Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig leave marks on ‘Dragon Tattoo’
NEW YORK – For Rooney Mara, playing one of modern literature’s most indelible, unorthodox female creations has meant, to some extent, overcoming her inner Lisbeth Salander.
The breakout star of the much-anticipated film adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is still mastering the art of garrulousness. As with Salander, none of it comes naturally, or seamlessly, to her.
“I don’t enjoy talking about myself. I’m a quiet person. I like to observe much more than I like to be observed. It’s definitely exhausting and bizarre to have to talk about yourself all the time,” says Mara. “It’s a weird part of the job.”
But one, thanks to the attention being heaped on the film, she can’t avoid. Mara plays solitary, skittish hacker Salander in David Fincher’s film, based on the first of the late Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. Swedish journalist Larsson died in 2004 of a heart attack, and his best sellers were published posthumously; the three books already were turned into Swedish films, which were released in the USA.
Both in the books and in Fincher’s dark thriller, Salander hides a rapacious intelligence, coupled with ferocious loyalty, under a cloak of piercings, tattoos and tatty clothes. In the film, opening Tuesday, she and disgraced investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) search for a missing girl and unearth a serial killer.
During a joint interview in Manhattan, Mara and Craig are a study in contrasts. Mara, 26, is diffident and quiet, almost curled into herself at one end of a sofa. Craig, 43, outspoken and assertive, radiates confidence and decisiveness. On-screen, says Fincher, the two just fit together.
“Blomkvist is very vulnerable. Salander is very vulnerable and trying not to be — even in real life,” says Fincher. “They’re similar actors, in a way. They’re very feline and thoughtful. They were comfortable with one another.”
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