A hit at the last Toronto International Film Festival, the Rian Johnson-directed The Brothers Bloom features Academy Award-winner Rachel Weisz as the lovely and eccentric heiress Penelope, a lonely woman who becomes the focal point of the so-called final con job the Bloom brothers (Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo) plan to pull off.

After the jump, Earl Dittman chats with Weisz about her her chainsaw juggling skills, and the relative merits of winning an Oscar vs. having a child.

Experts at swindling millionaires of the feminine persuasion, the Bloom brothers utilize intricate literature-inspired schemes to manipulate their marks’ sexual desires and emotional longings. With Penelope, however, the Blooms may have met their match. While the offbeat and affluent juggling beauty appears to be falling for their scam, which involves a wildly adventurous jaunt from suburban New Jersey through Russia, Poland and Greece, Penelope may be well-aware of the Brothers’ true motives.

What attracted you to a project like The Brothers Bloom?

“The writing and the character. I guess it was the character of Penelope, mainly. I mean, I love, I love, I loved the writing as a whole. I thought it was very beautiful, unusual, heightened, beautiful dialogue, but Penelope was a character that I just couldn’t pass up. I called [director] Rian [Johnson] and I told him I really, really, really wanted to play her.”

Had you seen Rian’s film Brick?

“I don’t remember if I’d already seen it. Yeah. I saw Brick. Yeah.”

So you knew what his style was like, then?

“Yeah. Although this is very different, and I asked him, ‘What do you want the acting to be like?’ because [Brick] was obviously noir, where people behave in a very unrealistic way. I would say noir acting is very sort of people being cool.”

Cool and maybe stylized?

“Yes, stylized. The writing of Brothers Bloom is very stylized, so my main question to him was, ‘Do you want the acting to be like it was in Brick?’ I must have already seen Brick. And he said ‘No, I want it to be completely naturalistic and real.’ And I was like, ‘I’m on.’”

So can you actually juggle chainsaws like Penelope?

“That’d be something I still haven’t mastered.”

Do you get a lot of comedy scripts even though you’re not really known for comedy?

“Surprisingly, I still do.”

What’s the secret for a dramatic actor to switch to doing something where you’re getting laughs and being naturalistic?

“Realistic? Well the aim, I find drama or comedy for me is to be naturalistic. In a funny way, there really isn’t any difference, because Penelope doesn’t think she’s being funny. I was just being completely seriously Penelope. It’s just the situation she’s in and what she happens to be saying and who she is, is kind a little off the ball I suppose. Comedy is just about commitment. There we go. That’s my master class. I’m finished.” [Laughs]

Everyone in The Brothers Bloom seem as if they are named after the characters in the story of Ulysses. Was that intended?

“You know what, I don’t know. Yeah. I mean Rian is really literary and very, very smart. Rian, the writer. And obviously you are, too. And I don’t know. No, no, no. You know what, I never asked him that question. Those kinds of things that I can probably, I will muse about now. When you’re going to play a character, that stuff doesn’t help you, do you know what I mean? But it’s really interesting. I’m sure, do you know something? I’ve never read Ulysses?”

Who has?

“Some people have. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve never read it.”

Is your character, Penelope, simply naive? Does she know the first or second time she is getting conned?

“I guess she just must be naive.”

Does she possibly overlook the cons because maybe she’s just in love?

“She’s definitely in love and she thinks that even if there’s a con, she doesn’t care. I don’t think money matters to her. She’s grown up with ten gazillion dollars. It’s meaningless to her. So I think the thought that there might even be a one percent, point-five percent chance that the ransom note is true, she better send the money. She doesn’t care. My other thought is about her in general. Even when she knows they’re con men, I think she doesn’t really care because this is more fun than she’s ever had in her life. Like, what a great thing to be caught up in this story, because it’s so much better than juggling at home.”

So, you think she was a willing participant?

“Yeah, I think so. I agree. Totally.”

Is Penelope kind of a fairy tale figure? Is she the poor little rich girl who’s been raised isolated, and instead of being damaged, she’s proficient in so many things. Were you worried about making her real because it is an archetype?

“Sure. Definitely. That was definitely the challenge. You just summed it up. That was definitely the challenge — to make someone of flesh and blood out of someone who is that type of person. I’ve met that type of person. She’s an unusual cocktail.” [Laughs]

What was it like working with Rian Johnson on The Brothers Bloom? How did his style differ from other directors?

“It differed totally from anyone. Rian is completely unique. He’s extremely intelligent and is equally as laid back as he is intelligent and for him the whole process is about having a wonderful time.”

Did you find Rian very hands-off in terms of your acting style?

“He gives you a lot of freedom, but he also gives you direction, so it’s kind of the best of both worlds. He gives you a vast playing field on which to roam and then if you go down a certain road, he’ll kind of gently like tack you back into a zone that he feels might be more productive. So it’s a really beautiful dialogue. Yeah. He’s really wonderful to work with. He said right at the beginning, ‘One of the most important things is that we have a really lovely time making this movie.’ So he’s not like some directors who get very tense about the results, understandably, but he just took each moment day by day and we had a lot of fun. He’s a very cool guy.”

Was having a baby just as cool as winning an Oscar?

“It’s a hundred times better. Actually, my son won an Oscar, too, because he was in utero. He was there with me the whole time.”

How many months pregnant were you when you won the Academy Award?

“Seven.”

How did you feel when they did a third installment of The Mummy last summer, without you?

“I was brokenhearted. I felt like Brendan’s [Fraser] character had left me for another dame. Can you believe it?” [Laughs]

Why didn’t you do The Mummy: The Curse Of The Dragon King after all? Was it because of the baby?

“You know what happened? This. I never even read the script because I was filming Brothers Bloom in Eastern Europe, and I’d been away for three-and-a-half-months. I would have to film The Mummy straight afterwards and they said it was five months in China. And that was just not possible. I would love to go to China, and I would have liked to have done the job, but it would have been with a newborn, a ten-month-old baby, and it just wasn’t feasible.”

Where do you keep your Oscar?

“It’s in my bathroom.”

Everybody seems to keep their Oscar in their bathroom. That just doesn’t seem like a dignified place to me.

“It’s not a loo. It’s not a W.C. or whatever you call it in North America. It’s one of the biggest rooms in my house, and I like it very much. It’s also a room that no one goes to, a part from my family, so it’s kind of private.”

Does everyone want to see it when they come over?

“No, actually they don’t. I don’t know why? Should they?”

What did winning the Oscar for The Constant Gardener mean to you?

“You know, it’s a massive honour that you know you never really think is the kind of thing that will really happen to you. It’s a really huge honour.”

Your Brothers Bloom co-star, Mark Ruffalo, said he met with a con man for his role.

“Oh, that was cool.”

Did you meet up with any victim of a con job while you were doing research for The Brothers Bloom?

“Well, with this film there would have been no one to meet. I just had to play an odd, fun-loving and seemingly naive woman with a lot of money. That’s pretty much me, expect I don’t have a lot of money.”  [Laughs]