NEED TO KNOW
- Amanda Seyfried said that she gave up Botox for a year while shootingThe Testament of Ann Lee
- The actress opened up to Etalk about the “sacrifices” she made during filming
- Seyfried previously told Variety that forgoing Botox was “absolutely necessary” for the titular role
Amanda Seyfried will do a lot for a role.
At the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of her film The Testament of Ann Lee on Tuesday, Sept. 9, the actress, 39, opened up about giving up Botox and makeup for her role as Ann Lee, the founder of the Shakers.
In speaking with Etalk on the red carpet, Seyfried said that the “sacrifice” was well worth it.
“I’m an actor and that’s my job and that’s what I love to do,” she told the outlet. “I don’t necessarily need all that in my life. I just like it. The things that I like, I can sacrifice a little. Of course I can.”
She added, “We did make sacrifices, and it was worth it. Every day was fun. We didn’t just survive, we thrived.”
The actress previously spoke about forgoing Botox as part of director Mona Fastvold’s no-makeup rule for The Testament of Ann Lee in an interview with Vanity Fair published on Aug. 26.
“I couldn’t get Botox for a year,” she told the magazine. “That was a big assignment… When I first got [Botox], I was, like, ‘This is amazing,’ because I frown a lot. But then it all came back in a way that was absolutely necessary for all the work I was doing.”
The Testament of Ann Lee had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on Monday, Sept. 1. The historical musical drama earned a 15-minute standing ovation after the screening — the longest of any film at this year’s event, surpassing the 13 minutes of applause given to Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.
In video footage shared by Variety, Seyfried was captured getting emotional at the ovation as she gazed around in awe at her colleagues, including director/co-writer Fastvold.
Per a synopsis from the festival, The Testament of Ann Lee is “an epic fable inspired by the life of Ann Lee, the founder of the Shakers, a radical religious movement that began in the late 1700s.”
As Fastvold described in a statement shared with the festival, in part, “Our film is a speculative retelling of the life of Ann Lee, one of the few female religious leaders of the 18th century. She and her followers, known as the Shakers, worshipped through ecstatic song and movement — trembling, exuberant and physically expressive acts of devotion.”
During the Venice press conference, Fastvold explained why she cast Seyfried in the lead role.
“Amanda has a lot of power,” she said. “She’s really strong. She is a wonderful mother. She is a little mad. And so I knew that she could access those things — she could access the kindness, the gentleness, the tenderness. And she could also access this power and this madness.”
The director, 39 added, “And I think that, at our age, there is something really exciting about exploring the combination of all of that. And I saw that Amanda has all of that, and that she was ready to go full force into that.”
Read the full article here
