The Savages is an irreverent look at family, love and mortality as seen through the lens of one of modern life’s most bewildering and challenging experiences: when adult siblings find themselves plucked from their everyday, self-absorbed lives to care for an estranged elderly parent. Academy Award-nominee Laura Linney plays Wendy Savage, a struggling New York playwright who spends her days working as a temp to pay the bills, applying for grants to finance her writing, stealing office supplies and dating her married neighbour. When Wendy’s brother Jon (Academy Award-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman) a neurotic college drama professor, receives a phone call to say that their estranged and abusive father Lenny (Tony Award-winner Philip Bosco) is being consumed by dementia, the responsibility falls on his children.Forced to live together under one roof for the first time since childhood, Wendy and Jon rediscover the eccentricities that drove each other crazy all those years ago. Faced with total upheaval, their own lives are put on hold as they battle over how to handle their father’s finals days and are confronted with what adulthood, family and each other are really about.In the role of Wendy Savage, Laura Linney gets the opportunity to create another darkly funny and deeply poignant role, following her Golden Globe-nominated performance in The Squid and the Whale. Twice nominated for Academy Awards for You Can Count On Me and Kinsey for which she was also Golden Globe and Screen Actor’s Guild-nominated Linney is one of the most talented and respected actresses working today. An accomplished film, TV and stage performer, Linney’s other major film credits include Barry Levinson’s Man of the Year, Driving Lessons, Breach, The Nanny Diaries, Jindabyne, The Hottest State directed by Ethan Hawke, James Ivory’s The City of Your Final Destination, Richard Curtis’ Love Actually, Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River for which she was BAFTA-nominated, Congo, Absolute Power, Primal Fear, The Truman Show, The House of Mirth, Lorenzo’s Oil, Dave, Searching For Bobby Fisher, A Simple Twist of Fate, The Mothman Prophecies and The Life of David Gale.

An Emmy Award-winner for her work on Frasier and Wild Iris, she was also acclaimed for her role in the popular TV series Tales of the City based on Armistead Maupin’s best-selling novels.

A graduate of Juillard, Linney was Tony-nominated for her performance in Richard Eyre’s The Crucible opposite Liam Neeson.

Other notable stage credits include her Tony-nominated performance in Sight Unseen on Broadway, Six Degrees of Separation, The Seagull, Hedda Gabler, Holiday, Honour and Landscape of the Body.

The filmmakers watched in awe as Linney threw herself into Wendy’s world with total abandon. Laura is such a professional she’s so often cast as characters who are very in control, so it was so much fun to see her really embrace the role of Wendy where she’s flailing and struggling to make her way in the world noted executive producer Jim Taylor.

Laura’s just so good and her instincts are so right commented writer/director Tamara Jenkins, I was amazed to see the way she took what I had written and made it her own.

This is a subject matter that affects everyone but it’s not often addressed?

It’s so difficult. It’s a subject that instantly fills me with dread. Families don’t live together anymore, you’re further away from it and you’re not prepared for it in any way. It’s about the inconceivable becoming conceivable and no-one really wants to spend time thinking about it and I can’t say I particularly blame them.

The thing that saves this material from being steeped in sentimentality or being too weighty is the three people involved and their very unusual relationship. That makes it a story worth telling and an experience worth seeing.

It’s also the question of how you behave with a parent who is at this stage of their life and you have to care for them when they really didn’t love you. What do you do? As a child it’s a privilege to see someone through to the end of their life, it’s a responsibility but if it’s someone who really didn’t love you, how do you do that? Do you do it for them or for you? That’s a question that hangs in the air.

It was obviously an experience that was close to Tamara’s heart. Did you actually ask her about it?

You don’t often see the relationship between brothers and sisters, you usually see marriage. Was that hard to build with Philip Seymour Hoffman?

No, with him it was actually a dream. The brother-sister relationship is fascinating to me because I didn’t have a brother, I didn’t grow up with siblings. I was an only child so I’m always curious about that shared history and knowing each other really well. So it was fun to have this rather than the You Can Count on Me or the Love Actually brother-sister relationship.

I could explore this unique pair they’re so flawed. Phil Seymour Hoffman is just one of my favourite people. You can’t get an actor who is better.

Did you do much research into dementia

No, I spent a lot of time really trying to figure Wendy out. Flushing out her decisions, her desires and also a lot of time on my responsibility to the telling of the story. I didn’t go into areas that were not directly related to me.

It’s really emotional territory and was shot in only 30 days. What was the atmosphere like on set?

It felt like 5 years! Because the material was really challenging and we wanted the material to be as good as it could possibly be we felt a responsibility to fulfill it as much as we could.

It wasn’t a low budget movie but a lot of the time it was uncomfortable and there was a lot of filming at 4am.

It was tough and it’s the stuff that you don’t think about when you’re in drama school! Filmmaking is diffucult. Acting your most important scene at 4.30am in the freezing cold isn’t ideal. How do I do what I’m meant to do in a situation where I can’t feel my feet!!

Did you find it good for the subject matter though, the fact that the conditions were pretty tough?

A lot of people think it’s good for the work but I don’t believe that! I don’t need to be tortured to do good work! The material was so rich and there was so much going, but it was very intense for everybody for the crew and all the actors but there was a real understanding of the material. I was pretty floored afterwards.

Was Philip Bosco quite fatherly towards you?

He is a giant in the New York theatre. He’s given his entire life to it and when I was growing up in New York he was a huge influence.I saw him in play after play and he was so popular to us who were part of the NY theatre scene.

There used to be a chocolate syrup called Bosco and I used to called it Phil Bosco milk that’s how important to me he was as a little girl.

For Phil Hoffman and I, Bosco was a colossus because we have a sense of history with him although we didn’t really know him, which is kind of similar to the relationship Jon and Wendy have with their father. Not a complaint ever came out of Phil Bosco’s mouth he was a dream.

Did the subject matter touch on any part of your life or did you know anyone who’s been through it?

My grandmother was actually in a very nice nursing home, but that first night is the toughest. When you move someone in to a nursing home then you walk away that first night and you’ve moved them out of their home and they don’t really know what’s happening. You tell them it’s all OK then you fall apart when you walk out of the door. It certainly made me talk to the relatives who I’m responsible for. It’s gonna be my job so, I said to them you need to help me now because when you go, I’m not gonna be able to think straight so can we deal with some of this now when we can both laugh about it. You can help me now so in the moment I’ll make the right decision. It’s an awkward, morbid thing to have to do but it’s a conversation you have to have it’s important. Nothing changes your landscape faster than the death of a parent.

The role reversal thing of the parent/child seems to be the toughest thing to deal with?

Of course. I remember there was someone I was speaking with whose mother was ill and he said ‘I want my mother of 30 years ago. I don’t want my mother how she is now’ and that broke my heart.

It’s interesting how the two characters react in the face of it?

It’s also very telling of their childhood. Wendy is someone who is still trying to have a relationship with her father, she’s still trying to please him and have some kind of father-daughter relationship, but the reality is she was abandoned and her brother was beaten.

There’s the moment where Jon turns to Wendy and says ‘we’re taking much better care of him than he ever took of us’. That was the line that defines all of them. For all of her intense flaws and there are many, she doesn’t know any other way.

One parent abandoned her and the other was abusive. Even though she lies, cheats and steals, that’s why you’re able to go on this journey with her.

The three of you create such a realistic family. How did you achieve that? Did you have a lot of time together before?

I think it’s just three actors just jumping in the same pool. I think it helped that we genuinely like each other and have a great deal of respect for each other we’re all theatre people. You can’t generate it.

You seem to be cast quite often as single, quite feisty women of a certain age?

I don’t know why that is. Everyone has a different take on what they think my career is but I really can’t tell. I just do it.

But a lot of people will point at films and say oh you’re always the bitch or the really sweet person. I just jump from project to project.

What are you working on next?

A vacation! Then I’ll do some stage work

Would you like to do a play in London?

Yes I’d love to.

How was working on City of My Final Destination?

It was filmed in Argentina which was spectacular and Anthony Hopkins was in it which was great. Apparently Linney is Welsh name, so there’s Welsh ancestry there. Argentina is one of my favourite locations, if you get the opportunity to go, go! Run to Argentina!

Did you take any tango lessons there?

I went to a tango hall once it was great.

Where’s home for you now?

I live in Colarado. I started out in New York and then went to a film festival in Colarado and fell in love. I’m in a ski town. But at heart I’m still very much East Coast as all my family is on the East Coast

What do you think about society’s attitude to the elderly in general?

It’s a shame. It’s a waste of resource. Experience counts for a lot. Fresh talent is terrific, but experience is earned and is really valuable. That attitude is also an indication of what society today thinks about history. It’s a by product of people not learning from history.

What did you do to your fingers? (wearing fingers in a splint)

I broke them this morning! I rolled on them in a very bad position! It’s not a problem, I have nine others!

There’s a lot of black comedy in the movie?

You can never play for laughs - you just play for the truth of the moment in the scene. It was very clear that the tone was a very specific pitch and that was integral.

As actors it was fun to try and stay on top of that wave. Tamara worked on it for a long time and she worked hard to get it made and she was relieved that all three of us thought the most important thing was the story.

She trusted all of us that we knew what we were doing. Some new directors expect to see everything instantly and you have to gain their trust and let them know that what happens on page fifteen, doesn’t happen on page two. You have to be patient and trust your actors.

What was on the page when you first received the script?

Almost verbatim. Which has only happened a few times with me, You Can Count on Me, The Squid and The Whale and Jindabyne were the only others. They were all ready to go

There was a reference in the production notes about the allegory with Hansel and Gretel, did you notice that?

I hadn’t until recently, I’d thought about Peter Pan but not that. But two weeks ago it popped into my brain and when you make movies like this that have a rich fabric you keep working on it and making connections even when the movie’s long over.

Do people still recognize you as Mary Anne Singleton from Tales of the City?

Yes! It was my first big job and I met some of my closest friends some of whom are no longer alive so I have a real deep connection to the material.

I didn’t realize how important it was at the time and looking back on it it means an enormous amount to me the books and Armistead. Being in that whole world was a real gift.

The Savages is released 25th January.

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