I hurt myself: Liv Tyler

The actress talks about her tiresome experience while working on The Strangers

How did you prepare for each take of this film, considering that it involves so many high intensity scenes?
Liv Tyler: It’s not always easy, but in the case of this film, everything was so real, so well set up, that it just happened. I could give each take naturally. I needed to look dirty and sweaty quite a few times. Which is why, I took to running for a mile each day while shooting. Just before the take was called, I would do a few laps, and then the director would say ‘Look sweaty.’ And you need to deliver with that kind of energy.

How was your experience of working with just one other actor –––– Scott Speedman?
LT: I have never before done a film like this with just one actor and me, in every scene together. It’s really a challenge, I have never worked so hard and so closely with an actor before. We have so many scenes and the background, is that, in the film, we have been in a relationship for eight years. There are happy times and there are miserable times. He proposed to me and I said no. Going through all this stuff, I sometimes can’t imagine what I would have done without him. I couldn’t have imagined how it would be like working with any other actor on this project. I worked with some great actors and share great bonds with them. But never like him because he really pushes me and encourages me. He is also incredibly generous, and becomes special in his own way.

Tell us something about working in a film with so little dialogues.
LT: There are a lot of moments in the script to tell the story and there are more words than you would expect usually if you would be speaking. Sometimes, even when you are filming it, even in a scary film, some things are so intense that you doubt that you would ever need words to do the scene. On screen, it is amazing to watch them and see some of these things happen to them. No dialogues in fact, translated the film better for us.

How was the experience of working in such an intense film?
LT: Imagine that you have fights with your boyfriend, and you have been crying… or you lose a family member. It’s like that feeling all day. Its so hard and so intense from the second you come to know that you have to head straight to work in the morning, straight into that crying, screaming. I thought that I would be emotionally drained, more than physically.

Mentally, I am ok now and am excited too, but my body is exhausted. There are so many times I could have slept in the same pair of shoes, and then, as the movie progresses, I got more in to the mess. My hair was always in a mess. By the time I came back to my house, my throat was also messed up. I got rubs and sores all over my feet, and got a twisted ankle too! I hurt myself.