Oscar-winning Frances delights full house

Frances McDormand certainly knows how to get an audience in the palm of her hand. In a public interview sponsored by The Irish Times and the Gate Theatre, the Oscar-winning actress delighted a full house on an appropriately hot Saturday afternoon with witty anecdotes and astute observations about her life and career.

Talking with Irish Times Film Correspondent Michael Dwyer on the set of A Streetcar Named Desire (which comes to the end of its sell-out run this week), Ms McDormand admitted she was ready to go home to New York. "But I've loved it here. This is the best theatre production I've been involved in."

Throughout a highly entertaining 1 1/2hour conversation, and responding to questions from the audience, she emphasised her intention to continue working in theatre, despite her movie-star status.

Asked to compare her interpretation of Blanche DuBois with others, most notably Vivien Leigh's in the 1951 film, Ms McDormand argued that film was not the medium for roles like Blanche. "But I'm not a traditional idea of Blanche. She's described in the script as a fragile, moth-like creature. Well, that's clearly not me."

Talking about her early days as an actress, when she shared an apartment with another future Oscar-winner, Holly Hunter, she described her first meeting with the Coen brothers, at an audition for their debut film, Blood Simple (when she not only got the part but also met her husband-to-be, Joel Coen), and talked about their popularity with actors.

"The parts they write are all character roles with quirks to them. They're enthusiastic theatre-goers and they have respect for the mystique of acting."

Asked about the effect on her life of winning an Oscar for her performance in Fargo, she was sardonically funny about the whole hoopla that surrounds the Academy Awards ceremony. "Hollywood is a cultureless environment. The awards season is their social season, so it goes on for two months. The amount of time and money spent is incredible."

But she did welcome the freedom it gave her to take on new challenges. "Like Michael Colgan saying to me: isn't it time to play Blanche DuBois? Also, I got a Sesame Street Big Bird video out of it."

As an Oscar-winner, wherever she goes she now has a parenthesis after her name, she says. "But I specifically chose not to use it in my biography in the programme notes for A Streetcar Named Desire. My name's long enough."