How Rene Russo finally came back to the big screen

Writer-director Dan Gilroy only had one woman in mind to play the role of Nina, a veteran of local TV or, as he puts it, “a hard-bitten beauty who began in front of the camera and has now, through sheer survival, become the madam of the whorehouse”, in his new movie Nightcrawler – his wife Rene Russo.
Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom and Rene Russo as Nina.Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom and Rene Russo as Nina.
Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom and Rene Russo as Nina.

“He lives with me, I guess he knows my colours by now and figured I had it in me,” says 60-year-old Russo, laughing.

Her performance is already garnering talk of an Oscar nomination. But, she reveals, her reaction to her husband’s suggestion was initially a rather underwhelmed one.

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“I was like, ‘Yeah, OK’,” she recalls. “Not that I didn’t believe it was going to be good, it’s just so hard to get films off the ground.”

The movie examines the power of local television news to perpetuate the myth of urban crime seeping into the suburbs, and stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom, a drifter who stumbles across LA’s dark world of so-called “nightcrawlers”.

A motley crew of freelance stringers, armed with fast cars, video cameras and police scanners, they prowl the city looking for violence and mayhem which they can film and flog to local TV networks.

Lou’s ascent in the TV realm is aided by Nina, and Russo has no doubt her character knows exactly what she’s getting herself into. “She’s a businesswoman, so it’s game on!” Despite sharing intense scenes together, she and Gyllenhaal “didn’t hang out”, but she’s full of praise for the actor who was Oscar-nominated for his role in Brokeback Mountain.

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“It’s very difficult for an actor to walk the tightrope he had to walk with all the colours that he had to put in it, and he did it seamlessly. He was charming but he was creepy; is Lou a psychopath, is he not a psychopath?” she says.

Russo was 18 when she was scouted at a Rolling Stones concert, in 1972. After moving to New York, she enjoyed a successful modelling career until the early Eighties, and then, after studying acting, she was cast in the short-lived TV series Sable. Shortly after that, she made her film debut in 1989 comedy Major League, before her breakthrough as Lorna, the female counterpart to Mel Gibson’s character in 1992’s Lethal Weapon 3.

Over the next decade, Russo starred alongside Dustin Hoffman in Outbreak, John Travolta in Get Shorty, Pierce Brosnan in The Thomas Crown Affair remake and Robert De Niro in Showtime. Then, following the 2005 family comedy Yours, Mine & Ours, Russo decided the time was right to quit Hollywood.

“I was doing two movies back-to-back and there were other things I wanted to do. I said, ‘Rene, if you don’t do them, are you just going to keep doing one movie after another after another?’” she explains.

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In recent years, she worked with the DWP (Department of Water and Power) in California to design a garden, and even started up her own dairy company, White Cow Dairy. However, in 2011, she was persuaded to return to the screen in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor as Queen Frigga, opposite Anthony Hopkins. “It was like, ‘OK, what the hell, I’ll go to London, it’s a small part’, but it was a killer role,” she notes.

Now, she’s taking things one day at a time, having wrapped on the comedies Frank And Cindy and The Intern.

“I don’t know if there’ll ever be another role that crosses my path that I feel excited about doing,” Russo remarks. “If not, I’ll just milk my cows!”

Nightcrawler is out now.