While making a point of skipping the Observe and Report screening at SXSW, I speculated whether Anna Faris might end up being the first person of talent to have a long and prosperous film career without ever making a good movie. I’m already wrong about that, since it had slipped my mind that she was in Lost in Translation. Nonetheless, her IMDb page is highly toxic and should be read only with extreme caution: it includes four Scary Movies, The Hot Chick, My Super Ex-Girlfriend and something called Skanks, which I’m sure is wonderful.
If Faris has any regrets about her career so far, she isn’t letting on. “I love unapologetic comedy,” Faris tells Logan Hill of New York. “‘That kind of role comes around so rarely for women.’ And when it does, she is one of the few actresses fearless enough to play it, well, balls out. Consider the Scary Movie franchise: ‘My character [Cindy Campbell] was so one-dimensional—a less-dimensional character could not be written,’ says Faris of her breakout role, in which she perfected a slack-jawed, uncomprehending blankness. ‘I had four looks. Four. Eventually, [director Keenen Ivory Wayans] would be like, ‘Okay, Look No. 2.’ That was a wince. There was also a look he called ‘Who farted?’ because, well …’ Faris laughs. ‘For an actor, it is humiliating when your expressions get reduced to a number—and you only have four.’”
Her latest role doesn’t exactly represent a sea change for the actress, who “has never played a more ditzy or idiotic twit than Brandi, the epically crass cosmetics-counter girl in the new dark and twisted comedy Observe and Report.” Nothing Hill writes about the movie makes me think I made a mistake by skipping it – he even gives away the hilarious punchline to the “borderline date rape” scene – but you’ve got to admit, Faris has spunk. Er, in more ways than one. “I’ve done my share of studio stuff that’s wrong and never got into the movie—male nudity, semen, a few boobs. But there it is. My parents have something to look forward to… In Scary Movie 3, I’m in one scene, spinning around on a pole like The Matrix, strapped to this apparatus for six hours, spitting vomit all over me, and I’m like, ‘Yup, I’m willin’.”
Related:
Anna Faris, Honorary Bunny
Anna Faris: The Meryl Streep of Bong Hits
