"I said to Sacha, ‘Can your agent represent me?’ And his agent said, ‘No way’," Isla Fisher opens up on rising above rejection and becoming a stunt woman
Isla Fisher reveals she’s had no helping hand in cementing her place in Hollywood. Speaking exclusively to British Cosmopolitan, she states:
"I really have had no help. In fact, the one time I did ask for help was after my agent in LA fired me. I was auditioning for all sorts of things but kept getting told ‘no’, so she just fired me! So anyway, I said to Sacha, who was my boyfriend at the time, ‘Can you ask your agent if they’ll represent me?’ And his agent said, ‘No way.’ It was the only favour I’d ever asked, and I was like, ‘OK.. great’. But it spurred me on."
"I’ve had no helping hand in Hollywood. But in general I’ve found that when it comes to getting jobs, what’s meant for you can’t pass you by."
Isla FisherAbout her childhood, and how it helped shape her into the comedy queen she is today:
"I went to something like six different schools before the age of 12, so I was always the new girl and had to make friends quickly. It was difficult at the start because I was very bookish – I was literally sat in the corner reading books, with no friends. So I learnt to be funny and to take the piss out of myself in order to ingratiate myself. I think it’s one of the best skills in life."
Clown school:
"It was a great training ground and I learnt so much, but after three years I’d had enough, and I decided to go and study at a clown school in Paris. It’s like a theatre school, but you basically learn clowning. I knew Emma Thompson had been there and she was a big deal at the time with Sense And Sensibility, and I thought, ‘Oh, wow’. It sounded so romantic and exciting and different. I knew coming from something like Home And Away that I was going to need to change people’s impressions of me."
Isla Fisher funny girl and dare devil:
"I saw some of my next movie Now You See Me yesterday and it was so good. I said to the director, ‘I can’t believe you put me in this movie!... I’m the fierce, fearless anarchist, so I felt like this was a good role for women to see. I did all my own stunts too. My character is an escapologist, so I had to do stuff like escape from a tank filled with piranhas while chained up. It wasn’t until the wrap party when the director said to me, ‘I’ve worked on a lot of action movies and no one ever does their own stunts.’ I was like, ‘What do you mean – I could have not done them?!’ I thought you just did what you were told."
A firm believer in women staying true to themselves and advocates sisterly support in Hollywood:
"Women should not have to adopt masculine traits in order to succeed. You should be able to stay as a woman, and in tune with your femininity and still be equal. Women one hundred percent support each other in the movie industry. I auditioned for a movie recently and when I went in, the producer said he’d told one of its stars, Naomi Watts, that he was auditioning me and she’d said, ‘She’s so funny, she’s a great actress – you should hire her.’ What a lovely, kind and supportive thing to do for another woman."
What next - writing?:
"My mum and I have actually been writing a script for a thriller together. It’s really fun. She doesn’t understand the rules of screenwriting, so I’m often like, ‘What?! Mum, you can’t kill off the protagonist on page 10!’ She breaks all the rules, which makes it original at least. We’ve had a scream doing it."
Family is everything and will always come first:
"I have an open-house policy and a lot of my friends who don’t have access to childcare drop their kids with me. You’ll often find me in the playroom, surrounded!"
"It’s a myth that you can have it all. You can’t. But, more importantly, I don’t think you should want to. It sounds exhausting! I’m just dipping my toe back into work now. It’s a juggling act and I’m not particularly good at it; the balls are in the air. But my priority is always my family. Motherhood boils everything down to the essentials."
The interview appears in the July issue of Cosmopolitan, on sale 4th June.
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