Miller's Crossing

In retrospect, one wonders whether Sienna Miller’s role in Steve Buscemi’s taut, psychological drama Interview back in 2007 was the wisest career move. In the edgy two-hander, Buscemi’s embittered journalist, recently relegated from Washington politics to celebrity puff pieces, is remorselessly out-manoeuvred by Miller’s media manipulating movie star. It was pitched as both the ultimate in table turning, where the superior scribe is set-up and knocked down by the seemingly vulnerable ingénue, and a commentary on just who in the world of contemporary Hollywood tittle-tattle has the upper hand. What might have been initially purgative for the tabloid-hounded Miller, post Jude Law and all, seems to have become a motive for two-bit hacks everywhere to sink their claws in.

No sooner had the current publicity machine for her latest (and distinctly unlikely) project, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, kicked off than the digs began. Adam Richard, a DJ on an Australian branch of the just delightful Fox broadcasting empire, teased her about her oft-denied relationship with actor Balthazar Getty, who just happens to be married with four young children. “You’ve met him, haven’t you?” he asked rhetorically, after first describing her co-star Rachel Nichols as “the green bitch” from Star Trek, and then a scene between the two in GI Joe as a “scag fight”. Ms Miller was, understandably, not exactly amused. “Oh, p*ss off,” she screamed. “We’re here to talk about a film. You’ve called us scags, bitches – we’re not here to talk about him. But yes, as you know, I’ve met him. What a scoop, congratulations.” And with that, the publicist ended the interview.

And so the tabloid headlines kicked off again. By forcibly denying the fact she’s a bad girl, she is of course instantly labelled a bad girl. By being human, she is cast as difficult. By publicly decrying gutter journalism, she is, in turn, creating more of it. “I’ve been in interviews where people try to blatantly get a rise out of you, especially on TV,” she says, with a shrug of those slender shoulders, “and I’ve been a bit shocked at how tactless people can be, asking about things that are obviously very personal.”

What kind of things, we naturally ask. “Apparently, I’ve shagged half of Hollywood,” she says. “And that’s not true. I’m supposed to have shagged Orlando Bloom, Daniel Craig, Leonardo DiCaprio... like, Orlando and I went to a pizza restaurant when I was 17 years old. Who else am I supposed to have slept with? Josh Hartnett, Puff Daddy… The media want me to be this partying, shagging girl. But I couldn’t ever have time to be all the things they want me to be.”

What Sienna Miller is, in fact, is an honest, open and unaffected an actress as any currently working. British born and raised, boarding school and all, to an American art-dealer father and South African drama school-owning mother, she has little reticence in displaying all her dimensions, with none of the PR polish of her Californian peers. Unfortunately, she just happened to meet and fall in love with Jude Law before she had more than half a dozen minor roles to her CV, and immediately suffered a fame blitz that threatened to swamp her burgeoning career. Long lenses were parked outside her home, and tedious shots of her walking up Kensington High Street or eating an ice cream were traded for thousands of dollars between supermarket rag photo editors.

While she has never quite been able to play the publicity game as smartly as The Interview’s Katya, she did have a reliable weapon up her sleeve last year: the English courts. In a landmark case, she won over $100,000 in damages from paparazzi agency Big Pictures, with an accompanying cease and desist order. “I can walk around and not have 20 men calling me names in front of my little niece,” she says of her new life. It’s just a shame her laddish wit and unlimited, almost unconscious sex appeal wasn’t sufficient in itself for a British media whose persistent stalking of the star has effectively killed a goose that kept laying golden eggs. At least it means the press might start to focus on the critical acclaim she harvested for her roles in The Factory Girl and The Edge of Love, which have ensured she has emerged from Law’s shadow with a talent all her own.

Not that GI Joe will garner too many Oscar nominations when it’s released this month. Director Stephen Sommers is a 21st Century Steven Speilberg, with The Mummy and Van Helsing already under his special effects-packed tool belt. While her previous work has been finely-drawn character studies – otherwise known as girl films – this is an all-out actioneer. And she wears a lot of black lycra with six-inch heels. And we’re all very grateful.

“I just wanted to have fun,” she says, justifying her choice in a movie that will do more for her bank balance than her Broadway bravura. “I wanted to do something where I wasn’t addicted to heroin or having a breakdown, or dying at the end. Also I think my parents were like ‘Please, stop doing these films. You’re killing us!’ So, I think I got to a point where I really just wanted to make a film that was just entertaining, pure and simple. I put myself through quite a lot doing the roles that I’d done and it gets pretty emotionally exhausting after a while.”

Another reason, of course, was that pesky Hollywood writers’ strike, which meant that the only films getting made were ones that didn’t seem to need a lot of writing. And just look at what Transformers has done for a certain Ms Fox... “No one really knew when they were going to work again, and I felt like doing something purely for entertainment purposes,” she says with that stunning candour that we scribblers just love. “Normally it’s not the kind of thing I would have done, but then I read the script and found that it had really well developed characters, a great villain in my role and a great story. Plus, it’s wonderful to do a movie that people actually want to go and see.”

And see it they most assuredly will. With incredible effects, fight scenes choreographed by the man behind The Matrix’s gravity-ignoring swoops and an awful lot of automatic gunfire, it has box office smash sprayed all over it – and there’s every chance Miller can steal some of the crossover territory that has made fellow Brit Kate Beckinsale such bankable fare across the Atlantic. “I can fire a rifle now,” she giggles, although she admits she still blinks with every round, and can’t help making a childish shooting sound with each shot. “It was all completely out of my comfort zone. I’ve never done anything on this scale. But once I let go of my anxiety, I really enjoyed it.”
 
In a sense, it’s difficult to understand why it has taken Sienna Miller so long to enter such explosive territory. Despite her assured prettiness, she is anything but a weak-kneed princess; she’s more Jennifer Garner than Jessica Simpson. Scintillatingly foul-mouthed when the occasion calls for it – “Did I tell a paparazzi to f**k off? Well, it sounds like something I would do,” she told New York magazine – and rarely on guard, she will even run, tomboy-like, through her scars. A minute slash on her cheek was the result of “being kicked in the face by an ’orse” when she was 5, another was from the removal of a cyst six years later, and a birthmark on her leg “that looks like Manhattan”. There’s also a tattoo from a teenage backpacking trip that started in Miami with one too many glasses of wine. She even thinks she was conceived during her parents’ acid trip.

In addition to the searing honesty – Jude Law insights aside, that is – there’s also the occasional lapse into foot-in-mouthness, an illness the big-budget, low sincerity world of Hollywood rarely appreciates. After all, everyone, everywhere is a potential customer, and your big stars really shouldn’t be venturing opinions when they’re out pushing your movie. For instance, calling one of Pennsylvania’s most prominent cities “Sh*tsburgh” when shooting a movie called The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh perhaps wasn’t the smartest thing she’s ever done. Cue the local hysteria – “Sienna the witch” and, predictably, “Sienna go home” – and the subsequent apology and mea culpa, live on TV with the town’s mayor.

“I will say the most inappropriate things at the most inappropriate time to the most inappropriate person. Always. Guaranteed. I think it might be mild Tourette’s,” she says. “The strange thing is, I do actually quite like Pittsburgh. And while I understand the patriotism of that city, I really don’t think it was that big a deal. And having met me, you’ll realise these things just come out.” It probably explains why she also felt the need to say that drugs are “f**kloads of fun!”

Maybe it’s why she lives in England. While the press there is undeniably vile and intrusive, it is largely free from the unctuous ass-kissing of the Los Angeles cocktail circuit, where speaking your mind is as dangerous as having bad teeth. She has also moved out of London, buying a country cottage in the Cotswolds, a slumbering corner of the South Midlands where spending a little too much on vintage wine in a renowned restaurant is about as mischievous as you can get. Although her personal choices and hyperbolic opinions might keep her in the spotlight, fame seems to be more of a first cousin than life partner for Miller. It suits her.

“I don’t even know what an ‘it girl’ is,” she says of the paparazzi days. “As far as I’m concerned, an ‘it girl’ is one who doesn’t do anything except go to parties and get her photograph taken. I guess there should be a bit more mystery to me. I suppose a bit of unavailability is an attractive thing.”Of course, the next words out of her mouth are: “Hopefully, there will be a GI Joe 2 and 3.” Because you know she will be available if they ask. 

A full version of this article appears in NOX 37

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