Interview: What big eyes you have – it’s fairytale casting

THERE is a dreamlike moment in Red Riding Hood, the very Hollywood take on the classic fairytale, where the heroine spies her grandmother’s vulpine gnashers and eyes and comments: “What big eyes you have”. Coming from Amanda Seyfried, the actress considered to be the “It Girl” of the moment – herself a 5ft 3½in blonde ball of energy with the biggest eyes in La-La Land – it is remarkably fitting to the mood of the piece.

What’s more, it is directed at Julie (Darling) Christie, one of the iconic faces of the Swinging Sixties and now, at 67, playing an old lady who may (or may not) have a deadly secret to hide.

“I’ve just got the biggest eyes in the business right now between 17 and 25,” laughs 25-year-old Seyfried, “[so] we had to use that [line]. I think it works really well because that’s an iconic piece of the narrative. To do it with Julie Christie and with prosthetics – big teeth and huge pupils – was just really cool. I think that’s the only way we could have done it. And putting on the cape for the first time [was] kind of a big deal because it’s its own character.”

Iconography plays a huge part of Red Riding Hood, an expanded take on the tale by Catherine Hardwicke, initiating director of the Twilight vampire/werewolf saga. The story has been lent a souped-up, highly sexualised, deeply gothic dynamic with the little girl transformed into a precocious lass and the wolf becoming a werewolf.

Gary Oldman, playing a mad-eyed warrior priest, calls it “a dark twist on an already dark tale” but there is more to it than that, particularly since Hardwicke is tailoring the film – a fantasy with a love triangle, budding sexuality, suspicion, terror and death – to the same teen audience that flocked to Twilight. Seyfried didn’t read the script, by David Johnson, before meeting Hardwicke to play Valerie, the red-cloaked girl at the heart of the story. She was sold on the “crazy visuals” and the prospect of turning “this old, timeless tale into a full-length movie”.

“[Valerie] was separated from the usual damsel in distress, which is in most fairytales. She’s this young, strong female realising her sexuality and trying to navigate herself through her young adult life in this medieval village. That’s how I wanted to play it. And, of course, she’s the heroine in the movie; so she needs to have balls. That was really attractive, I like playing women that have no fear.”

Red Riding Hood represents Seyfried’s first real period picture, albeit in fantastical form. It is the latest in a remarkable run of films that have seen her cornering the market in coming-of-age stories and romances. Beginning in 2008 with Mamma Mia! and continuing with Jennifer’s Body, Chloe, Dear John and Letters to Juliet, Seyfried’s impact has been significant. In Red Riding Hood she brings a burgeoning sexuality to the fable that will have teenage boys (and more than a few of their dads) breaking out in a cold sweat...

Hardwicke claims she wanted only Seyfried for the role after seeing her speak at a charity event. “She was quite amazing. I’d been watching her in all these other parts. I saw she could be funny in Mean Girls and charming and sexy in Chloe and I’m like, ‘Man, that chick can do anything!’ I really thought, you know, ‘What big eyes you have.’ I guess that’s one reason I thought of Amanda.”

Thus it is that Hardwicke and Johnson have upgraded the tale of a little girl, her grandmother and the woodcutter into something that taps into so many aspects of teen angst. And it’s not for the kiddies. “It can’t be that coming-of-age story if it’s a child, because that’s not what children are dealing with in their life at the time,” argues Seyfried. “It’s a girl questioning herself and developing into a young adult. We added contemporary elements to it like a love triangle. The coming-of-age element to it was very contemporary – how she was dealing with her parents and the man she loves and the man that she was betrothed to.”

Asked what stands out about the film, Hardwicke talks about the dark side. Actor Max (son of Jeremy) Irons, playing Valerie’s beau Henry Lazar, opts for paranoia. Seyfried’s answer is simple and unequivocal.

“Sex.”

Red Riding Hood (12A) is on nationwide release.