Amanda Seyfried finally claims her claim

The goats didn’t want to go out in the morning, said Amanda Seyfried. There was one in particular that got her in trouble, the one Seyfried described as the goat of God knows how big she is. This one was spoiled for a fight. This could not be moved.

So what did Seyfried do? She walked into that goat shelter, planted her feet, and pushed.

The goat grew back, of course. That’s the problem with goats: they’re stubborn. They also have horns, and Amanda Seyfried, a 34-year-old actress, does not.

It was frustrating. It was tiring. That was too, Seyfried hastened to add, completely awesome.

And that’s one of the main reasons Seyfried lives on a farm in the Catskills rather than an overpriced condo on the Sunset Strip: A morning fight with your goats has the ability to put just about everything else. in perspective. It’s crazy how I can feel so accomplished and successful here without having to be in a blockbuster movie, she says.

Seyfried shares the farm with several chickens, horses of extremely varying sizes, a donkey named Gus, these goats, her actor husband, Thomas Sadoski, and their two children. This last piece turned out to be the most surprising: During a week of conversations on Zoom, Seyfried was wearing no makeup and looked barely older than the panting ditz she played in Mean Girls (2004) or the Mamma Mia’s singing bride! (2008). But now she’s a mother, a farmer and, for the first time in her career, an important Oscar contender.

In Netflix’s new drama Mank, directed by David Fincher and scheduled for Friday on Netflix, Seyfried is playing Marion davies, the screen star of the 1920s and 1930s best known today as the mistress of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst. It’s a relationship that would be romanticized for Orson Welless’ Roman key Citizen Kane and Mank recount this process, as screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) recalls the years he spent partying at the Hearsts San Simeon Estate, a glittering Shangri-La where Davies became a confidant with whom he could share gossip and gin.

Seyfried only has a handful of scenes in Mank, but she still walks away with the movie, playing Davies as a sneaky, self-aware girl, a brassy, ​​airless girl from Brooklyn who has been immersed in in a castle by Hearst and is determined. to get the most out of it. Davies throws parties, drinks too much, and says the wrong thing a lot, but when you say the wrong thing in upper circles it just means you’ve been telling rich men the truth and the girl can’t help it.

When Marions isn’t onscreen you wish she was, but Seyfried isn’t used to being seen as the star: reading the rave reviews of First Reformed (2018), which she starred in. a pregnant widow imploring the conflicting pastor of Ethan Hawkes, Seyfried was happy just to get an honorable mention. She found that most of the time when critics name her, it’s in brackets that tells you who was playing the girl or the girlfriend. Skating like this has mostly been my experience, she says.

This sort of disarming frankness comes naturally to Seyfried, whose big blue eyes still widen when she remembers doing Mank but narrows slightly each time she does a self-assessment. She can’t help but wonder if the directors wrote her off after traditional romantic dramas like Dear John or Letters for Juliet (both from 2010), and she often makes fun of herself as lazy for playing a version of herself in those movies. It is important to Seyfried that an audience loves him; she works to love herself.

Despite her fair share of success, Seyfried was still shocked when she met Quentin Tarantino at the airport recently and knew who she was. Keep your expectations low, she told me, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Last fall, when his agent said Fincher had it in mind for Mank, Seyfried’s eyes filled with tears. It’s really nice to be respected by someone you think is just a one-of-a-kind master in their field, she said.

In a phone interview, Fincher compared Seyfried to Cameron Diaz, a mainstream comedian who was always able to give more, even if she was rarely asked.

We all knew Amanda was luminescent, we all knew she was effervescent, we all knew she was funny, he said. We all knew she knew how to analyze or create a joke, and we all knew she could move. I think the thing that ended up surprising was the mercurial nature of how quickly she could scramble these things, because it gives Marion that whole other dimension.

Fincher is famous for filming dozens and dozens of takes, a process that can frustrate movie stars accustomed to nailing their lines and moving on. Seyfried found his method to be a dream. She was in no hurry, she was not left out. Finally, she had the space to see what she was made of. It was my turn, she said. It was me.

WHAT MAKES SEYFRIED continue to act in the first place? I’m still working this out with my therapist, she said. But she sees herself a lot in her 3-year-old daughter Nina, creative, quick to speak up and eager for assertion. Becoming a mother has often caused Seyfried to revisit the arc of her own life, and from her perspective in the Catskills, things are a little different now.

After a pleasant childhood in Allentown, Pa., Where her film-loving father made Seyfried addicted to comedies and Laurel and Hardy classics like Nosferatu, she spent her teenage years traveling to New York City to film episodes of the As the World soap operas. Turns. and all my children. Some actresses take forever to land their first breakthrough credit. Seyfrieds’ first film was Bad girls.

It’s a pretty exhilarating start for someone still trying to understand themselves. All Seyfried knew at the time was that she loved attention, loved to be laughed at, and loved to make people feel something. And when she was young, she couldn’t wait to put herself to good use in any role.

Maybe that’s why she got it so early. Blessed with those big eyes and an intimate and immediate connection to the camera, it wasn’t difficult for Seyfried to convince you that she was feeling something: she really, really was. I don’t think I ever unboxed what it did to me emotionally, she said.

Her tendency to burn fiercely and her everlasting eagerness to please have sometimes made an easy mark on her, she now knows. If you have no limits then you’re screwed in this industry, she said. It’s a scary place for a youngster, someone with no backbone who was me. And I paid it.

She recalls a job she booked when she was still a teenager, where the director asked her to appear almost naked onscreen. With no one else on set to defend her, she reluctantly agreed to undress.

I have been placed in very insane positions, she said. I was walking around without underpants and without a shirt, and I didn’t want to be, but I didn’t feel like I had the power to say, no, that makes me uncomfortable. (She wouldn’t name the project.)

This is partly why at age 22, Seyfried started looking at homes outside of Hollywood. As her career continued to heat up, she needed to draw her own boundaries, to remember that a setting is not at home, that home is at home. Seven years ago, stepping out of her roles in Les Misrables and Lovelace, she finally stumbled upon the Catskills farm and knew this was what she had been looking for.

His sales manager hesitated, but Seyfried put his foot down: I was like, no, Mark! I’m telling you, this is where I’m going to die.

She later met, married, and moved to Sadoski, and children would eventually be added to the farm menagerie, including a son born in September. Spending the last few years in the Catskills has reinforced my need to be out of the game when I’m not working, to be out in the wild and to cool off, said Seyfried. Everyone needs a center of gravity. Somewhere to feel safe.

Safety is a priority for Seyfried, and she wants it to be a priority for Hollywood as well. He was reminded of this over the summer during a controversial vote to ratify the new Screen Actors Guild contract. There was a lot of infighting and it was really hard to know where I was, she said. In the end, Seyfried voted no, as she felt the contract did not do enough to protect actors who shoot intimate scenes: I just feel like really, this industry is not as secure as she wants it.

Ten years ago, Seyfried was perhaps too afraid to go against the grain, especially because his fellow actors still voted overwhelmingly to ratify the contract. But it can be a good thing to take a straight stand: it means you know yourself and your own priorities, and ultimately, Seyfried thinks so. No matter how her Mank performance goes this awards season, all the time she’s been on her farm this year has given Seyfried the ability to see these things much more clearly.

This movie is definitely the best opportunity I have had in my career, and it absolutely changes my career for the better, she said. But without it, I was just as happy, as I made room for myself to feel fulfilled in my own world.

Later, Seyfried texted me a picture of the hangar where the hangar had its morning showdown. I could see most of his goats moving in the distance, but one had climbed into the lens, defiantly staring at the camera with wide eyes. It sounded stubborn as hell. It looked like it wouldn’t be easy to drive. And I knew why Amanda Seyfried liked the fight.