No-Nonsense Moss Is Still Tough in Zero
By beth mcarthur
Publish Date: 19-Aug-2004
LOS ANGELES--What a flirt. When she entered the hotel's interview room, the
first thing Carrie-Anne Moss did was invite a curious male journalist to
eyeball the designer label on her icy-peach-and-silver tank top. But that
girlish gesture was more surprising than Moss's enduring celebrity. Since the
37-year-old alumna of Burnaby's Lakeview elementary and Vancouver's Magee
secondary kick-started moviegoers' imaginations as Trinity, the
leather-sheathed warrior babe in the Matrix trilogy, Moss has become
synonymous not with feminine acquiescence but with machismo.
"How could you not cast me as a tough girl? I'm such a toughie!"
Moss said, smiling slyly. She's joking, but her filmography underscores the
audience perception.
After her Matrix acrobatics, Moss was a no-nonsense commander in Red Planet, a
detective in The Crew, and an enigmatic manipulator in Memento (all released
in 2000). Now, costarring in Suspect Zero, Moss again plays stony. In the E.
Elias Merhigedirected thriller (opening next Friday [August 27]), she's FBI
agent Fran Kulock, who, with her tormented ex-partner/lover, played by Aaron
Eckhart, hunts a suspected serial killer (Ben Kingsley). Discussing his
casting of Moss, Merhige noted her balance of beauty, sensitivity, and humour.
"But at the same time she can kick ass."
The successor to Alien star Sigourney Weaver's macho-babe throne said she
initially didn't twig to the fact that she had such a reputation.
"I'm always surprised when people say that they, say, watched The Making
of The Matrix and they saw all the training that I went through and they're
like, 'Wow, you know, you're really tough or whatever,' " she said,
laughing. "And I'm like, 'I better watch that so I see what people think
of me.' "
Asked if, in the wake of giving birth to her first child--a son--last year,
Moss would steer away from the heavy films, the actor said she might, albeit
with realistic expectations.
"As romantic and light that I am in my life, I wouldn't claim to say that
I would know how to even do that in film. But I'd be really open to trying. I
kind of think you sort of see what you're good at and what the public likes
you doing. I don't have any real desire to, like, prove that I am something
else."
Nevertheless, Moss recently filmed a comedy called The Chumscrubber, in which
she plays a "flamboyant woman". But don't despair, action fans.
Rather, start penning a thank-you note to Tom Cruise, who cast Moss to play
opposite him in Mission: Impossible 3, likely to shoot next year.
"I mean, I said I would never do another action film and here I am doing
MI 3," Moss said, a mite sheepishly. "I'm very much a person of my
word, you know. I really had to grapple with that even in deciding to do MI 3.
I was like, 'I told people I would never do another one.' But life happens,
you know, and things happen. And once again I learned never say never."
For the L.A.based actor, that credo may also include the notion of
eventually moving home. "I visit Vancouver. And I'd love to live in
Vancouver. I just don't know if I could take the rain quite so much," she
said. But before you slam her for having David Duchovny syndrome, remember two
things. Locals are allowed to dis the precipitation. And this lady could kick
you upstairs.
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