Amanda Seyfried on Lovelace and How Her Deep Throat Simulation Scenes “Were Fun”

Julie Miller



Two years after Hollywood announced dueling Linda Lovelace biopics, the first (and possibly only one to materialize), Lovelace, makes its way to the screen on Friday. Starring Amanda Seyfried as the world's first porn star and Peter Sarsgaard as her skin-crawlingly sleazy husband, Chuck Traynor, Jeffrey Friedman and Robert Epstein's dual-perspective drama chronicles how the woman born Linda Boreman left the domineering clutches of her mother (a curler-clad Sharon Stone) for a sexually, emotionally, and physically abusive man who forced her into pornography and prostitution.

Just a few hours after attending Lovelace's Las Vegas premiere on Monday, Seyfried met us in Beverly Hills to discuss the personal responsibility she felt to the late Lovelace, Sharon Stone's encouragement, and the prop she used to simulate the infamous Deep Throat scene.

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Julie Miller: You were just in Las Vegas for a premiere of the film. . . Did you have time to do anything fun while you were there?

Amanda Seyfried: No, it was quick. There is nothing really fun for me to do in Vegas anyway, though. The most fun thing for me in Vegas is when I am on the plane taxi-ing and getting ready to leave. [Laughs.]

Did you identify with Linda as soon as you read the script or was it more of a process?

I didn't identify with her right off the bat. I think that I just felt an intense amount of empathy. Her story is insane and tragic and overall just very depressing. She never really got a break. Her whole life . . . people assumed a certain thing about her and just pigeonholed her as this adult-film icon. They judged her for the choices she made in life, even though she did not actually make a lot of those choices.

As an actor, I'm sure that I'm seen as a one-dimensional figure, like she was seen as a one-dimensional figure. We are all humans, though, with our own feelings and our own story. She tried so hard to tell it, but people didn't want to listen because they didn't think she was worthy of being heard.

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Even her publisher had a hard time with that. There is a heartbreaking scene where her publisher makes her take a polygraph test because they don't believe her life stories.

That was a hard scene, not only because Eric Roberts was right there [as the character administering the test]. But that was a turning point for the character, especially when he asks her, "Is your name Linda Lovelace?" Because her whole existence became so complicated. The complexities are a lot to take in.

Did you speak with her friends and family beforehand?

Her kids and her lawyer, Catharine MacKinnon, were very supportive and present. That was profound. It was second best only to meeting her. I also did so much research, though, that it felt unfair that I knew that much about their mother. And then I met them, and in a certain way I almost felt like a stalker. But they are really grateful that we are making this movie and were really complimentary of me as a portrayal.

I imagine that's a lot of pressure.

Yeah, my god. That was such a battle for me personally to have the confidence to play her.

Read the rest of Seyfried's interview exclusively at vanityfair.com.

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