If Jessica Biel is the sexiest woman alive now, imagine how she’d go over 80 years ago. In Easy Virtue, she plays a 1920s American clashing with he fiance’s British family. It’s got the costumes, the accents and the Noel Coward story going for it. And, of course, Jessica Biel in the lead.
Crave Online: Would you have liked to live in this era or was it just nice to play at it?
Jessica Biel: When you're living it for two months, kind of on and off, it's fabulous. You want to live there. You want to dress in beautiful, glamorous and incredible clothes and actually get dressed in the morning to do anything, have beautiful parties and it just seems so fun and frivolous. But life was clearly very difficult, living back then. So, yes, it's fun, but I much prefer to live now. There were so many restrictions, especially for women of course. It was so difficult to do what you wanted and have a career. You couldn't really do that, very easily at least.
Crave Online: How did you relate to Larita and then what did you have to pull out of yourself that wasn't very like you?
Jessica Biel: I related to her in the kind of fish out of water feel. So I really connect with her kind of stoic “I'm going to survive in this situation' attitude.” What was very different for me to grasp was her incredible comebacks and her wit and cleverness. I wish I was like that. I'm just a little too nice. It's so boring. I want to be more like her in that sense.
Crave Online: Did you feel like a fish out of water shooting in England?
Jessica Biel: Definitely. Definitely intimidated by that. I wasn't that familiar with Noel Coward to begin with. I was more familiar with his music, actually, than his actual plays. I terribly look up to Kristin Scott Thomas and love Colin Firth. Everyone there had been through such intense drama school. Initially I just kind of felt like I didn't fit in and like, “Gosh. I hope I'm good enough to pull this off.” So it was scary. It is nerve racking going to live in a new place and in a different country. Thank goodness I speak the language. That makes it a lot easier, let me tell you.
Crave Online: Could you use that in the character?
Jessica Biel: Yeah, absolutely. You do feel like the outsider. You can't help it. You're the American. You don't know what a crumpet is. You're sticking out like a sore thumb, but it's kind of invigorating and it's kind of wonderful and it's good to get out of your comfort zone. I like that. I like to do that, get out of my comfort zone and experience some other things.
Crave Online: How did you end up singing a song in the film?
Jessica Biel: That happened in the middle of shooting. Ben [Barnes] was singing, doing something in a scene and Steph[an Elliott] said, “God, you have such a great voice. You should sing the lead track. We want to do Mad About the Boy and you should sing it.” So they were actually moving forward with Ben singing it and what they found out, looking into Noel Coward's will and the things that he wrote about for his particular music was that he said no man could ever record that song again. I guess that he was in love with somebody and that was it. No man was going to record that again. So you can only find women singing it and recording. Then he heard me humming around or something and then he said, “Now, you should do it.” So it was really very random and I hadn't planned on it and it was just such a treat to get to do that.
Crave Online: Do you see a musical career maybe in your future?
Jessica Biel: I know that nobody knows this about me, but I really started in music with musical theater and Annie and The Sound of Music. I wanted to be Whitney Houston. That was my dream. I don't know how it took a left turn. I don't know what happened. I just sort of got into this acting world, but it was really fun for me to go back and do that.
