Just how blue are Vera Farmiga’s eyes?
Interviewed by: Greg Goldstein
Source: Offline
Just how blue are Vera Farmiga’s eyes? They’re like a translucent mountain stream babbling softly down… oh, the heck with it. They’re really blue, okay? The striking actress, whose screen debut came in 1998’s Return to Paradise, plays a stalked murder witness opposite Robert De Niro and Ed Burns in next month’s thriller 15 Minutes. There’ll be no Warholian clichés here, but clearly this actress’s time has come (sorry, couldn’t resist).
Jersey’s Own: Farmiga, 27, is the second-oldest of seven children born and raised by immigrant parents in the tightly knit Ukrainian community of Passaic County, New Jersey. She didn’t even learn English until she was six. As a teenager, she toured with a folk-dancing company before finally deciding on acting.
Favorite Ukrainian Expression? “It’s something my grandfather used to say: ‘Don’t touch the s— and it won’t stink.’”
Xena-phobic: While playing a dreadlocked Celtic warrior on a “really bad” 1997 Fox series called Roar, she fell in love with her onscreen nemesis, actor Sebastian Roché. They eloped to the Bahamas when the show ended and are now renovating a former mobster hideout on 100 acres in New York state. “I’m living in a trailer in a barn with no insulation,” she reports. “It’s so glamorous.”
The Eyes Have It: She plays a Czech immigrant hiding from killers in 15 Minutes, and though her eyes were beautiful enough to be written into the script (a comment is made about how arresting they are), she’s blind without contacts. “As a kid I wanted attention, so I started praying for glasses because everyone had ace vision in my family. Then one day my eyes started going bad and never stopped.”
I Like L.A. in June. How About You? “I can’t do Los Angeles. I’ve always been the anti-Barbie. I don’t want to be in a place where almost every woman walks around with puffy lips, little noses and breasts large enough to nourish a small country.”
Lights! Camera! Clearasil! You’d think kissing Ed Burns wouldn’t be a chore. You’d be wrong. “I had a big zit on my cheek, and the director tried to find the right camera angle to hide it,” she says with a laugh. “Then, as a joke, Eddie comes in burping with coffee breath—it was the most unromantic thing. The kiss didn’t even make it in the movie!”