Gretchen Mol Could Be The Next Viola Davis – Vulture

http://www.vulture.com/2017/01/the-next-viola-davis-could-be-gretchen-mol.html

The actress has spent years playing supporting roles in major films before her Sundance breakout, Marjorie Prime.

A Gretchen Mol renaissance is underway. The actress, who’s spent years playing supporting roles in major films, including Boardwalk Empire as Gillian Darmody and Girl Most Likely as a version of Zooey Deschanel, broke out with a starring role at the recent Sundance Film Festival in Marjorie Prime. In the film, directed by Michael Almereyda from Jordan Harrison’s play, Mol plays the title character, an elderly woman living in a future where hologram versions of her late husband and daughter have been created to keep her company (Jon Hamm and Geena Davis respectively). It’s a sad movie about memory and time — not exactly a conventional vehicle for an actress to show off — but it works because of Mol’s performance. As Vulture’s Emily Yoshida wrote in her review from Sundance:

Mol is the through line that keeps Marjorie Prime from collapsing under

A few years ago, Gretchen Mol was a struggling actress. She had a few supporting roles in big movies, but didn’t get much attention for them. Now, she’s starting to get more attention for her supporting roles in big movies.

Mol has been acting professionally since 1996, but the only movie you might have seen her in is Rounders, and then you probably only noticed her because she was Matt Damon’s girlfriend at the beginning of the movie. You definitely did not notice her in Celebrity or Sweet and Lowdown or Girl 6 or The Thirteenth Floor or The Shape Of Things or Finding Forrester or The Notorious Bettie Page.

Now, that’s started to change. This year she plays Ben Affleck’s love interest in Runner Runner and Daniel Craig’s wife in Don Jon. Next year she’ll play Steve Carell’s love interest in Foxcatcher. She even appeared on the cover of Vogue this month.

They’re the actresses who are never household names, but they always stand out. They’re the ones who, when you hear they’ve signed on to a new project, you can’t help but get excited. Gretchen Mol is one of them. Not quite a character actress and not quite a leading lady, she’s what I like to call “a good actor.”

If you’re familiar with her work at all (and if you’re not, go watch Donnie Brasco right now), you know that Mol is the kind of actress who makes every role she takes on better just by being in it. Her talent is so effortless, it almost goes unnoticed — until it doesn’t, and suddenly you find yourself stealing glances at her character in every scene she inhabits, wondering why she has so few lines in this movie or why she isn’t the one getting top billing.

But lately we’ve been seeing more of Mol than we have in a while: first as Wayne Knight’s partner in crime in HBO’s Vinyl, then as Ben Affleck’s wife in Live by Night and Jason Sudeikis’ girlfriend in Kodachrome (out later this year).

Gretchen Mol has been a familiar face for the last decade, but she’s still making her breakthrough. That could happen, finally, this summer.

Mol was born in Deep River, Conn. and raised on Long Island in a family of four girls. Her father was an employee at the United Nations until he died from Hodgkin’s disease when Mol was only 10 years old, She started acting in local productions while attending high school and continued on to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she studied under actor William Hickey and graduated in 1996.

She made her feature film debut the same year as a college student in Woody Allen’s “Everyone Says I Love You” and had small parts in “Vegas Vacation,” “Donnie Brasco” and “Rounders.” She also played Marilyn Monroe for five minutes in “The Harrad Experiment” (2002) with James Marsden and Taryn Manning.

In 1999, she starred opposite Edward Norton in Mike Figgis’ “The Loss of Sexual Innocence,” but it didn’t seem to catapult her career like it should have. She went on to star opposite Nicolas Cage as his wife in 2002’s “Sonny.” And then came her big break: She landed a role

If you want to be a good actor, people keep telling 24-year-old Gretchen Mol, you’d better get ready to wait tables.

She’s not having any of it. “There are so many actors who are working,” she argues, her eyes narrowing. “It’s just that they’re working on the kind of movies that come out in February or March.” She exhales deeply, as though disgusted by the whole idea.

Mol is sitting on a folding chair in her trailer on the set of Rounders, an upcoming crime drama about poker hustlers. As Jo, a law student and girlfriend of Matt Damon’s character, she has one of the biggest roles in a movie that also stars Edward Norton and John Malkovich.

In person Mol is shy but intense; she has a creamy complexion and dark hair that reaches almost to her waist. She looks both younger and older than her years: Her face is still girlishly round and her smile boyishly wide, but she moves with the self-assurance of someone twice her age. And while she’s been acting since childhood, she always wanted to be famous when she grew up. “I used to drive my parents crazy,” Mol recalls. “When I was 11 or 12 I

She’s already picked up two Independent Spirit Award nominations and a Gotham Award nomination, and she’s getting the right kind of attention for her role as the slightly clueless actress in “Rounders.”

“She’s just got it,” says director John Dahl. “She does these little things that make you believe her.”

A native New Yorker, Mol studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, then spent several years on the other side of the camera as a model. She was offered a role in “The Last Days of Disco,” but had to turn it down because she was pregnant with her first child.

But now Mol is back in the spotlight with a series of impressive performances in movies like “The Thirteenth Floor” and television series like “Oz.”