Patricia Clarkson talks Bradley Cooper, her new movie and her secret to eternal youth

THIS HAS been a good year for actresses of a certain age - meaty leads for Meryl Streep, Blythe Danner, Lily Tomlin.

But just so you know, Patricia Clarkson is not one of them.

She's got the juicy role, all right - in "Learning to Drive," opposite Ben Kingsley - but she's a decade (or two!) younger than these other talented women, even if audiences sometimes get that wrong.

"I've been playing 50 for such a long time now, that when people see me they say, 'Patty, you look amazing,' because they think that I'm 100 years old."

Clarkson is a bit more than half that. She was in her twenties when she had her first defining role on screen as Mrs. Elliot Ness in "The Untouchables," already playing a wife and mother. Clarkson has a deep voice that projects maturity and a southern poise (she was raised a New Orleans aristocrat) that attracts casting directors looking for someone to run a household or a corporation ("The East") or a post-apocalyptic society (the "Maze Runner" movies).

Clarkson thinks it's a mistake to lump all "old" folks together.

"People conflate us. We're not all one age after 50. There are actually several age groups. I'm 55. I think it's important that we represent people at certain stages of their lives. This story ["Learning to Drive"] is about a woman in her 50s. It's specifically and uniquely that - a woman who's lived five decades of life, and what it's like to be at that particular point."

Clarkson plays Wendy, a woman who loses her husband and her bearings, and has to start looking for love all over again, a chore she thought she'd finished. It leads to a disconcertingly funny scene of Wendy - shy, bookish, tentative - in the sack with an intimidatingly adept partner.

"Being naked is never easy. If it were, I guess we'd all walk around naked. But I've been nude on film before, so I know what that is. And it's a small group on set, a director I trust completely, an actor in Matt Salinger that I've known for along time," said Clarkson.

The scene is important, she said, because it tells the viewer so much about who Wendy is, where she is in life.

"Nudity is essential and valuable and a vital part of filmmaking. Especially as we age. People tend to take it out [of movies] when they actually should be putting it in. Because as lovely as it is to see young people naked, we don't stop being naked when we get older," said Clarkson - who, as it happens, was professionally nude for the better part of a year in the London production of "The Elephant Man," opposite Bradley Cooper.

"I just did nine month of 'The Elephant Man,' and I'm naked every night. Topless, but that's naked enough."

Like all of Cooper's co-stars, she gushes about Bradley.

"He's an incredible actor, a stunning man! Philadelphia should be proud."

Her co-star in "Learning to Drive," is another heavyweight - Oscar-winner Ben Kingsley (they worked together in "Elegy"). He plays a Sikh immigrant who gives Wendy driving lessons, a metaphor for freedom, self-reliance, navigating obstacles, being present.

Clarkson - who's survived and flourished in 30 years in Hollywood - said she learned a lot from the role.

"She's a woman who learns to realize what she has. She learns about 'looking up,' and it was a great lesson for me. I had to look up and realize that I've had a wonderful career. I got in this to work with great people, and I've done that," said Clarkson, who's starred in movies by Brian De Palma, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, George Clooney, Lars von Trier, Todd Haynes and many others.

"I'd be crazy not appreciate where the hell I am."

Online: ph.ly/Movies