Mena Suvari

 

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 A quick glance at Mena Suvari shows a picture perfect actress. A studied look yields much more. True, she’s bananas attractive, yup, she’s happy in love, and yes, she’s doing just great with a litany of movies dropping all summer and fall but her eyes reveal the pain of a failed marriage, constant insecurities, and the shrewd mind behind her deft decisions to shatter her pretty girl image. 

Since Mena Suvari was a child she’s loved taking photos with her 1960s Polaroid square-shooter camera. Were you to look at the snapshots throughout the 28 years of Suvari’s life, they would begin with her as a little girl in Newport, Rhode Island. She lived there until age nine when her family moved briefly to the Virgin Islands and then to Charleston, South Carolina. A photograph at 12, would show Suvari breaking into modeling, and another at 14 would portray her father, a retired psychiatrist, and mother, a nurse, uprooting their lives and moving the family to Los Angeles, California. The change of scenery was prompted by young Mena’s budding interest in acting. Suvari’s first commercial would soon follow, a spot for San Francisco treat Rice-a-Roni. It was at that moment the young actress first felt the hefty weight on her slight shoulders to succeed in Hollywood. 

 

Mena Suvari is tinier than you’d expect. She has a dainty pout and a perfectly delicate nose and they are exquisite if not a little subdued. It is the fineness of these features that make her eyes that much more startling. They are fucking enormous. It’s no surprise that they play beautifully in photographs but on celluloid is where they truly shine. Suvari, pretty and articulate was cast and well received in her supporting roles in Snide and Prejudice (1997), Kiss the Girls (1997), and Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), and then came American Beauty. 

 

The Sam Mendes-directed film captured the quiet desperation of suburban life and would win the 1999 Academy Award for best picture. The movie boasted nuanced and powerful performances from titans Annette Bening and Kevin Spacey but it was the image of 20-year-old Suvari’s languidly roiling flesh atop fluttering rose petals that stopped viewers short. In Spacey’s lonely fantasy, the frame tightens to her beckoning eyes—marvelous, wantonly calculating eyes that contradicted the youth of her cherubic face. In that moment, Spacey was not alone, Suvari’s expression became indelibly scorched in every man’s psyche. For Mena, it was a career-making moment.  

The next in the series of photographs would show Suvari joining young, likable ensemble casts for American Pie (1999), American Virgin (2000), Loser (2000), and Sugar & Spice (2001), and then, in 2002, the actress’ character choices took a turn. That year, she starred in two independent features: Nicolas Cage’s directorial debut Sonny, in which she played a prostitute alongside James Franco and Spun, as a black-toothed crystal meth addict opposite John Leguizamo. The role would mostly be remembered for the scene of her angelic face scrunching in the heroic effort of extruding a massively constipated shit. 

Such imagery fielded more than a few questions from the sidelines—why would such a pretty girl select such dark roles? 

Suvari to her credit continues to expand her resume with roles as a lesbian performance artist in the HBO series Six Feet Under (2004), Queen Latifah’s Beauty Shop (2005), and Factory Girl (2006). This year, she’s busier than ever, and not able to take as many photographs as she’d like. Suvari has roles in the upcoming mob flick Brooklyn Rules, the horror flick Stuck, zombie thriller Day of the Dead, and a romance, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. She’s also debuting a line of signature scarves with Echo the home design and accessories line, available in Tkdate in whichstoresTK. 

Were you to take a Polaroid of Mena today sauntering into SoHo Grand Hotel on this late, windy afternoon in Manhattan, you would see her tiny physique light up the hotel lounge. She’s wearing a L.A.M.B hoodie and vest and high-top Nikes, and those blue, anime eyes would engulf much of the photo’s frame. Sitting down for tea-for-two with Missbehave, she suggests the hot chocolate, opting for herself hibiscus tea, which is deemed too bitter and sent back. Suvari skips the small talk and dives deep into a conversation about career choices, divorce, her boyfriend, and how in her late-20s she is finally learning to live for the moment.

Holy shit your Dunks are so fresh.

It’s funny. To be honest, before I met my boyfriend I didn’t own any kicks and he was like, Why? Since then I’ve been influenced. Right now I’m all about limited editions and I think I’m all cool [Laughs].

Tell me about your boyfriend.

His name is Mike Carrasco but he goes by “Murda”. He’s in a b-boy crew called Knucklehead Zoo and he’s three and a half years younger than me. We’ve been together for about two years. I met him at an event called Battle of the Year.

 Oh right, that’s a world famous battle for breakers, like the b-boy championships.

You know, I didn’t know anything about the scene. To be honest I saw him and just thought he was super hot [Laughs]. I didn’t even know what a battle was. [Meanwhile] he’s been breaking for, like almost 9 years. He’s such an athlete.  Pretty much I just walked up to him and was like, What’s your name? 

 Wow, you’re bold.

I know! All my friends were like, Whoa you’re forward but you know, I wasn’t bullshitting. It was something powerful. I saw him and knew I had to meet him. I giggled the whole time like an idiot, and we’ve been together ever since.

And he’s good to you?

He’s beautiful. The night we met we texted all night and have every day after that. Every day he texts me, “Good morning.” I want to hear these little things. Girls just want to be considered. Guys don’t get it, but we like that.

Would you consider yourself difficult to be with?

I’m not “difficult” but he is unbelievably tolerant and patient with me. I mean he’s learned over time that [I can be] all over the place and he makes fun of me.  He calls me at moments like, “You’re just flying 

around.” He grounds me and that’s what’s so beautiful about a relationship and when you’re in it.  But yeah, he has sisters so you know, he gets the whole “female” thing.  He’ll be like, “You’re not crazy, you’re emotional,” but aren’t we all? [Laughs]

You got married when you were 21 and your ex-husband Robert Brinkmann was 39 at the time. In retrospect, how do you feel about your marriage and it not working out?

I never thought I’d get married at 21. It just happened and that was my path. Life is just a series of events and I would go through all of it over again to meet Mike. I met him because of that, because I was that person. I’m a completely different person now but I don’t regret any of those years.

How is this relationship different as a result of what you’ve learned from your marriage?

I realized I didn’t need anybody to fulfill anything for me. I had to learn about how to be on my own. I had never done that before and at the time of the divorce I was 26 years old. I learned that nobody could make me as happy as I could make myself—that there’s a difference between needing somebody and wanting them. 

Is it different to be with someone who is not a part of the film industry since your ex was a cinematographer? 

[When we met] Mike didn’t know anything about what I did. But he admires what I do just as I admire what he does. Sometimes I can’t help but feel like what dancers do is more raw and real. It’s sincerely one of the most liberating things you could ever watch.

How has the divorce changed your outlook on life?

Somebody once told me that there’s no past and that the future doesn’t exist. That life is just a series of consecutive nows. The cheesy quotes really make sense. I mean look, I’m 28, I don’t know all the answers but I’ve been through a lot of shit in my life and it’s taken me years and years to learn what I have. When you’re a little girl, you “must” play with Barbies or “must” start thinking about marriage when you’re 5, because that is the ideal thing. And if you don’t get married and you don’t have kids then you’re a failure. It’s ridiculous. You don’t have to please everybody and you don’t have to fit the mold or the image. We’re all walking around like zombies.

Do you still struggle with that?

Yeah, I still have issues. There are so many times that I felt alone because you get stuck in your ego. But you have to realize there are a lot of people who are insecure with that whole fear of judgment. 

You were restrained by your insecurities.

I felt like I had to be perfect. I thought I wasn’t good enough so I held back. I had an acting coach who would tell my mom, she’d be so good if she would just let herself go.

And you’re letting go these days?

The past couple years I really morphed, I was reborn. I’m not afraid anymore, I’m gonna do things that I wanna do.

Yes but how do you actually let go?

I am in this business to work. I liked acting, it’s not because I wanted to be famous. You learn to create a persona and this persona is what you give to people when you go to events. When I go out that’s “Mena Suvari” but it’s not me. I learned what to give and what to not give and that’s a hard thing because a lot of people are trying to take advantage of you. 

How is this change reflected in your career choices? 

I worked on a film called Spun and when I was working on it people were like, Oh my God you’re the girl from American Beauty, why would you do that? And when I first started I was “too pretty” to go in for certain roles. I couldn’t be a “pretty girl” and have an interesting personality. What the hell is that?

So did you make a conscientious decision to play unattractive roles?

No, I didn’t strategically say “I will do the film to change this image of myself.” But in the entertainment business when they take a new person to try something out and it works, they go, Oh my God it works! Let’s do it over and over and over. It’s like, Milk it! Milk it! Milk it! And then that person is doing that one thing for all of eternity.

That sounds awful.

I can’t mentally, emotionally do that. I couldn’t just play the same role. I get bored, I get restless, I have to change all the time. It’s just exciting to me. I feel alive when I do that.

Have you ever made lasting friendships with any costars?

You know it’s funny. I just worked on a film and one of my costars asked me to exchange contact information and he was like, So are we gonna be friends or is it gonna be like one of those things…? There are so many people that you work with where you’re like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll call ya… and nobody ever follows through. It’s an experience and I don’t force it but it’s all about people you connect with. I tend to make a lot of friends who aren’t actors. One of my best friends was a PA on a movie and I have a friend who was an extra on American Beauty and another was the costume designer on Sonny. 

In Stuart Gordon’s new psychological suspense film Stuck you play a girl who hits and kills a homeless man while driving home drunk. I can’t believe it’s based on a true story but I remember reading about it when it happened.  

 

Her name was Chante Mallard from Fort Worth, Texas. She was intoxicated and she hit this homeless man Gregory Glenn Biggs—he got lodged in her windshield. She freaked out, she didn’t know what to do. She drove home and he bled to death over a period of like 2 days in her garage.

Did you meet Chante?

No, I didn’t. She’s in prison in HoustonCK. She got like 50 years.

One really, really bad decision can change your whole life. 

My jaw hit the ground so many times when I was reading a script—I just loved it. And I’d worked with Stuart Gordon before so I went after this like a madwoman because I really, really wanted to do it. I love pieces that dissect humanity. 

How did you prepare for the role?

It was much more intense than anything else I’ve ever done. I mean, it’s based on a true story, so how do you get inside this person’s head? How do you wrap yourself around that? Besides, I love the irony of it. She’s a nurse’s aid working in an elderly care facility wearing scrubs and she’s got this guy who’s bleeding to death in her garage.

You also have Steve Miner’s zombie movie Day of the Dead coming up. Was it fun making a horror flick?

Crazy fun. We worked in Bulgaria for sixteen weeks. I did all my own stunts. I had to build up trust and the confidence from my director because he was really worried. I’d be standing next to him by the monitor watching the stunt girl and then turn to him and go, ‘I can do that.’

You must have felt like a superhero or something.

At one point I had three pistols—two in my belt, one in my back, one on my leg and an uzi and a shotgun and I’m running with all of that stuff in fatigues. We had a blast. We would compare our bruises on set, like ‘Hey, who won today?’

That sounds incredible. You’re also getting into the fashion industry. Tell us about your collaboration with Echo. 

Ah yes, the scarves. It’s funny when I tell anybody they go, Oh Ecko, that’s awesome. And then I have to go not that one, it’s E-C-H-O. I’m severely into fashion as much as I love photography. I’m designing a set of three scarves and they’re silk-screening photos that I’ve taken onto the scarves. I’m so proud. 

What other things are you particularly obsessed with right now?

I just got a new shelf in my house for my Kid Robot toys. I just slowly started to get more and more obsessed with them. I have friends at [the company] and certain ones I really respond to. I was just in the Mayan Riviera on New Year’s and I love their new Azteca collection. I went and bought them all. 

What kind of music do you listen to?

I’ve always been really into reggae my whole life.

Really? Who are your favorite artists?

Dylan Judah and his partner Sugar Black have a group called Black Judah and they’re amazing and about to release their second album. I’m very good friends with Sean Paul and I’m big into Eek-A-Mouse, obviously Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.

Nice. So you love music and your boyfriend is a dancer. Does he ever teach you any moves?

Yeah right. First of all I am a retard at coordination. I’m the person who takes the aerobics class and can’t get through it. I really want to learn and I want him to teach me how to dance in general. I’m so jealous of him and I’m always like, God I really wish I could do that. 

We’re seeing both of you in the tabloids lately. Are you ever tempted to read about yourself?

There was something recently in Us Weekly “Mena topless in Miami.” I don’t give a shit, I have nothing to hide, I love myself and, yes, my breasts are not symmetrical! [Laughs]. I take pride in the fact that I’m natural. You know, “be the change that you want to see in the world.” [Laughs].

The celebutante frenzy has created such a backlash from Hollywood to where serious actors no longer want to be in magazines at all…

It’s crazy. [On one hand] It’s like the press is the press. But wherever you are, in an airport or anywhere its like everybody’s reading one of these rags. They’re just so interested in these people. Privacy boundaries have been crossed but people are literally fanatical about living vicariously through these people. Why aren’t you more interested in yourself? There is so much more out there.