Guarding Against the Stain of Celebrity

As a highly successful stage and screen actor, Alfred Molina is used to a posh, globetrotting lifestyle of top-notch restaurants, grand hotels, red carpets and limo rides, For example, when FilmStew caught up with the 56-year-old London native at Toronto's Signatures Restaurant, a fresh brewed cappuccino appeared before he had a chance to place an order.

Nevertheless, as someone who is only too aware of how seductive such a pampered life can be, Molina has developed a unique strategy for keeping himself grounded. When he is on the road, he hand washes his underclothes and socks. "I've got no problem with spending two hundred dollars for a bottle of wine, but I'm buggered if I'm going to spend three dollars and fifty cents just to get a pair of socks laundered. It's ridiculous," he laughs.

Molina will likely have much laundry to deal with this fall and winter as he makes the rounds in support of the expanding release of AN EDUCATION.  In fact, Lone Scherfig's vivid coming-of-age drama - adapted by Nick Hornby from Lynn Barber's memoir - may also lead to a bevy of personal awards season kudos for Molina as Jack, the well-meaning but clueless 1960s era father of a vivacious 17-year-old  (Carey Mulligan) seduced by an older man (Peter Sarsgaard).

The last time Molina lit up the Best Supporting Actor awards radar, it was for his turn as Mexican painter Diego Rivera in FRIDA, which earned him nods from BAFTA, the Screen Actors Guild and the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA). This time around, the actor was able to draw insight from his own background; as the son of an Italian mother and a Spanish father, he sees a lot of his own dad in Jack.

"I think that's one reason why I completely got into the character," he muses. "There was something about him that I completely understood, that was completely clear. My dad was very much like the father in the movie. Not quite as ambitious as he was for his children, academically, but certainly ambitious for them to get a job, work. His limitations, his view of the world were very similar."

"The thing that really shocked me when I read the script was the whole thing he does about not going to St. John's Smith Square, because it's too far," adds Molina. "That's exactly what my dad would have done!"

Another aspect of AN EDUCATION that attracted Molina was the era in which it all takes place. "It does happen to be a very interesting and pivotal time, because as Nick Hornby has pointed out, 1961 English society was a lot closer to 1945 than it was to 1966," he relates. "It was a society absolutely on the very, very edge of huge change, kind of seismic change, really, socially, culturally, politically."

Only eight in 1961, Molina nevertheless has indelible memories growing up during that era in London's then rough-and-tumble Notting Hill, a far cry from today's gentrified vibe. "It's attractive and tempting to think of in terms of going back to that time, because there were certain things about it. It was stylish," he suggests. "There was excitement in the air, for sure. If you were old enough to appreciate it, it must have been very, very exciting."

"But I think nostalgia plays tricks on your memory," Molina argues. "The truth is, it was horrible, if you didn't have money. There was nothing on. There was nothing to do. Everything was shut on Sunday. The food was crap. The culinary revolution hadn't happened yet in London. In 1961, you were still eating kind of gray sausages. It was horrible. There was one Italian deli in Soho in 1961. Lina's, Lina's Stores, the only one. We used to go there. It was like this little jewel."

Asked to describe his own adolescence in the late 1960s and early '70s, Molina laughs.  His was not so glamorous as Jenny's as he describes a shy, geeky kid who found fellowship through his school's drama club and American music. "There were like four of use, and we were all obsessed with American music and we got very, very fussy about what we listened to," he recalls. "It had to be American and it had to be black and it had to be on certain labels. Oh, yeah, sad f-cks. Motown, Stax, Chess, Atlantic, and that was about it."

"I always try to describe it, do you remember those school parties, when you were at school, and all the popular kids would be in one room, near the beer, kind of laughing and joking?" he chuckles. "All the sexy girls would be sort of dancing and getting chatted up by good-looking guys. And there was always the kid who didn't talk to anyone and he was the one who was putting on the records. Remember him? That was me. That was me. I never got laid. I never got a date, but I could tell you who played bass guitar in practically any band you cared to mention." (Pam Grady)