Post by petrolino on Apr 21, 2018 0:07:38 GMT
Mena Alexandra Suvari was born on February 13th, 1979 in Newport, Rhode Island, where legendary rock band Throwing Muses were formed. She's an actress, activist, model and fashion designer. She's also a loyal friend of the horror filmmaking community, admired by the late Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper, and a favourite of Stuart Gordon who opened up about Suvari's obsession with reading true crime books (something she shares with writer and horror icon Linnea Quigley). Gordon made clear before returning to theatre that he was in the planning stages for a third film project involving Mena (drat!) ...
Suvari has worked with some of cinema's most confrontational artists from the beginning of her acting career, often appearing in controversial projects. In her first year in film, she took a role in 'Snide And Prejudice' (1997), Philippe Mora's film about mental illness and the Third Reich, and shortly afterwards signed on to work with American cinema's "enfant terrible" Gregg Araki. Her career path has never wavered since then as she's remained resolute in her approach to regarding film as being a socially conscious entity. Suvari is also one of the faces of the smash hit 'American Pie' franchise and the patriot that starred in 'American Beauty' (1999) and 'American Virgin' (2000).
"I’m not like Lady Gaga, you know? (laughing). I can’t even imagine ever really feeling like I’m under a microscope, because I certainly don’t. I mean, I understand that’s an aspect of the business that I’m in, but I’ve always really been drawn to the creative aspect and the work aspect of what I do. That’s what I enjoy. I never really, I guess, was inspired to attain certain things for the sake of fame or success. That was something I never could understand even when I started to become recognized, which is probably right after I worked on “American Pie” and that came out. So that was kind of a little strange when you have to deal with that; feeling like I wasn’t different in any sense or special in any way from anyone else and why someone would want a photo with me or an autograph. It was kind of weird to wrap my head around.
In my early twenties, there was a moment where I was a little weirded out by it all and kind of wanted to focus on what I was doing and I had to understand that, okay, there’s the Mena who’s still figuring out, you know, that’s the person I have to live with every day and who just continues to mystify me (breaks out a laugh) and whatnot… and then there’s the persona of who you know I am according to other people and that aspect of my work, so I know that’s just part of what I do. And I think that helps me deal with it in a sense that you know everyone is different. I can’t even imagine being in a situation that some people can be in, and then paparazzi can be very invasive. There’s no real dividing line. The paparazzi has gotten so much worse over the past few years and I feel like I’ve been in this long enough to say that it’s gotten a little bit out of control.
But I think, for the most part, I just feel overall really grateful people have always been really nice. I’ve always felt like they could be throwing tomatoes at me and they’re not. So I feel really grateful. So I just like to focus on my work and at this point in my life, I feel like I’m really enjoying that. I’ve finally gotten into working more in developing content that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. It creates more of an empowerment in a sense. I feel stronger as a woman to be able to pursue the things that I want and I know that a paparazzi photo doesn’t define me."
- Mena Suvari, Trend Privé
Mena Suvari
![](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c2/05/48/c20548e751af3e6616abfa18760c8a50.jpg)
'Paparazzi' - Lady Gaga
Mena Suvari is keen to work more in television now she's older, though she believes she'll always dedicate time to fashion shows as designing is a passion. She's worked on 'Six Feet Under', 'Chicago Fire', and the supernatural southern gothic 'South Of Hell' which I'm keen to get hold of. Next up? It can only be 'American Woman' (2018)!
"I remember I was reading this script up the street from my agent at my agency - "Stuck". I felt like my jaw literally hit the floor so many times. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that somebody would be in a situation like this and it just seemed to get worse and worse and worse. I guess that really appealed to me. It was very interesting. And I ran into his office afterwards saying that I had to do this. I really, really wanted to do it. I had worked with Stuart Gordon before on a film called “Edmond” so I was hoping that relationship would help me sneak my way in and that he would be able to see me in doing something like this. At the time I didn’t know that it was based on a true story. I didn’t know that this had happened at all. I just couldn’t believe what I was reading. I thought that it was a really ‘out there’ story. I was reading a book at the time called “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” by Mary Roach. Have you read this? I think it’s an awesome book. Not that many people know about it, but it’s fascinating to me. In the book she mentions this incident and then it was even more of a shock to me that this had happened. I guess I was even more on board. I had to be a part of it."
- Mena Suvari, Collider
"Yet Stuart Gordon sees the young woman, Brandi, played with wide-eyed panic by Mena Suvari, as another victim in this story. “She has this dead-end job,” says the director, “and then a promotion gets dangled in front of her, and she has a future all of a sudden. And she won’t let that be taken away from her.”
As inexplicable as her actions may be, she also comes off as willfully irresponsible, stressing about the problem of having a dying man on her hands without a bit of compassion. Even one of Gordon’s casting directors thought the character was despicable. “You could say the same thing about Lady MacBeth,” says Gordon. Suvari’s character in Stuck “is a great role, and she really appreciated it. Mena and I are alike in that we both like dark subjects. I learned that we are kindred spirits when we worked on Edmond. She really liked the fact that this character [in Stuck] was so shocking. This is what drew her to the project.” In Edmond, Suvari’s innocent demeanor added depth to her disturbing portrayal of a prostitute, and Gordon knew she could bring the unsympathetic character in Stuck to life. “Mena actually contacted me [about being in the film]. She had received the script and then came to me and said, ‘I definitely want to do this.’ I knew how great she was [from doing Edmond], so I knew she would make the character real.”
Gordon may have been destined to work with her, since she appeared in a scene in the 1999 Oscar Winner American Beauty that homages Re-Animator, something of a film geek’s treat. “That lovemaking scene [in Beauty] is shot exactly like the [“giving head”] scene in Re-Animator. Jeffrey Combs pointed out to me that they matched shot for shot. [Kevin Spacey’s] head was in the bottom corner of the screen moving up her body.” And the allusion is no mistake, since in another part of the film, Spacey’s character refers to that “movie, with the body walking around holding its own head. And then the head went down on that babe.”
“It would have been easy to make Mena’s character into a monster,” Gordon says. “But that’s not what we wanted, and [Suvari] didn’t take that route. [Brandi] is just an ordinary girl who gets herself into a bad situation and makes some really bad decisions.”While Suvari acts an outrageous role with conviction, Gordon made another find by casting Stephen Rea as Tom, her antagonist in agony. Stuck begins with his firing and eviction, and Rea helps create a bleak tone of bureaucratic oppression. The actor’s downbeat walk among the streets that results in his character’s wounding accident-cum-kidnapping is a haunting one."
- Matt Sorrento, Bright Lights Film Journal
Mena Pie
![](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/dd/38/42/dd384255fc007922942d2e92f75b52e0.jpg)
Mena Suvari & Shiri Appleby
![](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f1/84/ec/f184ec3ee551cc67ffb70baa3b8b5b5a.jpg)
- Mena Suvari, Collider
"Yet Stuart Gordon sees the young woman, Brandi, played with wide-eyed panic by Mena Suvari, as another victim in this story. “She has this dead-end job,” says the director, “and then a promotion gets dangled in front of her, and she has a future all of a sudden. And she won’t let that be taken away from her.”
As inexplicable as her actions may be, she also comes off as willfully irresponsible, stressing about the problem of having a dying man on her hands without a bit of compassion. Even one of Gordon’s casting directors thought the character was despicable. “You could say the same thing about Lady MacBeth,” says Gordon. Suvari’s character in Stuck “is a great role, and she really appreciated it. Mena and I are alike in that we both like dark subjects. I learned that we are kindred spirits when we worked on Edmond. She really liked the fact that this character [in Stuck] was so shocking. This is what drew her to the project.” In Edmond, Suvari’s innocent demeanor added depth to her disturbing portrayal of a prostitute, and Gordon knew she could bring the unsympathetic character in Stuck to life. “Mena actually contacted me [about being in the film]. She had received the script and then came to me and said, ‘I definitely want to do this.’ I knew how great she was [from doing Edmond], so I knew she would make the character real.”
Gordon may have been destined to work with her, since she appeared in a scene in the 1999 Oscar Winner American Beauty that homages Re-Animator, something of a film geek’s treat. “That lovemaking scene [in Beauty] is shot exactly like the [“giving head”] scene in Re-Animator. Jeffrey Combs pointed out to me that they matched shot for shot. [Kevin Spacey’s] head was in the bottom corner of the screen moving up her body.” And the allusion is no mistake, since in another part of the film, Spacey’s character refers to that “movie, with the body walking around holding its own head. And then the head went down on that babe.”
“It would have been easy to make Mena’s character into a monster,” Gordon says. “But that’s not what we wanted, and [Suvari] didn’t take that route. [Brandi] is just an ordinary girl who gets herself into a bad situation and makes some really bad decisions.”While Suvari acts an outrageous role with conviction, Gordon made another find by casting Stephen Rea as Tom, her antagonist in agony. Stuck begins with his firing and eviction, and Rea helps create a bleak tone of bureaucratic oppression. The actor’s downbeat walk among the streets that results in his character’s wounding accident-cum-kidnapping is a haunting one."
- Matt Sorrento, Bright Lights Film Journal
Mena Pie
![](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/dd/38/42/dd384255fc007922942d2e92f75b52e0.jpg)
Mena Suvari & Shiri Appleby
![](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f1/84/ec/f184ec3ee551cc67ffb70baa3b8b5b5a.jpg)
Suvari has worked with some of cinema's most confrontational artists from the beginning of her acting career, often appearing in controversial projects. In her first year in film, she took a role in 'Snide And Prejudice' (1997), Philippe Mora's film about mental illness and the Third Reich, and shortly afterwards signed on to work with American cinema's "enfant terrible" Gregg Araki. Her career path has never wavered since then as she's remained resolute in her approach to regarding film as being a socially conscious entity. Suvari is also one of the faces of the smash hit 'American Pie' franchise and the patriot that starred in 'American Beauty' (1999) and 'American Virgin' (2000).
"I’m not like Lady Gaga, you know? (laughing). I can’t even imagine ever really feeling like I’m under a microscope, because I certainly don’t. I mean, I understand that’s an aspect of the business that I’m in, but I’ve always really been drawn to the creative aspect and the work aspect of what I do. That’s what I enjoy. I never really, I guess, was inspired to attain certain things for the sake of fame or success. That was something I never could understand even when I started to become recognized, which is probably right after I worked on “American Pie” and that came out. So that was kind of a little strange when you have to deal with that; feeling like I wasn’t different in any sense or special in any way from anyone else and why someone would want a photo with me or an autograph. It was kind of weird to wrap my head around.
In my early twenties, there was a moment where I was a little weirded out by it all and kind of wanted to focus on what I was doing and I had to understand that, okay, there’s the Mena who’s still figuring out, you know, that’s the person I have to live with every day and who just continues to mystify me (breaks out a laugh) and whatnot… and then there’s the persona of who you know I am according to other people and that aspect of my work, so I know that’s just part of what I do. And I think that helps me deal with it in a sense that you know everyone is different. I can’t even imagine being in a situation that some people can be in, and then paparazzi can be very invasive. There’s no real dividing line. The paparazzi has gotten so much worse over the past few years and I feel like I’ve been in this long enough to say that it’s gotten a little bit out of control.
But I think, for the most part, I just feel overall really grateful people have always been really nice. I’ve always felt like they could be throwing tomatoes at me and they’re not. So I feel really grateful. So I just like to focus on my work and at this point in my life, I feel like I’m really enjoying that. I’ve finally gotten into working more in developing content that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. It creates more of an empowerment in a sense. I feel stronger as a woman to be able to pursue the things that I want and I know that a paparazzi photo doesn’t define me."
- Mena Suvari, Trend Privé
Mena Suvari
![](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c2/05/48/c20548e751af3e6616abfa18760c8a50.jpg)
'Paparazzi' - Lady Gaga
Mena Suvari is keen to work more in television now she's older, though she believes she'll always dedicate time to fashion shows as designing is a passion. She's worked on 'Six Feet Under', 'Chicago Fire', and the supernatural southern gothic 'South Of Hell' which I'm keen to get hold of. Next up? It can only be 'American Woman' (2018)!
"I really want to study criminal psychology. I've always been interested in science but I've recently decided that what interests me is the why and how more than the what. I read a great book called Base Instincts - What Makes Killers Kill by Dr Jonathan Pincus and it was fascinating. And sexual sadism - that interests me too. So many of the cases, all they tell you about is the crime. No one talks about their upbringing. You look at their childhoods and the things that happened to them are unbelievable. It makes sense that they act out later on in their lives and do these things. Honey, there's a lot of things you read about me that are not true. I don't know why it's like that."
- Mena Suvari, The Independent
Mena Suvari
![](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c6/65/a8/c665a86c21a2701fa4c5d55b2dfaecf1.jpg)
'Girls In Their Summer Clothes' - Bruce Springsteen
- Mena Suvari, The Independent
Mena Suvari
![](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c6/65/a8/c665a86c21a2701fa4c5d55b2dfaecf1.jpg)
'Girls In Their Summer Clothes' - Bruce Springsteen
Filmography
1997 Kiss The Girls
1997 Snide And Prejudice
1997 Nowhere
1998 Slums Of Beverly Hills
1999 American Pie
1999 The Rage: Carrie 2
1999 Atomic Train
1999 American Beauty
2000 Loser
2000 American Virgin
2001 The Musketeer
2001 American Pie 2
2001 Sugar & Spice
2002 Sonny
2002 Spun
2004 Trauma
2005 Standing Still
2005 Edmond
2005 Rumor Has It
2005 Domino
2005 Beauty Shop
2006 Factory Girl
2006 Caffeine
2006 The Dog Problem
2006 Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (voice)
2007 Brooklyn Rules
2007 Stuck
2008 Day Of The Dead
2008 The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh
2008 The Garden Of Eden
2010 You May Not Kiss The Bride
2010 No Surrender
2011 Restitution
2012 American Reunion
2012 The Knot
2014 Don't Blink
2014 The Opposite Sex
2015 Badge Of Honor
2016 I'll Be Home For Christmas
2017 Becks
"I had a meeting once with a director, and in the middle of it, he interrupted me and said, ‘You know, you’re actually kind of smart.’ And I remember thinking, is that a compliment?”
- Mena Suvari speaking with Jane Borden, Vanity Fair
'Summer Of 69' - Bryan Adams
1997 Kiss The Girls
1997 Snide And Prejudice
1997 Nowhere
1998 Slums Of Beverly Hills
1999 American Pie
1999 The Rage: Carrie 2
1999 Atomic Train
1999 American Beauty
2000 Loser
2000 American Virgin
2001 The Musketeer
2001 American Pie 2
2001 Sugar & Spice
2002 Sonny
2002 Spun
2004 Trauma
2005 Standing Still
2005 Edmond
2005 Rumor Has It
2005 Domino
2005 Beauty Shop
2006 Factory Girl
2006 Caffeine
2006 The Dog Problem
2006 Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (voice)
2007 Brooklyn Rules
2007 Stuck
2008 Day Of The Dead
2008 The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh
2008 The Garden Of Eden
2010 You May Not Kiss The Bride
2010 No Surrender
2011 Restitution
2012 American Reunion
2012 The Knot
2014 Don't Blink
2014 The Opposite Sex
2015 Badge Of Honor
2016 I'll Be Home For Christmas
2017 Becks
"I had a meeting once with a director, and in the middle of it, he interrupted me and said, ‘You know, you’re actually kind of smart.’ And I remember thinking, is that a compliment?”
- Mena Suvari speaking with Jane Borden, Vanity Fair
'Summer Of 69' - Bryan Adams