| Hope
Davis Q & A
Hope
Davis knew. The New Jersey-born actress, acclaimed
for turns in the independent films Next Stop
Wonderland and The Daytrippers,
started lobbying writer/director Alexander Payne
for a role in About Schmidt before she'd
seen a single page of the screenplay. Davis figured
whatever Payne "was doing was going to be
something really, really good." She read
twice for the chance to play Jeannie Schmidt,
the mullet-besotted fiancée of mullet-wearing
waterbed salesman Randall Hertzel (Dermot Mulroney).
Added bonus: Jeannie is the on-screen daughter
of Jack Nicholson (as title character Warren Schmidt).
The chance to play opposite a screen legend? Hope
Davis knew she wanted that, too.
On "playing" with Jack Nicholson:
The first day we shot together we did the scene
[and] he's in his bathrobe and pajamas, and I'm
in my pajamas and all his little hair was standing
up. He didn't look very scary. He looked really
sweet. And he called me, "Hopie," which
is something my own father called me, that only
my family calls me...And  then
we started the scene, and he was so great in it.
It was so much fun
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