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Cindy Pearlman
NYT Syndicate
Leslie Mann has the kind of laugh that dares you not to join her. What provokes one of these outbursts?
"I'm pretty much game for anything," the 44-year-old actress said.
That was good news for director Taylor Hackford when he was searching for someone to play opposite Robert De Niro in his new film, The Comedian.
"People lined up to work with Bob, but Leslie was a find," Hackford said in a separate interview."She came in at the last minute and fit right in. She took this role and made it her own."
"I was more than happy to do the film," Mann said after a screening in Los Angeles, and then launched one of those laughs."Was that a bad answer? I can keep talking if you want to me to talk."
What she had to say boiled down to one not-so-surprising fact.
"I can't even believe it when I see myself in scenes with Robert De Niro," she said.
In The Comedian, opening nationwide on Feruary 3, De Niro plays Jackie, an ageing insult comedian whose career has faltered of late, mostly because he can't seem to shake off the 1990s sitcom that made him famous.
Jackie ends up assaulting a heckler, does a month in jail and then finishes his sentence with community service at a soup kitchen. There he meets Harmony (Mann), a free spirit who's there because she assaulted her ex. The two develop an unlikely bond.
The film also features Danny DeVito, Edie Falco, Harvey Keitel, Cloris Leachman, Patti LuPone and, as himself, Billy Crystal.
"It was such a great story," Mann said."It's inspiring and makes you think. I knew this was the kind of story that people would want to talk about later. You think about it the next day and the next week.
"I think there are so many big action movies that don't mean anything," she added."This meant something."
The audition process came with its share of jitters.
"They asked me to meet with Bob," she recalled,"and I was really nervous, because I had loved him my whole life. Then I went in and found that he was just the nicest person."
De Niro had to work to get a feel for the world of stand-up comedy, which wasn't a problem for Mann: A former comic herself, she is married to writer/director Judd Apatow, another former comic who is good friends with his one-time roommate, Adam Sandler. Parties at her house often resemble the green room at a really, really great comedy club.
"I live with comedy, so this felt like my world and I could really relate to it," Mann said."Of course, being able to work with amazing comedic actors in this film was a dream come true."
De Niro and Mann come from different generations and different acting worlds, but Hackford said that they clicked from the start.
"When you're casting it's like a chemistry experiment," he said,"because nobody acts alone. Bob and Leslie had that instant chemistry you can't predict until you see it.
"We had a few one-takes," Hackford said."She just hit it."
The days on the set were longer than she had expected, Mann reported.
"When I started working with these guys, I thought, 'Oh, this will be great. We will have short days, because they're a little bit older and they'll probably get tired,'" she said."I thought, 'We'll have eight-hour days. I can come home early. I can have a life.'
"It was the exact opposite," she said, laughing."They worked twice as hard and had more energy than my daughter who is 14. They worked 17-hour days, and they wanted to rehearse after it was over.
"All of a sudden it was 3, 4, 5 o'clock in the morning and we were still shooting, because this was a real passion project for Bob," she said."We kept plugging away. There was Taylor, drinking his tea. He has all this energy. He could keep shooting all night long."
How did Mann unwind after her emotional scenes?
"Booze," she joked."No, seriously, it feels good after those scenes. When I do an emotional scene, I can actually sleep better that night."
Born in San Francisco, Mann was a shy child who found an outlet in acting after she and her mother, a real-estate agent, moved to Newport Beach, California. By 17 she was appearing in television commercials.
After graduating from high school, she studied communications in college, but kept returning to acting. Eventually she gravitated toward comedy, working with the improv group the Groundlings.
Her early films include The Cable Guy (1995), She's the One (1996), George of the Jungle (1997) and Big Daddy (1999).
The Cable Guy is a favourite of hers, because it was during the making of that film that she met her future husband, who was a producer on the movie.
After her audition, Apatow has said, he turned to a friend and said,"There goes the future Mrs Apatow."
They married in 1997, and went on to work together on The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Knocked Up (2007), Funny People (2009) and This Is 40 (2012).
Knocked Up and This Is 40 cast her opposite Paul Rudd, the onscreen man in her life.
"We just really, really like each other and have so much fun together," Mann said."We get it. We also really know each other now as actors. He likes to veer off from the script, and I love improv-ing with him."
Mann is one of Hollywood's busier actresses, with a recent filmography that also includes The Other Woman (2014), Vacation (2015) and How to Be Single (2016). Her next film is The Pact, a comedy about three fathers who try to stop their daughters from having sex on prom night.
Lately Mann is getting cast in a good number of mom roles. That doesn't bother the actress, who is the mother of 18-year-old Maude Apatow and 14-year-old Iris Apatow, emerging actresses who also played her character's daughters in Knocked Up and This Is 40.
In fact, she said, she embraces ageing.
"I have lunches with my girlfriends," Mann explained,"and sometimes we're crying and screaming about ageing and then we laugh about it. I keep asking women who are a little bit older, 'When is this feeling going to pass about ageing?'
"They say, 'It doesn't pass. It just gets worse.'"
When she isn't working, Mann said, there is"nothing nicer" than spending a day simply watching movies.
"The movies I love combine comedy with real life," she said."The more truthful, the better."
One of Mann's favorites is Broadcast News (1987).
"I love Albert Brooks sitting there sweating while he's trying to do the news," she said."That's the greatest thing ever. It's so heartbreaking and real. It's uncomfortable to watch, yet so funny.
"It's the perfect combination of everything," Mann said."That's my dream. I want to find films that give you all of those feelings."
