Melissa Leo garnered accolades for her long-running portrayal of Sgt. Kay Howard in Homicide: Life on the Street but never got her due. Now, after a string of supporting parts, Leo delivers a searing turn in Frozen River as Ray Eddy, a hardscrabble single mom ensnared in human smuggling along reservation lands at the Canadian border. Leo spoke to us from Boston, where she’s shooting indie comedy Don McKay with Thomas Haden Church and Elisabeth Shue.
Austin Chronicle: Frozen River started as a short, before being adopted into a feature. You appear in both. What about it compelled you to give so much to it?
Melissa Leo: When we did the short, all I knew that there was was the short. It was a great little piece, with a very, very strong couple of women. They had no names – it was “the blonde” and “the Mohawk.” … Then after we had done the short and I had indicated I wanted to do the feature, well, I wasn’t gonna let that outta my sight. I would call her [director Courtney Hunt] – not daily or anything, but you know, every three, six months: “So, are we gonna make that movie one of these days?” … I wouldn’t have let the project go for anything; I think it’s interesting people think of it as haven given so much. I think what I gave was pure pleasure, and what is being returned on it is so amazing.
AC: There’s buzz about your performance being remembered come awards season; does this feel like a breakthrough role for you?
ML: It’s of a great deal of importance in the shape of my life and my career, without doubt. I think that it could even be bigger than that, in finally understanding there doesn’t have to be boy movies and girl movies and black movies and white movies. There can be film that all the whole, diverse world can get. Maybe, maybe, maybe Frozen River‘s a little part of that transition. For me, so much of what I do is not this really rather amazing, wonderful response that has been happening in the last little while here; it’s really the process of making film itself.
AC: You’ve worked as much in television as you have in film: What are the pros and cons of each?
ML: Television has been an incredible training ground for me. There is something so quick [about it]. … There’s not a lot of time to flush things out. Very often in television work, you’re asked to make very unreal turns and directions. There’s a shorthand about it.
AC: I’m a huge Homicide fan. How much does it color your career?
ML: What Homicide did to my career more than anything was to paint it black. After I finished my five years on Homicide, I could not get hired to save my life. … I loved being Kay Howard, but she didn’t get any more work for me. They wouldn’t let me play the victims, because I was the police, and they wouldn’t let me play the police, because, oh, I’d already done that.
Frozen River opens Friday, Sept. 5, at Regal Arbor Cinema. See Film Listings for review.
This article appears in September 5 • 2008.