Pretty blonde actress Gretchen Mol certainly has transformed herself in
order to play Fifties pinup queen and fetish artist Bettie Page in the new
biopic "The Notorious Bettie Page." She's gone from blonde to black hair, and
has somehow figured out how to add a voluptuous look to her normally slim
figure.
"Bettie had a really healthy Fifties figure," Mol explains. "I had just done
a musical, I was dancing in 'Chicago' on Broadway. I was doing eight shows a
week. So I was worried about being too thin, because I had been doing all that
dancing. So I set out drinking milkshakes!"
Mol, who is best known for her role opposite Matt Damon in "Rounders," wanted
to shift her body image a bit, but not go to any extreme, either.
"I remember people asking me if I was going to gain weight, and the thing is,
if I did gain weight who's to say that it would've gone to the right places? So
I couldn't really do that," she recalls. "So a lot of it was figuring out how to
move my body to look as much like her as I could. The costume designer was
brilliant, and came up with such great artful patterns, and then it was the
magic of film, I think."
Paige, who was known for what Mol calls "her iconic image of the vixen with a
whip, and the leopard-print bathing suits, was someone that Mol felt a kinship
with, despite having much different life stories.
"I think that what I responded to about her was the way that she kind of
lived her life and put one foot in front of the other - and then stumbled. She
seemed to be kind of alone at the end of it. I can't say that that's what my
life is at all, but I just sort of felt like I understood that part of her, that
journey of just moving forward, stumbling, getting up and brushing yourself off
and being a survivor."
The 33-year-old actress has often been touted as the next big star (like with
a solo "Vanity Fair" cover years ago), only to find herself still not quite of
the same recognizability as a Reese Witherspoon or Jennifer Lopez, women who
were once her competition for roles. But that's not something that worries
Gretchen Mol; she's simply happy to have the chance to show off her stuff in
films like "The Notorious Bettie Page."
"'Making it' to me means staying in the business. I mean, I've had times
where I felt like I was slipping, and you just have to hang in there. I think
that what's nice about life is that this acting career can be important, but it
doesn't have to be your entire existence. So I really am happy in my life now,
as a woman in my thirties. So all of this, I'm able to enjoy more."
"The Notorious Bettie Page" opens in selected theaters on Friday, April 14.