“I love secondhand shopping. You find the best stuff! I can’t wait until my jeans and my boots are all worn in—when you shop secondhand, it’s already done for you. Plus, you can buy a T-shirt for $10 and cut it up into a new style, and it doesn’t matter if you mess it up.”
—Actress Malin Akerman, who played the Silk Specter on Watchmen, on her yen for castoff clothing.
From Ecouterre
Katie Holmes’ co-star Malin Akerman has said she wanted to ‘eat’ her little girl Suri.
Akerman, 32, worked with Holmes, 31, on their new movie The Romantics and said her co-star’s four-year-old daughter Suri was great on set.
She said to E! Online: ‘You just want to eat her! You want to eat that little kid so badly. And she’s a smart, smart girl. She’s so smart and well socialised because she’s always on set.’
Akerman was equally impressed with Holmes herself: ‘She’s like the sweetest hometown girl. She comes to set with cupcakes and coffee and orders pizza for everyone.
‘She’s like the mother hen… And she’s super cool and really, really funny. We had a blast.’
From Monsters and Critics
Actors are expected to sacrifice for their art, and for actress Malin Akerman that meant losing her eyebrows for her indie-hit.
Akerman tells PopcornBiz she did the ultimate eyebrow sacrifice for her new film “HappyThankYouMorePlease.”
Akerman plays a woman suffering from the hair-loss disease alopecia as the lead in the buzzed-about Sundance film which has garnered an August release date. There was no getting around the actual buzz for the part.
“I couldn’t fake the eyebrows,” she says. “The part deserved that dedication.”
The decision to go bare brow was “exciting and nervewracking.”
“The makeup artist turned on the shaver and the buzz started and I was like ‘Oh my God,’ ” she says.
There were a lot of bright sides. First of all, the brows have grown back. The Swedish actress was looking her usual stunning and fully-browed self at the Haute and Bothered Season 2 Launch Party on Monday night.
Also her husband loved the look. “My husband looked at me and said, ‘Wow you look five years younger. Second of all, you look angelic,’ ” Akerman says.
Finally, she didn’t have to shave her head. “We did a bald cap and my character wore these amazing head scarves,” she adds.
Akerman adds quickly. “I will shave my head if called upon.”
From NBC Connecticut
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
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 Friday’s 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.”
Vaughn was dating Canadian real estate agent Kyla Weber during filming (the two have since married) and Akerman’s national pride came out.
“She was on set and I was so excited when I met her that she was a Canadian,” said Akerman.
“I was like, ‘Yes! Go Vince! Good job!’ ”
From the Canadian Press
Toronto-native Malin Akerman has really come into her own in Hollywood in recent years.
The young actress starred alongside Ben Stiller in The Heartbreak Kid, played a flawed superhero in Watchmen, and most recently shared the screen with Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau in Couples Retreat (arriving on DVD Friday). For Akerman, the experience has been well beyond anything she ever expected.
“It’s been a pretty strange experience,” Akerman told Metro. “I’ve worked with phenomenal comedians who I’ve idolized for my entire life. To all of a sudden see my face on the same poster as Vince Vaughn was pretty surreal.”
Couples Retreat offered Akerman a rare opportunity to be involved with a movie throughout the creative process. With Vaughn and Favreau also working as screenwriters, the entire cast was encouraged to expand their roles.
“It was nice because they were in the middle of cleaning up the script and rewriting certain things when I came on board,” revealed Akerman. “So before we even started shooting, Vince and I had a good five hours when we went through all the scenes and improvised. Sometimes when you’re working with people who have written the material they can be really keen on their words, but this was a huge collaborative effort.”
Though known primarily as a comic actress, Akerman now wants to expand her career with dramatic roles.
“Often when you’re cast in a certain genre people only see you in that light, which in my case is comedy,” said Akerman.
“So, I’ve tried to veer away from that recently. This year I worked on three different independent films that are not comedies, just to show what I can do in the hopes of opening up other doors.”
In the coming months, audiences will be treated to a more serious side of the actress in the ensemble dramas HappyThankYouMorePlease and The Romantics (both of which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival) as well as the Canadian-funded apartheid feature The Bang Bang Club.
Through these projects, Akerman found that she thrived in the fast paced world of independent filmmaking.
“I loved it. The turn around is faster and you become very close to everyone you work with.
“There’s a nice feeling on the set that you’re all in it for the right reasons and really want to be there,” says the actress.
However, Akerman admits that she has no desire to ditch Hollywood entirely any time soon.
At the moment, she’s happy to try it all.
From Metro News
As if actors didn’t have enough to worry about — hitting their marks, appearing intimate with a co-star in front of a crew, getting older, dredging up memories of a dead pet to get themselves to cry — now they face the prospect of being replaced by computer programs.
That’s the talk when actors see the stratospheric box-office numbers for James Cameron’s “Avatar,” in which flesh-and-blood actors performed in motion-capture suits to add authentic movements to their computer-generated characters. (There’s even a long-shot campaign to get a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Zoe Saldana, who played Neytiri, one of the tall blue Na’vi.)
But in the offbeat and unique films of the independent world, like those playing at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, actors have found a safe haven. They tear into meaty roles, showing facets of their talents that aren’t seen — or sought after — in mainstream movies.
This year, more so than in past Sundance festivals, the acting has been top-notch — sometimes in spite of the writing and the directing. Here are a few of the performances from Sundance 2010 that raised the bar:
Malin Akerman, “happythankyoumoreplease” — While writer-director-star Josh Radnor is getting the applause for this interlocking set of romantic scenarios, it’s Akerman who steals the show. Akerman — who is usually relegated to pretty supporting roles (“Couples Retreat,” “Watchmen”) — is the movie’s heart, as the sunny best friend who has lost her hair to alopecia. She even shaved her eyebrows for the part.
From the California Chronicle