"We knew Jake and I would sit by the fire but we didn't know what would come next. Kate can be a calculating strategist who moves between romantic prospects like a woman queue-hopping at the supermarket, but Wilde throws everything into those scenes in which she is able to cut loose from any internal panic: a food fight, a rambunctious blackjack lesson, an emotionally tense campfire scene on the beach. It feels like the first time I've been able to loosen up and let it flow." This she does with a vengeance. Ninety per cent of what you do may be worthless but you have to be willing to blurt it out. Then you start again, but you reach the point sooner. You improvise to find out what the scene is about. "There was no script," she says excitedly. Swanberg's insistence on top-to-toe improvisation seems to have unlocked a daring part of her talent that hasn't been accessed by other directors. Wilde in Rush with Chris Hemsworth, 2013. Single guys of a certain age who are looking for someone fun say: 'Why can't I find a girl like that? She's spontaneous!' I'm, like: 'Are you kidding? She's an emotional terrorist!'" "Guys who've been hurt by girls like her hate her. "You go from liking her to hating her to hopefully liking her again," she says. She excels especially at those moments when Kate believes she is being playful or cheerily evasive when in fact she is merely bruising everyone's feelings. Kate is not always a likable character, but she is a plausible one, and Wilde's performance is purged strikingly of any vanity. Wilde plays Kate, caught between a drab relationship and the promise of something zestier with her close friend Luke (Jake Johnson). It is early October and the announcement that she is expecting a baby with her fiance, the comic actor Jason Sudeikis, has not yet been made.ĭrinking Buddies is an improvised comic drama from Joe Swanberg, a figurehead of the lo-fi indie "mumblecore" movement. In between chewing the fat with the stylist from the photo shoot, she looks up at me with a breezy "Hey!" She is 29, fresh-faced and mildly feline, her hair pulled tightly back. What I found was very different: Wilde kicking back in the attire of an off-duty dancer – white T-shirt, black leggings, sunglasses nudged to the top of her head. Turning up 20 minutes late due to traffic, I had anticipated frostiness. We are sitting knee-to-knee on a sofa in the penthouse bar of a Los Angeles members' club. Wilde with Jake Johnson in Drinking Buddies. "It's the only film of mine that I'd tell people: 'Please, please see it!' I think it's a really honest piece of work." She reflects on this, then says with a loud and mordant laugh: "It only took me 12 years!" "I feel it's the first time I've hit a real nerve," she confesses. But it's her current film, Drinking Buddies, that has done the trick for her. She assumed a credible English accent for the recent Formula One movie Rush, and will soon be seen in Spike Jonze's Her, which stars Joaquin Phoenix as a man who falls in love with a Siri-style app. Only now does she seem to have reached her destination. But admirers have been squinting at some of her career choices like expectant relatives scrutinising the flight arrivals board for news of their loved ones. She had a youthful spell on the teen TV drama The OC, and was sparky during her five years as the enigmatic Thirteen in the medical drama House. She has acquitted herself well in delicate indies ( Conversations with Other Women), intense, macho-method drama ( Alpha Dog) and blockbusters festooned with CGI ( Cowboys and Aliens, Tron: Legacy). It's not that she has wanted for work or variety. The question being: when is she finally going to get there? Each year has brought with it another handful of movies that might give her the success and recognition she deserves – or might not. It is no slight on this poised, intuitive performer to say that she has been on her way for most of her career. If travelling really does have the edge over arriving, Olivia Wilde must be enjoying the time of her life.
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