal” with Bullock and fellow Canuck Ryan Reynolds. She was also in the 2009 superhero flick “Watchmen.”
In “Couples Retreat,” also released last year, Akerman and Vaughn play spouses worn down by their kids and home renovations.
When their pals, played by Kristen Bell and Jason Bateman, propose a getaway with them and several other couples as a means of reconnecting, they can’t refuse.
Vaughn co-wrote the film with Jon Favreau, who is also in the movie playing the husband of Kristin Davis’s character. Peter Billingsley (Ralphie of “A Christmas Story”) directs. The DVD and Blu-ray HD releases include a never-before-seen alternative ending.
Akerman said they shot in Bora Bora for nearly a month and got to sleep in bamboo huts, sip their morning coffee by the water and take a dip before the shooting day began.
“It was like filming in paradise,” gushed Akerman, who speaks fluent Swedish and is learning Italian from her husband, drummer Roberto Zincone. “I don’t know if you could call it work. You didn’t have to twist my arm to get me there.”
From Times & Transcript