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Park City • When Brit Marling moved to Los Angeles to be an actor, she quickly determined one thing: "This is what I want to do."
After that, "it just became a question of 'How do you do this?' How do you navigate the space of being a young, 20-something ingenue type out in L.A. and not totally lose your soul," Marling said over breakfast on a recent morning in Park City.
The blond, blue-eyed actor found her path by taking control of her destiny and writing her own characters. Two of those characters are featured in two movies currently playing at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
In "Another Earth" (in the U.S. Dramatic competition), Marling plays Rhoda, a science whiz kid who serves four years in prison for a fatal DUI-caused car crash and then seeks out her victim's husband (William Mapother) — just as the discovery of a planet identical to Earth opens up the possibility of a mirror life for everyone on the planet.
In "Sound of My Voice" (playing in the microbudget Next program), Marling plays Maggie, a cult leader who lectures her followers in the basement of a suburban home — and tells them she's from the future.
The reality of sci-fi • Both films mirror Marling's bearing: intelligent, philosophical and a just a bit ethereal. And both contain elements of science fiction, which she believes makes a good backdrop for human drama.
"Science fiction allows you to take a human drama, or a set of characters, and see them in a different light," Marling said.
Director Mike Cahill, speaking at the Q-and-A session after the first screening of "Another Earth," agreed: "I love the idea of space and science being used as a metaphor."
Marling's acting interest started in high school in Winter Park, Fla., where she studied theater. She stopped pursuing it because "I felt like, 'What did I have to offer to Chekhov?' I felt insubstantial as a person, not developed, and naive and not exposed to the world," she said. "I felt that if I stayed in the bubble of theater, I wouldn't necessarily get that life experience."
So Marling enrolled at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., studying economics and studio art. "I would sort of get my art fix by making short films and acting in my friends' short films," she said.
In the summer between her junior and senior years, Marling got an internship with the financial firm Goldman Sachs. One weekend that summer, two of her friends from Georgetown, Cahill and Zal Batmanglij, came to New York City to take part in a 48-hour film festival — a contest where film crews are given two days to write, direct and edit a short film. They dragged Marling into their crew, and the experience made her reconsider a life in banking.
The passion of work • "I could be a workaholic and be doing something I was really passionate about, or I could be a workaholic [in banking] and not know what kind of person I would have been," Marling said. "I was also kind of appalled. I was finding out that a lot of things I learned in school about economics were a bit of an indoctrination."
So she dropped out of Georgetown and traveled to Cuba with Cahill to make a documentary, "Boxers and Ballerinas," about young Cubans deciding to turn their talents into a better life by defecting to the United States.
"I knew from that, that I wanted to try to get good at storytelling," Marling said.
Marling finished her degree at Georgetown "to do right by my parents," she said. Then she moved to Los Angeles and took her first acting gig in Batmanglij's American Film Institute thesis film, "The Recordist," and decided this was the career for her.
That said, Marling found out that "if acting is going to be what I feel it can be to me, which is a really beautiful process of tearing down all the analytical stuff and learning to live from your imagination and your innocence and your vulnerability, then I'd better learn how to write," she said. She went to the public library and read up on screenwriting.
Marling started collaborating with Cahill on "Another Earth," shooting scenes on the fly and developing a 45-page treatment of the story. That treatment and footage made their way to producers and to actor William Mapother ("In the Bedroom"), who took the role of the survivor of the crash Marling's character caused.
Acting as time travel • It would be an understatement to call the budget bare bones. "There was no makeup artist," Marling said. "I did William's makeup. If I was starting to look shabby, William would say, 'You might want to powder that.' It had such a handmade quality to it."
After finishing "Another Earth," Marling started working with Batmanglij on a project meant to be seen in chapters on the Internet. After some reworking, that idea became "Sound of My Voice."
Again, the budget was minuscule. To shoot a scene in which a character is flying into Los Angeles, they just bought two plane tickets — one for the actress, the other for a cameraman — and shot footage onboard with an unobtrusive video camera.
The movie's examination of cults didn't take too much research, Batmanglij told the audience at the first screening of "Sound of My Voice." "We live in Los Angeles, so it's par for the course," he said.
So, how does Marling define her dual job titles? Is she a writer who acts? Or an actor who writes?
"I consider myself an actor who taught herself to write in order to do the kind of acting she wanted to do," she said.
Marling relishes the challenge of taking on the guise of another person. "There are some moments when it happens, when it's really working, when you're really in it, it feels like time travel," she said. "It feels like the past and the future collide, and the present moment becomes infinite. It's the most amazing kind of high."
'Another Earth' screenings
Tonight, 9:30 • Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Salt Lazke City
Saturday, Jan. 29, 8:30 a.m. • Holiday Village Cinema III, Park City
'Sound of My Voice' screenings
Today, 11:30 a.m. • Holiday Village Cinema III, Park City
Saturday, Jan. 29, 11:30 a.m. • Library Center Theatre, Park City —
Sundance films feature strong women's roles
Breakout female performances abound at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Here are a few from U.S. Dramatic competition films:
Adepero Oduye, "Pariah" • The Brooklyn actress captures the confusion and determination of a 17-year-old lesbian figuring out her life in director Dee Rees' drama.
Corina Calderon, "Benavides Born" • She's small in size — 5 foot 2, 110 pounds, she said at a Q-and-A — but gives her character plenty of heart in this tale of a high-school girl seeking escape from her small Texas town.
Ellen Barkin, "Another Happy Day" • Barkin's been around, but we see a new side to her as a neurotic mother trying to cope with her dysfunctional family during her son's wedding.
Vera Farmiga, "Higher Ground" • We knew Farmiga, a Sundance veteran, could bring it as an actor (for example, there's her Oscar nomination for "Up in the Air"), but here she shows great promise as a director, too.
Harmony Santana, "Gun Hill Road" • This transgender actor shines in the story of a Brooklyn teen who's Michael to her disbelieving father (Esai Morales) but Vanessa to the outer world.