Vogue Values 2021: Frances McDormand
Vogue Magazine has selected 4 cover stars for their “Vogue Values 2021” January edition of the magazine based on the 4 stars’ individuality, creativity, inclusivity, independence of spirit, and leadership. The stars that Vogue chose for this series suggest some “thrilling changes” that they expect to be brought in as we zoom into the coming new year. They start with interviewing Frances Louise McDormand, a 63 year old American actress known to portray any and every female character beautifully and in a “chameleonic” way while remaining purely herself in personality, characteristics and features. Her interview was written by a freelance Vogue contributor Abby Aguirre from LA.
Frances McDormand was born to a single mother who originally named her Cynthia Ann Smith. She was adopted by Vernon and Noreen McDormand at 1.5 years of age who then changed her name. McDormand is a Yale graduate from Gibson, Illinois who began her acting career at the age of 25 (1982) officially but started acting at her high school in Pennsylvania. This was followed by being the only theatre major in her scholarship-led undergrad career at Bethany College (1979) – she received the scholarship because of her adoptive father Vernon’s career as a minister for the Disciples of Christ, an organization that was affiliated with her college. BC Theatre was followed by her participating at the Yale School of Drama afterwards (1982). Her professional career kicked off with Derek Walcott’s “In a Fine Castle” (1982) and Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 1988 amongst numerous other acting gigs. She has won 64 awards and been honored with 4 other accolades including 2 Academy Awards, 2 Primetime Emmys, and 1 Tony Award, achieving her the rare “Triple Crown of Acting” while also being a multi-Oscar award winner.
Upon their first meeting in a non-disclosed location – an extremely rare occurrence since she doesn’t like interviews or press attention – Abby Aguirre describes Frances McDormand as a 63-year-old Annie Oakley who just stepped out of 19th century tintype photograph but with a cropped haircut and a backpack. Her facial features are completely natural due to her abandoned use of makeup, including at award shows, and lack of botox, all of which cause her to have a “deadpan” expression when in a state of rest while “elastic” when storytelling. The reason the interview was even possible is because of McDormand’s latest film “Nomadland”, directed and produced by Chinese-American director, screenwriter, producer, and editor Chloé Zhao.
“Nomadland” is based on journalist Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction explorative book of the same name from 2017 that follows “nomads” – older aged American workers – who travel the country in campers looking for employment: “They are driving away from the impossible choices that face what used to be the middle class.” When she was screenwriting the film, Zhao wrote most real-life nomads into the work while also creating a fictional character named Fern; the character, like Zhao’s most works, is a spin of real characteristics of Frances with partial fictionalisations. In fact, when talking to the actress, Aguirre says that she couldn’t differentiate between Fern and Fran(ces) because she had just watched “Nomadland” before the interview, Fern was still fresh in her memory, and the uncanny lack of differences.
The interview reminisces over McDormand’s past characters from the 80s, revelling over the impression each character left on viewers, the indelibility (permanence) of their uniqueness and strength of McDormand’s acting alongside the phenomenal writing of the characters. McDormand says that she brings margin characters to center stage, but Aguirre writes that this self-description sells the award-winning actress short: “If your reference point is the real world, McDormand isn’t bringing the margins to the center so much as she’s bringing more of the world to the screen.”
Aguirre then brings up the struggles of being cast in films that women face in the industry – it isn’t the acting that casters look out for, it is the body, which is an unfortunate but very real aspect for women in the acting industry. McDormand faces this struggle at more points in her life than other brilliant actresses and receives rejections at multiple occasions: “I wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t cute, I wasn’t beautiful, I didn’t have the body.” This caused her to receive supporting roles more than leads. At the time when she was getting told all this, she and film producer Joel Coen had been married for a while, and he helped her “depersonalize the rejection” and accept that supporting roles would be all that she could get. At one point, she was even offered a boob job to help her get “big-breasted woman” roles. Coen often attempted writing characters specifically for her but soon after, other actresses started getting female character roles in his films – something McDormand disliked at the time but according to Coen, she wouldn’t get the role every time. Later, with time, McDormand began getting unique roles that only she could bring to life.
In 1995, McDormand and Coen adopted Pedro from Paraguay when he was 6 months old. Two months before he was due for New York to them, Coen wrote a pregnant belly into one particular role for McDormand – Marge in “Fargo” (1996) – to foreshadow Pedro’s imminent arrival. He grew to develop an interest in sports, but since neither parents were sportive, McDormand would take Pedro shopping to Century 21, saying that would be their sport and their thing. As he got older, Frances realised she had to get back into film production and that’s when she decided she needed a protagonist role and more so than before. One week before it won the Pulitzer Prize, McDormand chose to portray the name lead in “Olive Kitteridge” (2014).
As she moved towards production, it became evident that her passion for housewifery – she considered and called it a profession – helped in her passion for production like selecting the right material aspects for films such as the perfect house or sink, and even choosing the appropriate nonmaterial aspects like the soundscape: the scrubbing heard in “Olive Kitteridge” or the jumpsuit-only closet for Mildred in “Three Billboards” (2017).
Towards the end of their interview, McDormand wonders out loud to Aguirre about the writer’s decision in choosing the actress for the magazine and upon hearing that people loved her movie, she says, “To still be culturally relevant as a 63-year-old female is so deeply, deeply gratifying. It’s something that I could have never expected, given what I was told. And I believe I had something to do with it. I’ve crafted some part of this moment in time. And I’m really fucking proud.”
You can read the full article here and let us know who else you would like to read about here.
Credit: Annie Leibovitz/Vogue Jan 2021
