The task of becoming a cult figure

OSCAR winner Melissa Leo acts in a horror film with a difference.

111019 arts red state

RED State begins simply enough, even predictably, as a trio of profane schoolkids reply to an online invitation for free sex. It escalates when the trio is lured into the captivity and deprivations of a fundamentalist religious group.

RED State is not the kind of film many would have expected from former slacker wunderkind Kevin Smith. Nor was Smith the director Melissa Leo expected on the film.

Red State is clearly the work of a director wanting to say something and move on from the piffling concerns of the slacker subjects in his previous films, including Clerks, Chasing Amy and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Leo recognises the film as a departure for Smith. "He made it very clear he wanted to do something very different," Leo says. "He made clear to me that if he had me in his cast, people would recognise he was doing something very different and somewhat serious."

The seriousness is his switch and bait with the narrative, turning what appears to be yet another Kevin Smith film into a violent, worrying rant about fundamentalism, government duplicity, homophobia and other libertarian concerns.

Leo, 51, who earlier this year won her first Academy Award (best supporting actress for The Fighter) 25 years after she won her first Daytime Emmy (for All My Children), says the compliment brought her into Smith's fold.

"Not that I've seen that many of his films," she says. "Not that I see that many films in general."

And not that she thought the film might shock people.

"I didn't want to do anything with it. It's not my movie," she says. "I just played a part in it. Kevin? I really knew nothing about him but he was interested in using me.

"I won't take responsibility for the filmmakers' films. I take responsibility for my part in it, for sure, and I thought it interesting but I don't go into judging my characters."

Leo plays one of the committed brethren of the notorious cultish Pastor Abin Cooper (played with convincing menace and conviction by Michael Parks).

Neither character earns sympathy; in fact, in the US, the crazed characterisations are likely to draw rabid responses from religious types.

Leo doesn't seem to care. She didn't perceive the script as inflammatory.

"I try not to judge," she notes before adding she also filmed "another story about Christians, a completely different tale", the religious sports drama Seven Days In Utopia last year.

"I'm not a filmmaker, I'm an actor and it is my great pleasure to help these filmmakers realise their films and find the truth in their characters; portraying them as they have informed me through their script and their direction," she says.

The director knew Red State would be contentious. He made the subversive little horror film on the cheap and bypassed -- or anticipated -- conventional distribution channels in the US in favour of screening it in old-fashioned road show.

Leo accepts the film might set some audiences off, although the expectation is that the kind of audience that would be offended by the film wouldn't walk in the door initially.

Besides, Leo says, setting people off is "in a lot of ways what I do".

"It always has that element to it because drama is for society to see themselves reflected in it and because society is made up of so many people and the differences of opinion and the rest of it, it will set people off," Leo says.

She hopes her work is broad enough to tell "all the stories, with all their truths and opinions and shades of light and dark".

She laughs, saying we could talk about her personal opinions on the state of the nation or the state of the world "[but] I don't know that anybody would care what I think about that stuff".

"It's just interesting for me to participate in it and see the human behaviour that is the response from the critics and the audience," Leo adds. There is a particular thrill, she recalls, sitting in the theatre when audiences cheer John Goodman's character's arrival "in the knight-in-shining armour role".

Leo is approaching 100 screen credits and is happily a "thespian" who loves her craft and those around her. She laboured in television for many years before a recurring role in the series Homicide: Life on the Street, one of those series that seemed to garner greater appreciation after it was off air.

This decade has brought Leo greater notoriety in cinema, although she remains an actor who makes some idiosyncratic choices. Two of her films, 21 Grams and Frozen River, attracted a great deal of recognition (with an Oscar nomination for the latter), as have recurring roles in David Simon's Treme, the follow-up to The Wire, and a starring role opposite Kate Winslet and Guy Pearce in Todd Haynes's series Mildred Pierce. "I was thinking Guy would be so snooty. Sweet as honey, my gosh!"

She is in demand, with a handful of films awaiting release or production, including a Robert Zemeckis thriller starring Denzel Washington.

Leo is now in the comfortable position of being an Oscar winner and being admired by others. She concedes it is both "uncomfortable" and "lovely".

The award has enhanced her "opinion of myself and therefore the way I greet the world. It's nice".

Yet she remains busy.

"I still work to support myself and I have no grand savings from my illustrious 30 years working," she says.

"And as far as working is concerned, it's my favourite thing to do . . . so I work as often as I'm able and have always done it that way.

"I don't make time for myself because I don't have a life."

Red State could have been troublesome work with its high stakes, growling performances and low budget.

Leo recalls the "camaraderie among the players on the set was remarkable" and Smith's intentions were noble.

"But in fact what a group of thespians needs is a leader," she says.

"That's why there are directors. And Kevin's one-man-band filmmaking style is not really helpful with an ensemble acting corps. But we tried and there you have it. There's extraordinary performances from many players.

"But I can't remember shooting it without recalling how difficult in fact it was to make, not so much because of how harrowing the subject was."