Writing in The Guardian today, Hadley Freeman has a great interview with “Mad Men” actress Christina Hendricks, who’s starring in this
Christina Hendricks at the premiere of "I Don't Know How She Does It."
month’s “I Don’t Know How She Does It” with Sarah Jessica Parker and the upcoming “Drive” with Ryan Gosling.
Freeman meets up with Hendricks in Los Angeles, finding her a throwback to classic Hollywood glamour.
As always, here’s the nut graf:
“Even without the 60s pencil skirts and beehive do that her character, Joan Holloway, currently models in Mad Men, Hendricks, 36, looks like something from a different age who has somehow landed in the modern day. This is not, I should add, a veiled reference to her frankly over-discussed figure. Since Mad Men began in 2007, some critics have been so busy noting how we live in an era so different from the sexist workplace of Sterling Cooper – in which women’s bodies are lustily discussed in front of them – that they have apparently not noticed they often do the same thing with actors, especially Hendricks. It’s hard to think of another female star whose body has come under so much scrutiny of late. While most of the attention has been positive, there is a thin line between celebrating someone’s appearance and reducing that person to nothing more than her physique. And this would be unfair to Hendricks because her performance as Joan is very subtle, lifting the character beyond camp and vamp.
And anyway, Hendricks’ retro quality is not simply due to her womanly shape. It’s also down to her ramrod deportment – probably a hangover from her teenage years spent doing ballet – and her voice, which is more Marilyn Monroe-ishly girlish than it is as Joan, rising to high-pitched babyish when she talks about Arend (“I am kinda crazy about him,” she concedes, when she catches herself smiling when his name flashes up on her phone). Her walk is pure Joan sashay.
“‘Yeah, my husband says, ‘What Joan walk? You’ve always walked that way!” She laughs.”
Read the full story here. And remember to click through to the slideshow as well.
