Latino Review visited the Chicago set of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and have just posted their experience, which includes interviews with Rooney and other cast and crew members. And remember we have a new trailer and some new TV spots to look forward to this week!

Seated towards the middle of the factory and away from the sights and sounds of filming, we wait around the table for cast and crewmembers to speak with us.

One of the first is Rooney Mara, who, fresh from shooting a scene, walks across the factory in impossibly high boots that would surely pose a problem when running from Freddy Krueger. Her cheery disposition stands in contrast to her character Nancy Thompson, who moments before was yelling at her friend and love interest Quentin to wake up or risk a showdown with the nightmare-stalking Krueger.

“She’s described as ‘goth,’” explains Mara, but “She’s goth in the sense that she’s, quite obviously, disturbed and quiet and keeps to herself and can’t really open up to people or connect with people. And she feels really alone in the world because of things that happened to her when she was younger. But throughout the movie you see that change, and you see her grow, so it’s a good arc.”

Today, every bit of Nancy’s character design and Mara’s look reflect that realness and depth. Nancy isn’t a token hot teen in the latest fashions despite her boots. She wears dark colors, purple nail polish, and a baggy cardigan that seems to swallow her slight figure. And while there’s no denying that Mara is a gorgeous woman in real life, as Nancy her eyes are darkened and her hair stringy from depriving herself of sleep.

“Rooney was someone who, to us, embodied that kind of natural, real girl thing that Nancy had in the original,” says Fuller. “Freddy Krueger is the star of the film, and everyone else has to be able to have the chops to keep up with him, but that’s the star of the movie. For all of the actors, we tried to find kids who had the chops to be really good.”

And those chops extend to emulating her character’s self-imposed insomnia.

“If we have a really intense scene, I try not to let myself get more than three hours of sleeps, and after a few days that’s quite draining,” she tells us. “Last night when I went home I was like a wreck. I was really spent, because yesterday was really intense, because it was all day one of the most intense scenes in the movie, crying the whole day. Seventy-five takes of just bawling my eyes out.”

Source (full feature): Latino Review

Rooney is featured in a new issue of Paper Magazine, and it includes a gorgeous new photoshoot picture.

After filming Tanner Hall, the debut film by writing/directing team Tatiana von Furstenberg and Francesca Gregorini, actress Patricia “Tricia” Mara took on a new identity, dropping her first name to become Rooney Mara. “I never really liked my first name,” Mara says. (Rooney is her middle name.) “I never felt like a Tricia. And Rooney is more memorable.”

As Patricia growing up in the tony Westchester town of Bedford, Mara says she was a “loner” who shied away from team sports, even though in her family, football was everything. (Her great-grandfather Tim Mara founded the New York Giants.) “I was dragged to football games every week,” she says. “I just started liking it a few years ago, but I really hated it growing up.”

For a different, less all-American experience, after highschool Mara lived in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. From there, she headed to Kenya where she started a non-profit children”s relief charity called Faces of Kibera. “I needed to get out of the bubble of Westchester. I wanted to finish high school and experience other parts of the world before I tried acting.” Mara moved to Los Angeles two years ago, staying at first with her sister Kate Mara (also an actress). And since then, she”s been working non-stop. After she sexes up Tanner Hall as the precocious teen Fernanda, she”ll star in Youth in Revolt (with Michael Cera) and The Social Network, David Fincher”s buzzy Justin Timberlake-starring feature about the creators of Facebook. “In the movie I break up with Mark [Zuckerberg], which is the inspiration for him to start Facebook,” she explains. Good luck finding Mara on the social networking site. “I do have a Facebook account, but I very rarely use it,” she says. “I have my profile on private — so no one can find me.”

A great new in-depth feature on Rooney has surfaced (including a new portrait picture, click thumbnail on left to see full size), and instead of focusing on her impressive rising film career, it goes into great detail on her other passion: her charity Faces of Kibera.

Important to highlight is the Faces of Kibera eBay auction currently taking place, which features tons of amazing one-of-a-kind sports and entertainment memorabilia, with all proceeds benefitting the charity.

A face of caring
By Chris Serico

Once reluctant to pursue the career that made her older sister, Kate Mara, a movie star, actress Rooney Mara never hesitated to follow a calling that often takes her 7,337 miles from her native Bedford.

In just her early 20s, Rooney Mara is the founder of a charity that benefits young orphans in Kibera, an African slum of about 1 million people living in 1 square mile of Nairobi, Kenya. And through Sunday, her online auction of sports- and entertainment-themed rarities will raise thousands more dollars to help build and support a facility on land she bought for Faces of Kibera.

”I went there, one of the last times I was there, in my pigtails, and bought 6 acres of land,“ she says with a wide smile. ”It was crazy.“

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Rooney, along with her “Tanner Hall” co-stars Amy Ferguson and Georgia King, made the Toronto Star’s list of standout “fresh faces” at the annual Toronto International Film Festival. Along with a glowing review of Rooney’s performance, a new portrait image of the 3 was featured, which you can view in our gallery now.

Fresh faces at TIFF
Which new stars made a claim on fame at the film festival this year? Here are our picks

Amy Ferguson, Georgia King, Rooney Mara

First-time directors Tatiana von Furstenberg and Francesca Gregorini have assembled a cast of outstanding young actresses for their film Tanner Hall, a drama set in a girls’ boarding school in northern New England. All in their early 20s (and coy about giving their ages), Americans Amy Ferguson and Rooney Mara and Scottish-born Georgia King are solid and believable as three teens on the verge of womanhood facing tough decisions and hard learning lessons about consequences.

These are the first leading roles for this trio of young actresses (the fourth star, Brie Larson, wasn’t at TIFF), although they have screen credits ranging from TV to theatre and small movies. During an interview with the Star, the actresses said they hope the as-yet-unsold Tanner Hall will find a waiting audience of young women who often feel overlooked by Hollywood’s desire to cater to teen boys. King’s first screen role was as Lady Teazle in The Duchess – which was at TIFF last year – starring alongside Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes. In Tanner Hall she’s the bad seed, a new girl who sets out to manipulate and destroy others. King balances a credible portrayal of evil with vulnerability.

Rooney Mara, younger sister of actress Kate (TIFF closer last year, The Stone of Destiny), has the most challenging role, taking on the part of wise yet unworldly Fernanda, who finds herself drawn into an affair with an older family friend (Tom Everett Scott). Her portrayal of a girl’s torment over her actions and rising panic about her choices is credible and note perfect.

Mara has the lead in director Samuel Bayer’s re-imagining of A Nightmare on Elm Street, due next year. She also appeared alongside Michael Cera in another TIFF film, Youth in Revolt. As Lucasta, a scholarship student who seems unaware – or unwilling to acknowledge – that she is questioning her sexual identity, Amy Ferguson takes on her first major role.

Rooney sat down with MTV’s Rough Cut to talk about her role in the highly anticipated “A Nightmare on Elm Street” remake. In the first one, which you can watch here, she talks about how the classic horror movie was reinvented for a new generation, and in the second one, here, she goes more in depth about the iconic character she plays: Nancy Thompson. It’s great to finally hear from Rooney about her biggest role!

Screen captures from the interviews are below.

153 x Screen Captures – Promotional Interviews: MTV Rough Cut

Many media and news sites have posted previews of their visits to the “Nightmare on Elm Street” set, and included this brand new title treatment for the film. Below is a compilation of some the sites that will be posting full set visit reports in the coming days:

Bloody-Disgusting.com – The Midwest. It’s hot, it’s cold, it’s raining, it’s thundering, and goddamn are the mosquitoes out for blood – they aren’t the only ones. Sitting in a make-up truck outside of an old abandoned church in Gary, IN is Jackie Earle Haley, who within four hours time will be transformed into Freddy Krueger, the iconic child molester that has been tearing up the big screen with his patent razor-glove for 25 years now. (First look at Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy here too)

IESB.net – Starring as leads Nancy, the girl next door, and Quentin, the Johnny Depp equivalent, are Rooney Mara and Kyle Gallner fresh faces to the world of horror films. We spoke with both Rooney and Kyle while on set to see if they were fans of the original film, but alas they weren’t even alive yet. Man, that dates me…

MovieHole – Platinum Dunes producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form are telling Moviehole that this take on Elm Street is much more brutal and realistic than its predecessors. “I think that if we’re going to try and restart this franchise or at least bring our take to the franchise, it had to be different from what the other one was,” said Form. “It felt like the first Nightmare on Elm Street was kind of a scary, straight ahead horror movie, and then as they went on, they became more funny. In an effort to differentiate ours from what it had become, we wanted ours to feel much more real.”

Shock ‘Til You Drop – In June, this writer took a trip into a dreamscape. Not a picturesque vision of gorgeous women, classic rock and flowing beer (hey, I’ve got my fantasies, you’ve got yours). What I speak of is covered in soot, scratches, child-like drawings on stained chalkboards, candlelight, decay and infected with a maniac who creeps about in a red and green sweater, a fedora and a hand-crafted glove with imposing knives for fingers that has become as iconic as the man wearing them since both were introduced by Wes Craven in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. For the first time in my career, I was on the set of a Freddy Krueger film. Granted, not an entry in the original franchise that I had nursed on during my budding years as a horror fan, but a picture that signals a fresh start for a new generation.

We will alert you when the full set reports are online!

Rooney is, quite deservedly, featured as one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film for 2009. A new photo accompanies the article, which features some great new soundbytes from Rooney, and the magazine itself goes on sale at the end of July, though you can read the whole thing below. Check back for HQ scans when I get my copy.

Rooney Mara

The careers of actors and actresses are possessed of their own internal logic. An actor’s breakout in a critically acclaimed starring role is usually the culmination of a process that’s been witnessed by producers, directors and casting directors for years before. So when we surveyed people in the industry about acting talent for this year’s list, one not-yet-household name kept coming up: Rooney Mara. Said a casting director: “She’s got great presence and wit, and she can do both comedy and drama.” “Women love, guys love her,” one producer said to me. “We cast forever for her character, and she just came in and nailed it.” Audiences will have a chance to discover Mara’s talents because she has supporting roles in three independent or specialty films coming out this year. First she’s opposite Sam Rockwell in the Sundance pickup The Winning Season, she co-stars in Adam Salky’s Sundance Competition pic Dare, and she’s also in Miguel Arteta’s upcoming Youth in Revolt with Michael Cera.

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