INTERVIEW: JACKI WEAVER, FROM DOWN UNDER TO TOP OF WORLD AT 63
On Tuesday morning, I had the opportunity to spend about 20 minutes in New York with the Australian actress Jacki Weaver, who was in town to accept the National Board of Review’s best supporting actress awards later that night for her haunting performance as “Smurf,” the diminutive and deceptively sweet matriarch of a ruthless crime family in David Michod’s feature debut “Animal Kingdom” (Sony Pictures Classics, 8/13, R, trailer). Weaver’s has been a household name for decades in Australia, where she has starred in over 100 theatrical productions, appeared in dozens of film and television productions, and won three acting awards from the Australian Film Institute, the Aussie equivalent of the Academy Awards. Now, at the age of 63 and after 48 years as an actress, she is finally generating a great degree of attention stateside, too. She will be a best supporting actress nominee at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards on Friday night and the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday night, and at this point it seems more likely than not that her name will be among those called when Oscar nominations are announced on January 25.
Tags: Animal Kingdom, David Michod, Interviews, Jacki Weaver, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Videos