On the red carpet at the Monte Carlo TV Festival you were accompanied by your family. Have you ever had a role that compares with being a wife and mother?
Credit: CBS
Not really, no. I think being a mum is much more complicated than you could condense into any project. I've tried to show pieces of that in different projects I've worked on. With Medium we had a family for seven years - a working marriage with three girls. In Boyhood I was a single mum, married, divorced. And on CSI: Cyber I had a marriage and I had a family.
Is there anything about this role in particular that you're enjoying?
Part of what I think is fascinating about this whole project is that usually I play characters who are very heart-based and very empathetic but this character is very brain-based. She's developed this mechanism for survival to profile people psychologically - to figure out what choices they'll make to keep herself safe but also to keep the world safe. Also she has this skill set, again of her brain, which is cyber analytics and understanding the new technologies we live with. People who are her age got into technology very early on and they were all a bit eccentric, the people who went into this field, so for me it's a very different character because of that and the project itself is very interesting because I find this is where crime is really going. Most of us, we go on the internet and we go shopping, we check in with our friends, but there are a lot of things that are happening on the internet which are terrifying.
You're having an amazing year, with all the awards recognition for Boyhood and now being on CSI: Cyber. Does it feel like your career has hit a peak?
It's very strange but the age I was coming to is when Hollywood kind of ages you out of the system. I obviously knew I was working on Boyhood for many years so during the time I went cold, in a way, in the art movie market as far as some people's concepts went. I knew I was working on this project and it was like having an ace in your pocket. I was also working on Medium for many of those years and sometimes journalists would say to me 'You used to make these great art movies' and I'd reply 'I'm making a great art movie right now'. They'd say 'No, really, you used to make great art movies' and I'd say 'I really am making a great art movie right now'. I signed on for CSI before Boyhood came out. I really enjoy doing film and television and I think I got into television before a lot of film actors did. It's important to me as a woman to be given this opportunity to have this global franchise in CSI. It was their idea to have a female lead who's middle-aged. I loved that idea and I was excited about working with them. I really like working with this whole team of people.
What kind of reaction have you had to your Oscars speech about equal pay for women?
It's been pretty incredible. A woman told me the next day 'My boss pulled me in and gave me a raise'. I've met so many along the way. For instance there's a woman in California who I just met who has two Masters degrees, she teaches mathematics and she heard in the lunch room that her colleagues made $20,000 more a year than she did. This is working for the schools, the school district, working for the government in the United States, so across the board it's very, very, very important to women. In some communities we have 70% single mums supporting families in America. If African-American women are getting paid 64 cents on the dollar it is horribly impacting their community. Latino women in California, the seventh largest economy in the world, last year made 44 cents for every dollar their male counterparts made. They've having to take two or three jobs and that's obviously impacting their children. If women in America made the same as their male counterparts half of the 66 million women and children living in poverty would no longer be. Women have been struggling for a long time and they've been talking about this and I have the opportunity to highlight that. With our lesbian sisters and our transgender sisters, we have lesbian partners who are penalized by $20,000 a year because they're women.
Do you think nowadays it's easier for women to find leading roles on TV rather than in movies?
Yes, I do. Well, I think there are a lot of roles for young women in movies, oftentimes as a romantic counterpart, and that is part of the human story - it's an important of the human story otherwise as a species we wouldn't continue to make babies. But definitely there's better roles for women in television, I think. I just won an Oscar so you'd think at this moment I should be getting every opportunity in film for these sort of parts and there's just not very many of them, even right after you win an Academy Award. But I love doing television anyway. My great grandparents were involved in vaudeville - I'm a fourth generation actor - and vaudeville was cheap entertainment for the masses. With television also, you can entertain people in an old folks' home or people who are living in poverty. They have to watch commercials but if you're on network television it's free and I really like the idea of entertainment for people that's free.
Since starting the show have you changed all your passwords?
[Laughs] I did more than change my passwords. There's something called 'dual passwords' you can get on some email accounts - I know in America you can - where you sign in on your devices once and if anyone else tries to sign on for you they send you an alert. That's one of the things you can do. Cover your camera all the time too. With the first generation the light would go on to show you someone had turned your camera on remotely but now with the new hacks the light doesn't even go on so you don't know when people are watching you or not. There's a lot of malware on a lot of programmes that can wait for months before it turns itself on and which can do screenshots. I don't have any email on my phone at all. [Laughs] I'm a little neurotic. But really, a lot of my stuff is so boring a hacker would probably commit suicide after reading it.
How is your working relationship with your producer Jerry Bruckheimer?
I've always loved Jerry. I've known him over the years through the business and his wife Linda as well. She's actually a very good writer. I'd always wanted to work with him and I was very excited about this project when it came my way. I think Jerry has a real understanding of entertainment and he has his pulse on audiences in a way other people don't. He's very supportive of his whole staff, he empowers them and he likes television to move and to feel like movies.
Can you tell us a little bit about what makes your character Avery Ryan tick?
She's a cyber psychologist so she has these two skill sets: The profiling of people and the psychology of criminals and also this cyber element. She's the team leader basically and there's a certain responsibility with that. Her team are much younger people and it's a very interesting time in law enforcement because many of the people who have the strongest skills sets are kids and some of them are criminals who are kids. So she's got this group of kids who she feels very maternal towards. She doesn't feel very comfortable exposing her emotional past or going to places where she feels emotional, and yet she's put in circumstances where sometimes she feels she has to deal with her emotional reality and that makes her uncomfortable. As a woman I remember reading a criticism about the movie Damage where Juliette Binoche played this character who was very assertive and aggressive and intense, and this critic said she was far too masculine for that role. I thought 'Wait a minute, this is an incredible actress and she was in The Unbearable Lightness Of Being and she was so vulnerable and intimate and open, so it's not her essence, it's her acting choice'. I feel Avery Ryan is very different to my other characters. She's not as warm, not as open. For me as a woman and as an actor, there's a subconscious expectation for women to be warm and vulnerable. I remember at one point during CSI a director said to me 'You're being kind of mean to him' and I was like 'But this is the bad guy!' I don't think he would say that to a guy.
How do you feel about the importance of the Monte Carlo TV Festival, which has now been going for 55 years?
It's an early-adopter that's very much embracing of television, a very forward-thinking festival, in my mind and my experience the international festival of television that American actors really know about. Of course this country has an incredible history of the love of acting. Look at Grace Kelly; she was one of our great gifts as an actress from America so there's a real connection to good acting and entertainment here.
What have been your highlights of your career so far?
It's funny because there were times where people could say 'That was not a great film' or 'That was not a great project' but then there were times as a single mum where I was worried about money and it fed my kid so I valued that project a lot. It meant a lot to me to know I could feed my kid, pay my rent, pay my union dues, take my kid to the doctor… But obviously there were a lot of beautiful experiences I had on True Romance. It was an incredible experience for me. I'll never be able to thank Tony Scott enough. He taught me to trust my instincts as an actress. With every single idea I had he'd say 'That's a great idea'. The one or two times he said 'I don't know about that' we'd shoot it and he'd go 'You know what? You were right'. But every time Christian [Slater] would have an idea he'd go 'That's a terrible idea'. He was the first director who really taught me 'Go with your instincts, go further with your instincts, trust your instincts' and I have to say that's fed me my whole career.
As part of an acting dynasty it's in your blood, but do you think you'd ever have done anything else as a career?
I'm sure if you look at DNA at some point they'll be able to dissect it and say 'You have that gene and that's why you're doing this'. At one point I wasn't sure if I wanted to act or be a midwife, but I was more afraid of acting and failing - of being a bad actor and not getting work - so I decided that more than being an actor or a midwife I wanted to be a brave person. So I decided for one year I was going to try to act. Every day I would dissect an acting performance or go on an audition and do something towards acting, and what I found was I got a job acting. Then I had to show up at the set and it was terrifying and I'd say 'OK, so now I know my lines I have to hit this mark and not look at it and act'. And I felt terrible; I felt like a terrible actor but again my concept was to be brave so for that whole year I committed to that and I continued getting work and little by little I felt I was getting a little better at it and understanding it more.
Ted Danson will join CSI: Cyber in the second season. Does this mean you'll be sharing the lead roles?
I think shows always revamp a little bit between season one and season two. You have to shoot so much of your first series before it ever airs so you always go back - it's part of the process of it finding itself and its groove. We're all so excited about Ted coming on. I got to do a couple of crossover episodes with him and I love him as a person. He's lovely to the crew and so talented. But I never worry about power sharing or anything. I embrace that. I feel like you're only as good as the other people in the scene with you. I am the lead on this show as a woman but I also feel like we're all leads on the show. I want everyone to feel like that on the set.
Why do you think audiences and critics are embracing diversity on television more than in movies?
That's a very good question. I do think we are seeing a lot of the television business starting to explore diversity and seeing the strength in diversity, and that's really exciting. I think movies are behind. I'm not sure why that is but I do think in many ways the film industry has gotten a little out of touch. Our director on Boyhood was raised by a single mum. He saw that woman in his life - the one we all know in our lives but you don't really see her in movies very much. But he valued his mum and her contribution and who she was, and I think that was a little bit of a surprise to Hollywood - that people wanted to see characters like that. So I do think the movie business is still a little bit out of touch.
You've just received a Crystal Nymph at The Monte Carlo TV Festival. What do you enjoy about being in France and also about attending the festival?
As I say, in America we perceive this as THE big international television festival. It's a huge festival and it's a great honour to be here and also to get a lifetime achievement award in this beautiful country, with Grace Kelly having been a strong component of this royal family here. Her place in the story of this nation and in entertainment and in America is beautiful. I've always loved France. My father's side of the family comes from France. We were very early settlers in Quebec in Canada and also in America, but before that we came from France. I have to do more research and track down my bloodline here.
Why does the crime genre appeal to you and do you have any idea why the majority of the audience for crime shows is feminine?
That's interesting. I didn't know most of the crime audience was women so that's very interesting, but I think women like to figure out what's going on. We like to use our brains to figure out what's happening, who's telling the truth, who's lying, what's going on, who's dangerous, who's safe… It kind of goes back to when were in the cave, I think. [Laughs] 'You're both wearing loincloths but someone killed that animal. Whose belly is fuller? Let me see!' I've always been interested in the crime genre but I also love horror, I love comedy... I love all genres, but I definitely like the crime genre as well.
You're incredibly busy. Do you have much time for family life and for just relaxing at home?
I don't relax very well. I always seem to have projects, so I'm cleaning the closet out or the basement or something. This last year was very hectic because I was shooting the show and doing a lot of press for Boyhood on the weekends, at festivals, on awards shows and all of this. But in general I don't go out. I just go to dinner with my family or cook dinner with my family. I don't go out on the weekends; I hang out with my kids on the weekends. Whenever I have a vacation I'm with my kids. That's kind of how we do it. Most of my friends I've been friends with since I was six or seven and their kids are there too. I know I work a lot and when we do this show we shoot 12-hour days every day, but my daughter will come to the set, she'll eat dinner and do her homework there and I'll hang out with her in between breaks. And when I'm not working at night I'll put her to bed or do her homework with her, and then I'm with the family at weekends. That's where I want to be - with my family.
After doing Medium, did you ponder about doing CSI: Cyber, as making a TV show can be very demanding of your time? And how are you with technology?
I've never been much for technology personally but I've always been terrified by it. The US government got hacked twice in the last couple of weeks, banks had a billion dollars stolen recently, so I've always been terrified by technology but we've let the genie out of the box. Now it's out there and what is it doing out there? How rapidly is it morphing and changing? That's really interesting to me. And did I think a long time before accepting CSI? I did. I was very tired when I finished Medium. I loved working on that show but I was really exhausted. I took some time, I did some films and I also worked on Boardwalk Empire but I wasn't the lead on that so I didn't have to carry the whole show - which is part of what I love about Ted coming in and the other kids on this show, all of the other people. I like being part of an ensemble. It's difficult to be in every single shot in every single scene and also I feel at a certain point you get so tired that you get diminishing returns. You can't be completely focused and as prepared as you want to be. But they're so organized at CSI. They know what they're doing and it's ahead of time, so it's a very different animal. They're on top of it and it makes my job a lot easier.
CSI: Cyber - Complete Season 1 is available on DVD Box Set now.
Tagged in Crime Scene Investigation Patricia Arquette