Q&A with Sienna Miller and Peter Sarsgaard

April 16, 2009 by Lance Carter

Sienna Miller and Peter Sarsgaard are out promoting their new film, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I haven’t seen it but read that Entertainment Weekly gave it a “D”. Uh-oh.

Peter Sarsgaard is a fantastic actor but I think people are forgetting how great of an actress Sienna Miller really is. Even though she’s been in the tabloids recently for shacking up with Balthazar Getty, she’s definitely no Lindsey Lohan.

On working together:

Q: Did you work out your characters together before each scene or did that happen more spontaneously?

PS: There was no working out of anything.

SM: We tend to approach [it] the same way. Show up and jump.

On creating his character:

Q: Peter, your character is described at the very onset as a lunatic and you’ve just referred to him as a omnivore. Did you take the hint that he’s kind of crazy and self-destructive?

PS: I didn’t take any of it that literally at all. To be honest with you, when I thought about playing this character the things that came to mind were like the image of Julian Schnabel holding onto like a big piece of chicken and sitting in front of a huge fireplace.

SM: In like his dressing gown.

PS: In his dressing gown. The jazz musician Ornette Coleman wears these blazers that always have primary colors on them. He just has this style that I’ve always been fascinated with. I don’t wear things like that in the movie though I did wear one blazer in honor of that.

But I was searching for this guy that had transcended even what it meant to live in Pittsburgh, that there was no relationship between him and that time. The way that I look in the movie came from something that he had really dreamed up, that he was trying to become something that was in his mind.

On working in theater:

Q: To change the subject, both of you have done theater. Do you have a ritual before going onstage that you’re superstitiously do?

PS: No. I have a practical one. I use the toilet, but every actor does that.

SM: I generally just sort of quiver and shake going into a complete, “Why have I done this? I can’t do this” moment.

Q: Do you cry every performance or just on opening night?

SM: I get incredibly nervous, but that’s something, a quality in some actors that you like putting yourself through hell like that.

Q: Do you prefer the stage more than film?

PS: I do like acting onstage more, but there’s a craft to acting on film and it’s very cool. I really like acting. So when you’re doing a stage play you do tons of acting. Every night you act straight for two hours straight, plus and then you do it again. It feels good.

SM: I think there’s nothing like the feeling of live theater, but people then, if you do a play, say, “Oh, that’s real acting.” And I’ve done work in film where it felt very much like real acting. It’s just a different technique. But the buzz of being onstage with a live audience is kind of unbeatable. Anything can go wrong.

I’ve gotten terrible giggles onstage and incorporated it somehow into a Shakespeare heavy scene and it worked. You just have to absolutely jump and go with your instincts. Anything can happen and I get a kick out of that.