She floored audiences as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and everyone knew that the roles would come pouring in for Rooney Mara. Now that she’s been nominated for an Academy Award, there’s even more curious eyes as to what Mara’s next role would be. After much consideration, Deadline reported that Mara has committed to starring in Steven Soderbergh’s (Haywire, Traffic) latest film, Side Effects.
Editor’s Choice: Read Our Review of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
She will play the role of Emily Hawkins, a young, sexy woman suffering from anxiety and depression from the release of her husband from prison. He has been in prison for three years and takes a new prescribed medicine, she unknowingly murders her husband and faces criminal charges. There’s also a love triangle between Hawkins’ doctor that complicates things. Mara replaces Blake Lively and Side Effects also stars Soderbergh faves, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Channing Tatum and Jude Law. Scott Z. Burns is writing the screenplay who wrote Contagion, which Soderbergh directed last year.
Soderbergh has been good for many actresses and helped redefine how we remember them. He made Jennifer Lopez look like a real actor in Out of Sight, he made Zeta-Jones into a woman breaking bad in Traffic, and Julia Roberts has yet to do anything that has been on par with Erin Brockovich. Soderbergh has worked with actors with very little feature experience too like Sasha Grey in The Girlfriend Experience and Gina Carano in Haywire. This role in Side Effects could turn more heads towards Mara.
As for why Lively was shuffled off in favor of Mara might have had to do with some lack of confidence the Gossip Girl star could carry this role on her shoulders. Annapurna Pictures had originally been the chief financier of Side Effects, but was rumored to be less than enamored with Lively (Green Lantern), who outside of a juicy turn in The Town, has not floored many with her acting skills. Mara may have been an attempt to restore faith and bring Annapurna back to the table and finalize the deal. Open Road Films will distribute and is a relative newcomer with the Killer Elite and The Grey as the only films they’ve successfully made. Their third film, a horror story called Silent House will star Elizabeth Olsen and has a release date of March 9.
Editor’s Choice: Hear our BuzzFocus Blast Off Podcast about Haywire.
Mara’s career moving forward will be one film fans will be watching. After the Oscar buzz dies down, Mara will start the production for Terrence Malick’s Lawless, which will be released in 2013. She’s already signed on to reprise her role as Lisbeth Salander in the film adaptations of The Girl Who Played WIth Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest.
Fair or unfair, fans of the Swedish versions of the Millennium trilogy will be comparing Mara’s career to that of Noomi Rapace who was the first actress to play Lisbeth Salander in three films as well as a TV mini-series called Millennium as recent in 2010. Afterwards Rapace’s career blossomed into a starring role in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. Her two-year immersion into Salander character paid off in a big way.
For Mara, she paid her dues too but she nearly ended her acting career before she could stretch herself into Salander. She was concerned that her career would be defined by bit roles on television and poor remakes like the recent reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street. She just needed to get that one role to turn it around and she found that as Erica Albright in The Social Network. That along with an extensive audition process gave David Fincher the confidence to cast her as THE girl to wear the dragon tattoo. Now with Malick and hopefully Soderbergh in her future (if Side Effects can find money), Mara’s bright career is well on its way.
