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RELATED LINKS

• A History of Violence
• Save the Children
• DreamYard Drama Project for Kids
• Ms. Bello's bio

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Tavis: Maria Bello is a fine actress who has made a very successful transition from television to film. Following her stint on "ER", she's gone on to star in movies like "Payback", "Assault on Precinct 13" and "The Cooler", the latter earning her a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actress. Her latest film is one of the most anticipated movies of this fall, "A History of Violence". The thriller has received rave reviews and opens nationwide this weekend. Here now a scene from "A History of Violence".

[A film clip is shown]

Tavis: Maria, nice to have you on the program.

Maria Bello: Thank you. Happy to be here. I see that scene and I'm still scared of Ed Harris (laughter). I'm serious.

Tavis: He is a great actor.

Bello: A fantastic actor, a fantastic director. I was so intimidated to do that scene with him and I was having the worst day. It was like my four and a half year old was up all night; I'd just flown in; I was exhausted. I remember doing the scene and, at one point, I kind of dropped out. I wasn't listening because I was exhausted. I said, "I'm listening", I said in the scene, and he said, "No, you're not." He scared the hell out of me (laughter) and I went, oh, I forgot. I'm working with one of the most brilliant actors alive. I have to show up. He really helped me.

Tavis: I don't know how many takes it took, but you pulled it off.

Bello: Thanks, because I was scared to death (laughter).

Tavis: He is a great actor and I'm always partial to movies with Ed Harris in them because I love the guy, but I'm also partial to movies that are set in Indiana.

Bello: I heard, because you're from Indiana.

Tavis: I am from Indiana, so a shout out to the folk in Indiana. I love movies set there. That's a brilliant scene, but the scene doesn't really tell you what the movie is about, so I'll let you do the honors.

Bello: The movie is about a family from Indiana. Tom Stall, played by Viggo Mortensen, and myself are married. We own a diner in Indiana, have two kids and a perfect life in this bucolic setting. One day, bad guys come to our diner and he has to protect people in our diner, Tom, and becomes a local hero and our lives start unraveling from there.

Tavis: What specifically drew you to the part that you play, Tom's wife?

Bello: Honestly, do you know what drew me to the part? David Cronenberg, who I have been a huge fan of. We met months before that. After a three-hour dinner where we never talked about movies, we said, oh, my God, we've got to play together. We've got to do something together. A few months later, I received a script with his name on it and I would do anything to work with him. Then I read the script and realized how relevant it was to me personally, to kind of the world at large, and I felt like it was an important film to do.

Tavis: Speaking of being an important film, are you sensing -- I assume you are, but maybe you've been off on another planet somewhere -- but are you sensing and feeling the reviews and the expectation and the buzz? There's a lot of that around this film.

Bello: I know. You know what's so fantastic? You know, we did the junket for a couple of weeks and you know that's hard. You know, people come in interviewing you and --

Tavis: -- asking you same questions over and over and over.

Bello: Yeah, and a lot of times people go to the surface of it, right? Because they have to. It's only a three-minute thing, so they're like, "Oh, so what was it like working with Viggo? How was the sex scene?" You know, I was like -- we were so intensely involved in this film and put everything into it and loved it. So to read the reviews and understand that people were understanding the complexity and depth of it was amazing and still is. You know, it made me really excited and I never looked at the film as like the biggest metaphor for what's going on in the world, but now when I watch it again and again, I understand what people are kind of saying.

Tavis: So how was the sex scene (laughter) Just kidding, just kidding (laughter). But it is though. It is a metaphor for what's going on in the world and my sense is that that's why I think there is so much being written about it because it is a point of connectivity for people trying to understand the strangeness of the world that we live in, certainly where violence is concerned.

Bello: I think so. And what I like about David's work is that he makes it really personal because the violence is personal. It comes out of something personal. It's this unresolved or not looked at shadow self in all of us that we all have and most of us never go there, never acknowledge it, and I think that's why wars happen. Because we're repressing this kind of human instinct really.

Tavis: While you were filming this, did -- I think you've already answered this, but if I can deduce your answer from what you've said already, as better put -- while you were filming this, did you understand the cocoon that this film was being made in? I mean, I say cocoon, I mean, given what was happening in the world and all the issues that this film really touches on that are part of the world we live in, were you like at all cognizant of that while you were filming it or you just --

Bello: -- No. I tend to be attracted to things because it moves me in an emotional way or I'm going through similar themes in my life in figuring something out. So for me, it was deeply kind of emotional and psychological and Viggo, myself, Ashton and Heidi really bonded. From the beginning, it was very familial. It felt very like safe and, you know, contained, so that by the last scene, that very last scene, we were a wreck emotionally just thinking about separating and what that would mean. So it resonated on a really deep personal level with me, this film.

Tavis: Speaking of familiar, let me go back to that sex scene. Now I'm being serious about this (laughter).

Bello: Okay. Which one?

Tavis: The one that your daddy saw. Did I read somewhere that your daddy -- you had not told him. You can't do this to your dad. You cannot take your daddy to a premier and not have told your dad that you did a scene and you come up on the screen and you make your daddy -- your daddy could have gone into cardiac arrest. He could have had a heart attack. What did you tell your dad?

Bello: This is not my first kind of, you know, love scene onscreen.

Tavis: But you got to tell your daddy, is my point.

Bello: No, he knew because he was in the press line with me. So the first time he did the press line, people were going, "How do you feel about your daughter. . ." You know what he would say? He's like a fisherman from Jersey. He'd go, "She does good. She does good work, my daughter." So he's sitting next to me during the whole premier and I kept checking in with him. "You okay? You okay?" "Yeah, doing good. You're doing good." He even liked the sex scene on the stairs. The next thing, you know, I walk out of the bathroom and my robe's open and you could hear a pin drop. My dad just went, "Jesus Christ". The same thing he did when I did my first off-Broadway play and was like kissing a guy (laughter), so I think that never changes about a father.

Tavis: Take me back to how you got -- how did you know that this was your calling?

Bello: You know, I was a political science major. I had this kind of urge and desire to kind of give something back, to do everything I was supposed to do in the world, to serve in some way. I had this amazing mentor. His name was Father Ray Jackson back at university. I spent a summer with him editing a book and I sat in the library with the most amazing thinkers and philosophers you could ever think of in books, you know. Thomas Merton and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi and the Berrigan Brothers and Dorothy Day. Everything spoke to me about the same thing it kept coming to, the singular passion. And what is your passion? By following that passion, that's your way to serve.

I don't care if your passion is making cupcakes. You know, if that's your passion, you'll make the best cupcakes in the world and you'll tend to be able to share your light in that way. When I first started acting, I took my first class in university and I thought this is my thing. This is what I love to do the most. This is my passion, so since then have pursued that with that sort of thing in mind that this is the thing I do best and the thing I love and this is the best way I can serve.

Tavis: You named your son after the Father?

Bello: I did, yeah. Jackson Blue was named after my friend, Father Ray Jackson.

Tavis: I say this not to cast dispersion on anybody in this business who is doing good work. There are a lot of actors, a lot of thespians doing great work for a variety of causes. But you started doing some work with some special kids in Harlem.

Bello: Yeah.

Tavis: Way back before we got to know who Maria Bello was. Tell me about the work that you started back in Harlem way back when.

Bello: It's funny. You know, I was like a little girl in Army boots from Philadelphia, you know, with not a dime in my pocket, but in acting class. I met these two extraordinary guys, Tim Lord and Jason Duchin, and they said, you know, they asked us to teach at this community center up in Harlem, an after-school program. Do you want to do it with us? I said sure. So the first year, we had like twelve kids in a classroom and we kind of came up with this process whereby we got the kids to talk about their lives and their hopes and their dreams and, at the end of the year, put on a production of their stories.

What we found throughout the year, you know, everybody already knows -- or a lot of people do, at least -- when kids have the opportunity to tell their stories, it is such a freeing experience, such a confidence builder and such a spirited enhancer really. So now the organization is huge in New York, the DreamYard Project, and these guys have totally taken over and running it. I'm not with them anymore and I decided to kind of reach out on a global level and do a similar thing, so I started working with Save the Children and traveling around quite a bit.

Tavis: Quite a bit? That's an understatement. You've been everywhere.

Bello: (Laughter) I like to travel. I'm a bit of a gypsy, that's for sure. But kind of like your friend's book who was just on the show. Anthony -- what's his last name?

Tavis: Anthony Shadid.

Bello: Oh, I can't wait to read that book, by the way. I think the most important thing is to make violence personal, to make war personal. You know, to find out how it really affects individuals, individual people, and that's what I've always been interested in. How it affects kids and what they have to say about it.

Tavis: I wonder. It's always fascinating to meet people at curious points on their journey. I mean, you are obviously out there. People know your work and this film is going to put you out there in a way that you've not been put out there before. I mean, this is some good work here and it's going to put you out there on another level. I wonder whether or not you ever think about or whether you are at all concerned about the fact that, as your star continues to rise, as you shine more, that you might feel inhibited about being so outspoken, inhibited about being so political. You know, that's not always a good thing in this business.

Bello: It's true, and that's unfortunate, you know, but I was raised with parents who said the greatest gift you can give the world is to be yourself and to be true to who you are. I know if I hold any of that back that I'm not really giving myself fully. What's the worst thing that could happen? People won't like me? All right. A lot of people don't like me already (laughter). I'm okay with it. Or, you know, I don't work again? Fine, I'll do something else. You know, not that I don't have fears. I certainly do, but I know that, you know, my mom and dad taught me that, when I get to a cliff, you know, there's only two options. You turn around and run or you jump, and I want to jump.

Tavis: Sounds like a lead-in to a movie. I think I've seen that somewhere like "Thelma & Louise", something like that (laughter)? Anyway, forget "Thelma & Louise". There's a new movie out called "A History of Violence" opening this weekend starring Maria Bello. Go check it out. Marie, nice to have you on the program. All the best to you.

Bello: Thank you. So nice to be on your program.

Tavis: My pleasure. Glad to have you. That's our show for tonight. You can catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local radio listings. We'll talk on the radio this weekend. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles. Thanks for watching and, as always, keep the faith.