NEW YORK — "You need actors who aren't afraid to take chances," says director Martin Scorsese.
While Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis already have proved they're game for a challenge, Cameron Diaz takes the biggest career risk with "Gangs of New York," Scorsese's 25-years-in-the-works epic.
It's a dramatic, violent and visually breathtaking tale of the battles between nativist Americans and Irish immigrants for dominance over the squalid streets of New York's Five Points district. Inlaid atop this narrative sprawl, which plays out against the Civil War and climaxes with the racially charged 1863 Draft Riots, is the story of a father and son, revenge and love.
DiCaprio plays Amsterdam Vallon, a young Irishman seeking to avenge his father's brutal murder 16 years earlier at the hands of nativist leader Bill the Butcher (Day-Lewis). Caught between the two men is Jenny Everdeane (Diaz), a skilled "bludget" (thief) who eludes Bill's powerful grasp and chooses Amsterdam's poor but solid arms instead.
On a snowy Sunday morning, I'm wedged between reporters from all over the country into one of several small rooms on the third floor of the Essex House in New York.
Miramax has paraded the three stars, co-stars Jim Broadbent and John C. Reilly, and writers Jay Cocks, Steve Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan past us for questions. Scorsese has opted for a large press conference one floor below.
All the actors profess a respect and awe for Scorsese, and Day-Lewis says it best: "There are probably less than a handful of directors working in the world today for whom it is genuinely a vocation. He's compelled to do that work to the point that if he didn't do it his life would be bereft."
For DiCaprio, who approaches us with a studied wariness, the chance to work with Scorsese was "one of the most memorable movie-making experiences I've ever had because I've never committed so much time, thought or effort to a movie — or felt so attached."
Diaz, standing out as the sole female in a veritable boys club of a cast and enduring her part being written and expanded only as it was shot, is treading new territory. And she was the only one of the stars who had to audition for her part.
Remember, DiCaprio and Day-Lewis, hits and misses aside, already have proved their mettle as dramatic players, but Scorsese took a chance in casting a movie star who commands between $15 million and $20 million per project and is known primarily for such lightweight comedies as "The Mask," "There's Something About Mary" and "My Best Friend's Wedding," and for action fluff such as "Charlie's Angels."
Her turns in darker fare — "The Invisible Circus" or "Any Given Sunday" — are more often than not overlooked.
Scorsese notes that Diaz was suggested by Joe Roth, former head of Disney. He says he saw "There's Something About Mary" and "Being John Malkovich" and "liked her in them" and, when auditions came around, asked her to read.
"There was a spark between her and Leo," he says. "She was great. I never saw any other of her movies, by the way. Just those two."
Diaz, in a one-on-one interview later in the day, is, if a little tired, still graced with the loopy charm that endears her to audiences. She breaks our conversation to sing, "Hey, you, get off of my ledge" to a pigeon usurping another's refuge on the room's window sill and she is disarmingly frank about her image and career.
She laughingly says it is "really, really easy" to be the only woman on a set because "you get the compliments flying your way from the crew, who are always happy to see you."
Unlike several actresses in her league, Diaz says, she has no problem going to auditions. "I will read for any role if it's something I want to do and with people I want to work with. Just because you've reached a certain place where people are giving you scripts doesn't mean they're the sort of things you'd want to do," she says.
"After 'The Mask' I got offered roles that were just ridiculous." She elaborates with a laugh, "You know, the Czechoslovakian doctor, scientist and daughter of a genius nuclear physicist who is about to blow up something. Of course, she had a plunging neckline, a clipboard and glasses. So hideous, you know?"
"Everybody had heard about 'Gangs' . . . and I just basically stood in line and hoped I could get in there and have an opportunity. Initially, I didn't know — or care — what the story was. I didn't care how big the part was. If Martin Scorsese lets me come in and read for him and he likes me, I'll do it."
Diaz recalls that her character's presence grew during filming in Rome. "I didn't know Jenny at all or what part she played in the script but as we went along, they sort of wrote her and she developed and I understood her strength, how strong she was and how she endured.
"If you dropped her into this time, I think she would be much the same type of woman as I am. I relate to her and understand her and am thankful there were women like her.
"It was women like Jenny who've given women like us the freedom to be who we are. She wasn't a feminist but she was an energy that was alive and independent. She did what she wanted to do because it was her right."
As a result, says Diaz, "She had scars, she had bruises, but she was numb to those. The thing that really hurt her was the tenderness."
Diaz — who began as a model and admits to having "no formal training as an actor" — works in a business full of pain and knocks. She tells me each film becomes a kind of classroom. Her part in "Gangs" was filmed a year and a half ago and the actress says she would "change all of it — that's the problem with making movies. I'd love to have the opportunity to do a movie and three years later do it again."
Does she hope that a Scorsese picture will lend gravity and weight to how she is perceived and bolster the possibility of more dramatic future roles?
"If I went around worrying about how everyone perceived me, I'd be exhausted. It's none of my business. It's like asking someone, 'What are you thinking?' There are a lot of actors out there who have been labeled and have broken out of that label. I think it just makes you work harder.
"When I say I'm having fun, it's because it's true. I love what I do and I feel fortunate and very grateful that so far in my lifetime I've spent this much time doing what I love to do. A lot of people spend their lives doing something they hate or because they have to. In this life, I just want to have a good time. Otherwise, what's the point?
"This," she says with a passion that equals the intensity of a Day-Lewis, Scorsese or DiCaprio, "is not a dress rehearsal."