Ultracool director Quentin Tarantino (“Pulp Fiction”) took one look at actress Parker Posey and told her, “You’re a danger.” A lithe, supermodel-thin woman with sublime skin and expressive, knockout eyes, Posey has the kind of active, hyperalert mind that never rests.
She has a way of disarming her interrogators, even the friendly ones. Tell her she reminds you of Katharine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall or Barbara Stanwyck with her cool, implacable intelligence with which she always appears one step ahead of everyone else, and she replies, “Oh, I love you. Let’s get married.”
She may be a spiritual heir to the vanished tradition of American acting, but in fact, Parker Posey, 26, is something else entirely, maybe the first postmodern actress. You can never be certain if what she says is authentic or an elaborate gag, and she’s adroit at obfuscating those lines.
Parker Posey. Even the name sounds like a put-on, the sort someone dreams up and takes as her own.
Posey is one of the new icons of the American independent cinema, an emphatic, iconoclastic young woman on the cusp of a major career. She burst onto the scene with her icy, maniacal turn as a class-conscious high school beauty who preserves a rigid social order in Richard Linklater’s 1993 teen film, “Dazed and Confused.”
In Rory Kelly’s 1994 “Sleep with Me,” Posey was part of a memorable ensemble. Two scenes in particular illustrate her vivid presence, an ability to take over, attesting to her skill and mischievous, playful impulses.
In the first, she sabotages a male-bonding poker game by refusing to play by the rules. Later in the film, her character runs off with a married man (Eric Stoltz), a seduction scene of movements and counter movements, with her elliptical, fragmented, “I suppose you think I’m going to sleep with you.”
Posey has also appeared in “Tales of the City,” an excellent American Playhouse production of Armistead Maupin’s stories; Nora Ephron’s “Mixed Nuts,” opposite Steve Martin; and two Hal Hartley films, last year’s “Amateur” and the forthcoming “Flirt.” She also has a brief, hilarious turn in Gregg Araki’s blistering “The Doom Generation” and will show her versatility in Noah Baumbach’s “Kicking and Screaming,” Gregg Mottola’s “Daughters and Lovers,” Christopher Guest’s improvisational film “Waiting for Guffman” and Julian Schnabel’s still-untitled biography of artist Jean Michel Basquiat, in which she plays Mary Boone.
Parker’s first starring role is “Party Girl,” Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s debut film about a downtown hedonist named Mary (Posey) whose spirited if reckless behavior lands her in trouble with the cops and forces her to settle for a mundane existence as a librarian.
The film has received mixed reviews, but there is near-unanimous judgment that Posey is the next big thing. Her vicious, cunning wit, devilish manner and satirical underplay are perfectly suited to the demands of the role.
Mary is the perfect role for Posey, taking what is essentially an unlikable, shifting, impudent young woman and making her unusually sympathetic and even touching.
“She’s kind of a bitch, but you kind of like her–I think that’s true of me as well,” Posey said at the Sundance Film Festival, where “Party Girl” and “The Doom Generation” had their world premieres.
“If you’re an actor, you really have to figure out for yourself what naturally emanates from you,” she says. “People have different thoughts. This is my first big role, but I don’t feel any pressure. Whenever something this extreme happens–like if somebody dies, you cry, and if you see somebody who looks like them, you cry again–you realize you’re still grieving over that. On the other hand, when something great like this happens, I’m completely removed, and people aren’t lying to me.”
Although her roles often place her as the definition of hip, popular and part of the “in” crowd, Posey says her way of working is just the opposite, of someone perpetually on the outside and looking in.
Her method is voyeuristic, impressionistic, of someone watching and observing from a distance: “I kind of work from the outside. I kind of watch.
“I come from a small town in Mississippi . My high school was very small. There were like 800 people in the whole school.
“Here’s a story about my parents. They were very poor, and when they used to go out on dates, they would go to the supermarket, they would sit in the car, and my dad would make up stories about the people who came out of the store. That was to make my mom laugh.
“We were constantly watching people, telling stories, linked to this traditional oral storytelling found in the South. So when I was 18 and I was watching these beauty queens or football players, or the people of the community, it strengthened my compassion.”
Posey has a twin brother who is studying law. The idea of the doppelganger and shared linkage fascinates her, she says.
“I have a weird thing with competition. Having a twin, I didn’t want to compete with him because I loved him so much. On the inside I think he’s very crazy. On the inside, I’m very lost.
“Growing up in Mississippi, there wasn’t always a lot to do. That’s why I liked watching people, to examine their walk or how they talked, seeing what they do say and what they don’t say. My parents thought I had a learning disability because I was such a dreamer. My father would put bells on my notebook so I would remember my homework.”
Like a lot of twins, Posey was born prematurely and was kept in an incubator. She isn’t one to let that experience go by without reflecting: “I almost died. I was hooked up to a respirator. My being in an incubator for six weeks, it’s all about who I am. You’re fighting, you were in the womb with someone else, and then you go alone.”
She has made up for lost time. The relevant question is, “How does a young woman from Laurel, Miss., remake herself as a cutting-edge talent?” This being Parker Posey, it involves the inevitable disappointment, fall and resurrection.
“I went to the North Carolina School of the Arts summer program,” she says. “I wanted to be a dancer, but I couldn’t get into the dance program. My father called the dean of the school because he knew how upset I was. The dean told him, `Your daughter is in the wrong business. She should be acting. She took over, she’s very funny, she’s popular.’
“I used to study acting with the television set. There came a point when I was 17, my parents would say, `Why don’t you go out; it’s Friday night?’ ” She laughs. “I’d say, `I’m watching “My Dinner with Andre.” ‘ “
As a senior in high school, Posey auditioned for theater programs of three colleges and was accepted at SUNY-Purchase, on Long Island. Along with New York University’s film school and Columbia University, SUNY-Purchase has become an impressive state school for developing young talent, particularly directors Hal Hartley (“Trust”) and Nick Gomez (“Laws of Gravity,” “New Jersey Drive”).
At Purchase, Posey moved from berserk comic movements to more subtle or deeper dramatic capabilities. In her senior year, she earned a role on the long-running CBS soap opera “As the World Turns.” Posey is joining illustrious alumnae Meg Ryan and Julianne Moore (“Nine Months”) as she builds a significant career.
“I loved it and hated it,” Posey says, “because I was there for so long. I really liked melodrama. I was crying all the time, my Chekhov crying.”
There remains a sense about Posey that the screen isn’t large enough to contain her. She glides and moves to her own actions and motions. But her style is never exaggerated or over the top, for her character is action. She is impulsive, unpredictable, outrageous and caring–until these outsized emotions collapse against one another. There is a method, a grounding, to her apparent “madness.”
“I’m a big believer in changing what images people think are correct, because I think characters are for the most part boring,” she says. “You get into these talks, people are like, `You’re turning on.’ Just because I have a sense of humor doesn’t mean I’m a big fake. Just because I’m making these people laugh and I’m jabbing you, people say, `Oh, you’re just acting.’ Because everybody acts. If we weren’t all actors, nobody would be talking. Everything would be silent.”
Indeed, if there is anything that constrains Posey, it’s the limited choices that are available to all actresses, the strict sexual and social role-playing that tends to kill off the ambitious and the unorthodox.
“We have the vixens, we have the wives, the wacky neighbor and the tough cookie,” she says. “That basically covers everything.
“I’m sort of a wacky neighbor. I don’t have large enough breasts to be `the vixen,’ but I’m strong enough because I speak my mind. I try to be something I am.”
