The Life Before Her Eyes

Eva Amurri is Susan Sarandon's daughter. It's a big deal, to be sure. Even bigger, however, is her jaw-dropping performance as virginal Maureen in director Vadim Perelman's latest drama. Below, the second generation proves she's got what it takes to be a first-rate actress.

By the time I approach the 20th floor of Manhattan's Regency Hotel, I've downed about seven large coffees. My hands are shaking something terrible. My heart is racing, and all I can think is, I've just spent twenty minutes in the same room as Uma fucking Thurman. My day was, well, sort of complete. And then I met Eva Amurri. Angled comfortably on a couch in the suite's living area, she flips through the New York Post absentmindedly. She no longer has the plastic cup of gummi bears she'd been carrying with her earlier that day. "Great bow tie," she says, as I reach out to shake her hand. I flush red. She looks every bit her mother, but it seems obvious and condescending, so I pass on the opportunity to lob a compliment back her way. She's stunning in person, so far from the dowdy, born-again Christian named Maureen she plays in Vadim Perelman's The Life Before Her Eyes, starring, yes, Thurman. In it, Evan Rachel Wood is Diana, a rebellious, life-affirming presence who, together with Maureen, finds herself at the mercy of a high school shooter. Unlike other films of its kind, Before Her Eyes focuses on friendship and love. Violence, while intrinsic to the plot, is pushed aside in favor of blooming adolescence. It's something the 23 year old can relate to, as she steps out from her mother's shadow in one of the most challenging films of the year. Hyperbole? Maybe. But, read on, because maybe it's not.

BLACKBOOK: Let’s just get the mom questions out of the way, shall we?

EVA AMURRI: Yes, let’s.

BB: I’m under no illusion that you didn’t have a normal upbringing simply because your parents are celebrities. But that said, you must have been introduced to some interesting people along the way. You were, what, five years old when Robert Mapplethorpe took your portrait?

EA: It’s really unfortunate, but I was too young to remember that. Before my family settled down, things were much more fast-paced. We were traveling to bizarre places and hanging out with people in really fast, crazy circles—people I met when I was young but don’t really remember. My mom’s always like, “You sat on the lap of this person or that person.” Once my brothers were born, things became more domestic. But, yeah, I mean, I met David Bowie at a young age, and I was traveling everywhere. My mom used to have night shoots, and I’d sleep over sometimes in the back of her trailer where the bed was, having come to set in my pajamas. I always used to love that.

BB: It seems, recently, you’ve branched out on your own as an actress.

EA: Early on, my parents preferred that I do movies with them. I thought that was specific to my family, but I’ve read interviews with Bruce Willis, and he said that when his kids were young, he did the same thing. I always wanted my own career. I think it’s frustrating when people always want to pair us up. I say to people, I don’t know what your relationship is like with your family, but come on, not everybody wants to work with their mom and dad all the time.

Evan Rachel Wood and Eva Amurri.

BB: From an objective point of view, working alongside Susan Sarandon has to be a little intimidating, even if you are her daughter.

EA: Of course. In our personal relationship, obviously, she’s my mom and I’m her kid, but we’ve always had more of a friendship-based relationship than most mother-daughter pairs because it was only two of us for such a long time. Professionally, we treat each other like any other actor we’re working with. We come to set with as much respect as we would for anybody else, regardless of the fact that, technically, she has a little more pull over me than I have over her.

BB: You recently graduated from Brown University, and there was a series of real school shootings while you were filming The Life Before Her Eyes—the theme must have hit close to home, no?

EA: It was really emotional and chilling. In the end, even though the story does stem from this specific event, it’s as much about the relationship between two friends and the choices they make.

BB: Are we meant to sympathize with the shooter? Did you?

EA: Well, we don’t see a lot of him. It’s not the classic, “look at this kid who’s being bullied” story, you know, with all these scenes of him being ostracized. But it’s clear that there is something wrong. People are saying, “What’s the difference between [Gus Van Sant’s] Elephant and this?” But Elephant is really about the killers themselves. This takes the opposite approach. It really is about all these people who feel like outsiders, which everyone can relate to.

BB: I get the impression that you’re nothing like your character, Maureen, mostly because you keep saying, “I’m nothing like my character Maureen.”

EA: [Laughs.] It’s more interesting to play somebody as far away from yourself as possible. But it’s fun, in any case, to play in the extremities. Maureen has these values that I can totally relate to—she wants to be a good friend, she wants to give herself up, emotionally, and she’s funny at times. She gets it, you know?

Evan Rachel Wood and Eva Amurri in The Life Before Her Eyes.

BB: I love that moment in the film when you call Evan Rachel Wood’s character a slut. It’s so unexpected and venomous.

EA: In that second, you realize Maureen is not a pushover. All along, you think she’s Diana’s right-hand man, that she’s completely besotted with her, which she is, but at the same time, it’s like, “Don’t you dare fuck with me.” She has some fire and brimstone in her, literally.

BB: The movie plays on the relationship between dreams and memory. Are you a vivid dreamer?

EA: I used to have much more vivid dreams growing up. You know that feeling, after you’ve had a bad dream—not necessarily a nightmare—where somebody is either really mean to you or does something horrible, and you wake up mad at them? In college, after one of those dreams, I woke up and was, like, furious with my roommate. I didn’t even want to look at her. It was ridiculous. But it’s interesting to think that dreams come from yourself. What is it that induces those thoughts?

BB: Can you relate to the film’s theme of loss?

EA: I can’t relate to that because, knock on wood, I haven’t been in that specific situation. There are times, however, when I’ve felt completely invincible, when life feels like it’s just beginning—maybe foolishly. I just worked with Eli Wallach, and he’s like 92! He was in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and he’s done all these amazing movies. He was sitting across the table from me, when we were filming New York, I Love You, and he was telling me all these stories about how he was in The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe. And I’m thinking, Jesus, this guy is lucid. Life just doesn’t end. If you make your life what you want it to be, it can last forever.

Photos of Eva Amurri courtesy Patrick McMullan Company.