‘Boyhood’ Oscar nominee Patricia Arquette talks ‘human relationships’
Nominated for best supporting actress for her role as the struggling mom in Richard Linklater’s best picture contender, ‘Boyhood,’ Arquette discusses how the film industry has changed, and how her director hasn’t. And that’s a good thing.
"I feel like I've watched this really strange shift in cinema over the course of my career," Patricia Arquette observed, back last summer when Richard Linklater's Boyhood, the 12-years-in-the-making movie about a kid growing up and the family growing up around him, was just rolling into theaters across the land. "I've seen it become a business of bankers and spreadsheets," she added, noting that "the way that Rick chose to make this movie — the structure, the collaborative openness" was a reaction against a formula-following, demographic-driven industry.
"There are philosophical elements about the human connection, there is space for human relationships" in Boyhood, Arquette affirmed. Her performance, as a struggling single mom who makes some bad choices with the men in her life, and some good choices when it comes to raising her son (Ellar Coltrane) and daughter (Lorelei Linklater, the director's kid), brings heartfelt specificity to challenges that working parents face everywhere, every day.
Arquette, an Emmy winner and Golden Globe nominee for her starring role on the NBC mystery series, Medium, said that signing up for Boyhood, in which the cast would shoot for a few weeks every year, as Coltrane's character evolved from grade school to college dorm, was a daunting commitment. "It was jumping into the void from the get-go."
It was a jump worth taking. Arquette received her first Academy Award nomination for her trouble, and Boyhood scored five other nominations, including best supporting actor for Ethan Hawke (her ex, the father of her children), best picture and best director. Boyhood is back in select theaters, and available on VOD platforms.