Pamela Landy takes over DVDetails HQ

By: Lovey

Lovey sits down with Joan Allen – the actress who brings the hard-nosed Pamela Landy to life in the Bourne movies. And true to form, she doesn’t hold back – going straight for the jugular with her first questions.

Lovey:  What is your favorite way to pamper yourself?
Joan Allen:  Probably to go to the gym. I do quite a bit.  I definitely feel that that’s my time for me to do what I want.

Do you lead a healthy lifestyle?
Pretty healthy, yeah.  I also like to eat what I want to eat so going to the gym is kind of the tradeoff.  I remember Martina Navratilova, she recently came out with, I think, some sort of tips on how to live your life and I actually admire her quite a bit.  She was being interviewed and she said, “I do all these sports things now because I like to eat and I want to eat what I want and if I do the sports in addition I can eat.”  I like to live a full life and I like that philosophy and I connect with that.

There’s a rumour floating around DVDetails HQ that on a previous set, Matt Damon’s mother came up to you and asked you, “What do you do?”
It’s not quite like that, but it’s pretty close.  I saw Matt, and his mother is so fantastic, I love her, and I don’t know if I had met her before.  After Bourne Supremacy came out I was at an Off Broadway opening of a play and we had a mutual friend and Matt was there with his mom.  He was saying, “Mom, this is Joan Allen, blah blah blah,” and she said, “Hi, and what do you do?”  And Matt said, “Mom, she was in the Bourne Supremacy with me.”  Actually I took it as a great compliment because later she said to me “You project in life such a different vibe than Pamela Landy and you didn’t even look the same to me!”  Really, it was very funny.  I was actually complimented as an actor that she didn’t recognize me.

Do you have anything in common with Pamela?
Yeah, I think I have a strong work ethic, I believe, and I think I have a strong sense of responsibility and duty to myself and to other people.  I think I share those qualities.  I think I have a certain amount of confidence that you need to do that kind of work.  I don’t think I could ever be quite as dynamic as she is, ordering people around knowing that people’s lives are at stake based on decisions that you make.

Are you good at winning arguments?
No, I don’t like to argue very much.  Sometimes I can, my daughter likes to argue and sometimes I want her just to drop it.  She’s a teenager now so she’s not going to be dropping much of anything for the next few years (laughs), I don’t think, so I better get used to that idea.  I don’t like arguing, I like collaboration.  I do better when people are cooperating rather than competing in stuff like that.

Why do you think the action genre has smartened up in the last decade?
I think things have waves or periods of popularity that are sometimes difficult to explain.  Like why was the Western so popular for so many years?  There are still animated films coming out now, but for a few years there was that wave where it was really like happening.  I don’t know, public tastes change and morph.  What’s going on in our world reflects that and what the current zeitgeist is and what people hook into.  I don’t know if there will be more of these made by different directors from other fields.  I haven’t seen the Bond film, but I understand it was a different feel from the other ones.  He was more vulnerable or something, he fell in love with a girl or something, I understood (laughs).  And I understand there were critics at the time who were comparing that to The Bourne Supremacy.

The Dude wanted me to ask if you’re signed on for Bourne 4?
It doesn’t exist yet.  If they do it I would be there, hopefully somehow.

Do you have an idea of how they would do it?
I was talking about it this morning and wondering, what would it be?  What would a fourth Bourne be and it’s hard to conceive of what he really. Pam Landy comes and fishes him out of the water and takes him back to headquarters and he breaks out? (laughs)

What fired up your desire to be an actress?
I think it was this feeling, wanting to express myself in a way that explored what my personality was, what my background was.  I felt like I could do it better in a pretend way.  Once I fell into what I wanted to do, and I feel really grateful that I was that clear.  Because I think a lot of people and certainly I see my daughter and her friends, and I love listening to them talk about what they want to do.  Most of them are unsure, which is natural.  So it’s kind of a rarity when you know at a really young age that this is what I want to do. I’m going to pursue this so…

Q:  How tough is it being a mother to a teenage girl in this time and age?
JA:  It’s getting challenging (laughs).  She’s always been a challenging kid in a very good way. Temperamentally we are quite different, she has a very, very strong personality.  I go on more of a slow burn if something bothers me, but if something bothers her she’s very intense and kind of out there.  But then she’s over it and she moves on, which has taught me quite a bit.  But it’s a new time.  The current book that I’m reading is Yes, Your Teenager is Crazy, that’s written by a psychologist.  It is a whole take on, that recent studies have shown that there is brain development that happens in teenagers, that they don’t get it when they are fighting you etc. There is sort of a physical reason why that is happening as well and I thought that was interesting.  Sometimes when they are tough I can take it very personally and it’s good to sort of try to separate myself from that so I can be the most effective parent that I can be.  If she’s igniting me and back and forth it’s not really helpful to anybody so I’m trying to educate myself.