Interview with Emmy-winning Julia Ormond, co-star of movie Here’s Yianni!

Julia, you started in theatre, then into much TV work, and transitioned well from television to film. Do you approach all roles in each medium the same, or do you tailor your focus and methods differently?

Well, the transitions are really about size, and they're really about the size of the movements that you make, and the kind of movements that you make within the frame. So with theatre, you could be in the ‘round’, for example, and you could be surrounded by audience, in which case there's a kind of naturalism that you can get away with. Whereas, if you're in what's called the ‘pros-arch’ (proscenium arch), the frame is the shape of the stage, and the sort of ceiling of that, and there is something about theatre work as an actor that your movements need to not be naturalistic on some level. You try and make not having naturalistic movement more naturalistic. 

 Editors will tell you that, when you're in theatre, let's say I come out of screen, you're that big, right? Let's say you're that big. So, if you're doing little fussy things, it's distracting, but if you do a clear movement, it reads and registers for the audience a bit differently. And also in theatre, you need to be constantly aware of the blocking in terms of what you're doing for other people. Are you upstaging them? Are you pulling them around? Those things still apply when you get in front of a camera. 

 But on camera, let's say you're a close-up. If your close-up is like that, you can't be doing a lot of movement. So, it impacts the scale through which you work, and you let emotion come through, your intellect or anything, really. Sorry, I'm probably answering this question in way more detail than I was supposed to, Jake. There's a wonderful thing that I love, actually, which is, a lot of my training was Stanislavski, and it's called Stanislavski Circles of Concentration. Part of your circle of concentration is yourself. It's like your energy has to come out through your body. And when you're working in theatre, your consciousness goes to the back of the stalls and the top of the circle to fill the whole space, so that you're keeping in mind the person who's at the top, very top of the circles in terms of what you're doing, whether it's voice, whether it's looking up, whether it's whatever. And in film, you throw your circle of concentration around the actors, around whatever space you're in, and you bring in the camera as almost like another character. 

“Here's Yianni!” is going to be premiering at the Torino Film Festival and has been at some other festivals already. I got to watch it the other day. The picture is inspired by writer and director Christina Eliopoulos’parents' lives as immigrants from Greece, her father's own battle with dementia, and the effect that had on the dynamic between her parents, him and his wife. When a story like this is so personal, what's important for you to keep in mind when you're trying to bring a character like Plousia and the greater story to life on the screen?

I love your questions, Jake. You've done this before, haven't you? (laughs) 

So what's important to me when it's based on somebody's real life is that they both feel the right balance of being challenged around the story so that it's not too sentimental, and that it's as interesting a story as if it was completely fictional and made up. But also, you're really honoring them. It was super important to me. This is a tragedy. I mean, it's like, yes, it is about Yianni and his getting dementia, but it's also a story of how dementia impacts the whole family. Family, friends, everyone who knew him, you're dealing with the impact of dementia. And I just found it, I found it really interesting when you have something that's essentially a family tragedy that is threaded through with so much whimsicality. 

 And I think that for me, that’s the Christina that I got to know. It's very much so warm. Having the opportunity to play Plousia, you have this extraordinary opportunity as an actor to walk in someone else's shoes. Yeah, it's a story version. It's scripted. You're not really them. You're not, you know, sort of like, you don't need to take it to therapy, but you kind of do get to be someone else in a way that's really cool. And that, you know, can be kind of changing if you let it for the positive. 

 For me, what so touched me about the whole thing was the humor and warmth as a family they surround him with. Christina's not really in this story as a living child, but just the way that Plousia approaches how to deal with it, I found warm, somewhat whimsical, and as a result, incredibly moving. Whether or not other people will experience this, that's what moved me. That's what I thought, “oh, this is actually quite interesting”. That's what drew me to the project. 

Plousia, in front of others, braces this real strong image, one of support for her husband, one of confidence, love, and capability, like she's going to be able to deal with this. But one of the first times we see them alone at home, and she's observing Yianni in his state, you see this storm of emotions that's swirling in her. She's smiling, trying to entertain where his mind is going. A little tear comes down her cheek that he seems oblivious to. There all these emotions on her face, and as your character, you wear them so well. You’re trying to depict this woman who's worried, she's sad, she's fearful, she's faithful, without overdoing it. While working to show her emotional state, but show it balanced and paced throughout the film, what was your approach?

You know, it's interesting. Yeah, good question again. It also actually goes back to your first question about what's the difference between theatre, film and TV. Because in theatre, you get to play the whole arc every night from beginning to end, right? So you get to go through it, you get to rehearse the whole story for three weeks or whatever your rehearsal period is. But on film and television, it breaks it down. In film, you know your start, middle, and end. TV, you have no fucking idea what's going to happen, quite frankly. 

You take it on, you like the thing, you like the people, but you have no idea where they're going to take it, especially if it's serious.

  If it's a one-off piece, that's beginning, middle, end, and then you know. So, you can work out the temperatures of where you go with stuff. You can kind of block out a script or have it in your head in terms of, ‘this is a three, this is a two, this is my maximum’. You'll know your scene, which is, ‘that's my maximum height of emotion’. And you can sort of plot that out, but also keep an open mind that I've no idea what other people are thinking of. I want to go and bounce off them, and I want to be working with them. It's usually something that you kind of work out with the director in rehearsal, that you work out your character arc so that it's in sync and it's supporting the whole story arc. You're not, as an actor, making presumptions about your character that then presents problems for the director, because the director is kind of in charge of all of the story arcs. 

 In terms of from my perspective, I feel as if the thing that I've relaxed on as I've gotten older and more experienced as an actor is, I don't, think, give myself a kind of goal of ‘you're going to cry in this scene’, which I probably would have done as a younger actor.

  I can remember, I got to work with people like Sydney Pollack, who would always be a bit, just not particularly, impressed isn't the right word, but wouldn't necessarily seek a moment where you start crying. It's more about that the emotion is held within. Sydney Pollack used to talk about the fact that if you were to find out that somebody had died in a scene, and I would add the caveat of, unless it's your dog, in which case you fall completely apart, it takes time to sink in. So, it might be a more interesting acting choice to play the numbness, to play the dissociation, to ask the cop who delivers the news, “would you like some tea?” To just kind of do the opposite is actually more interesting. So how do you deal with the emotions? For me, you do all of your research, you do as much prep as you can before going in, and then you kind of let it go. Then you can be in the scene as much as you want, and you can take it from what's happening in the scene. 

 I think I know the moment that you're talking about. Yianni’s dementia… he believes that he's become a talk show host. And so, the people in his life become guests on the show. Because for me, what happens with Plousia, and what's sort of kind of lovely about her, and a little bit vulnerable of her as well, is she's sort of like, ‘this thing's bigger than me. I can't fight this thing. And I'm fucked if I'm losing him. I'm not going to lose him. I'm just going to follow him’. So, she goes into his world instead, but it's confusing. And at first when it starts to happen, that's really one of the few moments where you can gauge the degree to which she loses him. She loses him in pieces and in bits. And it's like trying to hold ice in your hands. It's just melting, and you can't. 

Your answers are better than my questions, they just thread right into my next one. There's a scene where the actual TV talk show host, Jim Hopper, played by Eric Roberts, arrives at Yianni and Plousia's house, and your character asks, “am I hallucinating?” Throughout, we get reminded that the film is telling the story in parts through Yianni's eyes, as his dementia progresses, and at times through your character's eyes as she's navigating how and what to do, as well as the eyes of the other characters. Do you think that there's a significance to the film challenging the audience's own notion of reality, perception of reality, and dreams, by alternating through these different lenses in which we see the movie unfold?

I love it when films do that. I think for me, it seemed quintessentially, sort of a Good Morning America kind of TV style to go and see this local person, and just the way that it plays out, it's a stretch in terms of suspending your disbelief as the audience like it does. It slightly pushes you, but it also, I think, is quite funny because from 

that perspective, it's like ‘okay what what's happening?’ you know it's sort of difficult. I think for me what it did, and I'm not sure if this is what Christina meant through the story, it was one of those life moments when you have the sense that the universe has your back, that there's something other going on.

Being that you're such a season veteran of the craft, what's it like working on a film that's written and directed by fairly new auteur like Christina.

Honestly, I’ve worked quite a few times with first time directors, and I get such

a kick from it. It is so hard to get a film off the ground. It's so hard to get something done. It's a high mountain to climb to tell something that's a personal story. And it's really quite a privilege to be part of it. I think for me, there are certain, obvious things like your budget restrictions, you know. I will tell you, this was not an easy one to make. Boy, this one was not easy. She probably won't say that because it's inelegant for her to say that or inappropriate or whatever, because obviously, we're all thrilled that we got the opportunity to make the movie, but there were things that get lost in the story, stuff that gets lost and all the rest of it. 

 It's a hard one for me to answer because I think I’m much better now than as a younger actor, when you're just less flexible. You're just more supple in your craft, and as you as you've gained experience, you know that some sorts of stuff don’t hit you or don't phase you in the same way. You've seen it before. You know how tricky it's going to be. You know that somebody's going to get tired. You know that somebody just doesn't physically have a lot of bandwidth. They've also got to have a lot of mental bandwidth. You can ring the changes. You know that there's going to be location changes and all the rest of it.

 I think when you haven't had experience… I remember being on The Baby of Macon, and Peter Greenaway, I don't know if you know his work, but he had this scene where it starts indoors and then the camera turns, and you're outdoors, which I loved as a thing and can remember just being completely thrown. He just turned up and said “well, we're doing it here because we haven't got the budget” or something's falling through. I can remember that really bothering me. But it’s just that you're carrying it, and you can't afford to do that. You just gotta let it go. It will be what it will be, and it will be fine.

I appreciate your candidness. Not many people on a cast will talk about the effects of shooting on a smaller budget.

I would also say that the flip side of it is, I'm not particularly a believer that having loads and loads and loads of money makes it a better movie. I've gotten to work with, in the past, a few Eastern European crews, and you know, the war in Ukraine might not be particularly popular right now, but there is something about squeezing what people can have that actually forces you to make a creative decision that's better. And that would never have happened if you weren't put in that situation. But I do think that that's something that comes with experience.

 It's that thing of, if you can create something, you can recreate it. Don't worry if it goes wrong on the first take, you get a hare in the gate, to go again. You can recreate it. You never know. You might get something better. I was just talking the other day to someone. I did a movie with a really lovely director, where we were given two weeks prep and fifteen days to shoot. Wow. And you never get to stand up on the soapbox and say, “hang on a minute”. The reason the car chase looks like this or the reason that this isn't like that is that we only had this time, and while you're making it, you're kind of thinking this this, on some level, really sucks, because as soon as companies or corporate studios or whatever, understand that that's what you can come out with in that time, then they'll start clumping down. Yeah. You know, so it's always a balance. It's always a balance. Not over until the fat lady sings.

In the picture, the character Jimmy, (Kevin Pollak) is void of any illness that we know of. Certainly, he does not have dementia. His personal life is in disarray. Yet, he looks at Yianni like he is not the same, almost as if he's not even human anymore, and views your character like she won't be able to deal with this. But as we watch their loving bond, we see they have what he doesn't. Was that contrasting dynamic mentioned or brought up during shooting? Was it a notion in your mind?

I definitely think that was there in the movie. Yeah. I think for Christina, a lot of the telling of the movie is not just about telling the story of her dad, but also telling the story of her mom. I can say that even though I got to play her mom, it's... their love was what got them through.

I imagine acting can be a very demanding, consuming profession. Finding time for much else outside of it is already tough. But you participate in much activist work, a lot of raising of awareness. Aside from the impact that that work has, does the nature of doing it help keep you grounded or balanced while working in the entertainment industry?

Yeah. That work, just to elaborate on it, the activism that I do is activism on human rights, but the real focus in the last two, three decades has been on human rights and working against trafficking, slavery, and forced labor, child labor. My nonprofit has focused on cleaning up supply chains and ensuring that human rights and decent work and decent wages are given to workers, because that, for me, is the goal. It’s that we measure our relationship between planet and people, because when we measure it and we measure it credibly, then we can actually make changes that are positive and move forward. 

Yeah, so a lot of my work has been around that. I would say it is very grounding. It's very grounding I think for anybody in any profession.

 I consider myself to have been really blessed to have been given the opportunity to go and investigate this issue because not many people get to do that. Politicians don't get to do that. I remember working with one UN guy, and we were visiting a sex trafficking shelter in India, and I had been sitting with some of the survivors, talking to them, and understanding and getting their story better. As we came away from it, he said, “you know, it really is essential because I'm a white male UN official. It's totally wrong, or it feels totally wrong, and I would argue maybe it is totally wrong for me to sit there and put that girl through that story yet again, or that boy”.  So, it really is about finding the right person to be the listener, finding the right person to be the carer, finding the right person to be, you know, a change agent.

So that work has been, yes, huge for me. It's been huge for me. The thing about acting, and I think it's the same if you're a painter, it's the same probably for you on some level in terms of what you do, that there's a lot of pressure to tell yourself that it is who you are, versus it's what you do. For me, the trafficking and slavery work speaks more to who I am, and it's satisfying in a way that enables me to have a little bit of a healthier, I guess, relationship to the acting.

 I think I got into it and started out thinking, ‘this is who I am, I have to do this’. But as your career unfolds, you're not holding it so fiercely. I don't feel like holding it so fiercely anymore. And I actually feel like, ironically, that's good for me as an actor in terms of what I'm able to produce. And the other stuff is really good for me as a human being. 

When I ask somebody questions, I never have an answer I want to hear, or expect to hear, but that was a beautiful one. Thank you for taking the time with me, it was a pleasure.

Thank you, Jake, you too.

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