We have updated our gallery with another portrait made during Kate’s current tour promoting Megan Leavey. This time is one she did for The Globe and Mail.
On the article that accompained the portraits, Kate and Gabriela Cowperthwaite talks about working with animals, specially comparing this current work with A Dog’s Purpose (and the behind the scenes video that caused comotion due the mistreat the german sheppard was receiving). For Kate and Cowperthwaite, the dogs’ welfare was “the most important thing at all times.
Mara credits Blackfish with turning her into an animal activist; that’s why she urged Megan Leavey’s producers to hire Cowperthwaite, though the director hadn’t made a fiction feature before. Mara’s gaze is level and her manner friendly, but there’s something flinty about her, something wary. She’s believable as someone who becomes a U.S. Marine “to get away from my life,” whose status as the sole woman in camp sets her apart even from her corps, and whose key relationship is with her dog.
“Megan starts off lost,” Mara says. “She doesn’t know what her purpose is in life. Everyone goes through that at some point – they need some guidance or passion. Through Rex, Megan finds her reason.”
There’s a strong outsider streak in Mara’s filmography. “I’m intrigued by that in a person,” she admits. “I like stories about people who don’t feel like they belong. I think all of us have a bit of that.”
Although she grew up in tony Bedford, N.Y., in a family that ran two football dynasties, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New York Giants, as a kid, Mara yearned for escape. “School to me was a problem,” she says. “The social aspect was really anxiety-ridden for me.” She graduated high school a year early and dived into work, landing roles on TV (Law & Order, Nip/Tuck) and film (127 Hours, The Martian). Now, she says, “I’m able to wait for things that move or inspire me.”
You can read the full interview directly on Globe website.
