{"id":308265,"date":"2025-11-26T14:25:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T14:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/308265\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T14:25:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T14:25:07","slug":"elizabeth-olsen-has-deeper-ambitions-but-will-hollywood-let-her-achieve-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/308265\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Olsen has deeper ambitions \u2013 but will Hollywood let her achieve them?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Elizabeth Olsen attends a screening for her new romantic comedy Eternity in Los Angeles on Nov. 5.Mario Anzuoni\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Annie Hall, Norma Rae, 9 to 5, The Way We Were, Thelma and Louise, Working Girl, Broadcast News \u2013 these movies turned their female leads into stars, because they connected women\u2019s lives to the culture at large. We saw ourselves in Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Melanie Griffith, Holly Hunter; we empathized with what they struggled against and yearned for. Those kinds of mid-budget films have largely disappeared from cinemas, so today\u2019s actresses are trying to make their cultural connections through streaming series. But for every Big Little Lies that catches fire, many more misfire: The Girlfriend for Robin Wright, Sirens for Julianne Moore, Nine Perfect Strangers for Nicole Kidman. These women want to work. They\u2019re getting less than they deserve.<\/p>\n

If even Julia Roberts can\u2019t entice people into theatres for After the Hunt (though its viewership will ratchet up now that it\u2019s arrived on Prime), what hope does Elizabeth Olsen have with her lightweight romp of a new film, Eternity (in theatres Nov. 26)? <\/p>\n

From the minute she blew my hair back in Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011), I\u2019ve been waiting to see more of that Olsen and her rich talent. She\u2019s been trying: She\u2019s worked with challenging directors (Spike Lee on Oldboy, Azazel Jacobs on His Three Daughters); she\u2019s headlined two interesting limited series (Sorry for Your Loss and Love & Death). But her deeper ambitions were swept aside when she signed onto\/cashed into the role of Wanda Maximoff\/Scarlet Witch in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That juggernaut sucks up the best actors of Olsen\u2019s generation, but it doesn\u2019t use the breadth of their talents; it makes a cultural connection, all right, just not a profound, artistic one. <\/p>\n

Despite Elizabeth Olsen\u2019s best efforts, Eternity is missing sharp wit, big laughs and romantic chemistry<\/a><\/p>\n

I met Olsen, who is 36, in a hotel room last September when Eternity premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. She introduced herself as \u201cLizzie,\u201d wore her hair straight with bangs and looked extremely Mary Tyler Moore in a long, striped button-down shirt, jeans and loafers. \u201cI would love to feel that directors and producers know me, know what I want and can do \u2013 but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s so,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to make art, with great artists, that holds up a mirror to something that is happening in our world, and challenge people with it.\u201d <\/p>\n

She has \u201cseveral projects in development with great filmmakers,\u201d but they\u2019re on hold because they\u2019re not getting the budgets they need. \u201cThese directors know how to make a movie for nothing, but they don\u2019t want to,\u201d she says. \u201cThey know what that will look like.\u201d She feels \u201ccynical and frustrated\u201d that her career is happening at this moment, \u201cwhen everyone is trying to figure out what the film industry is, how do we function in it now, what even is independent cinema anymore, and how do we make something financially okay to invest in?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Olsen made Eternity. Written by Pat Cunnane (fun fact, he\u2019s the son of U.S. congresswoman Madeleine Dean), the script made the Black List of most promising unproduced screenplays in 2022; the film, directed by David Freyne and shot in Vancouver, has the ba-dum-bump rhythm of a Borscht Belt routine, with a thin undercurrent of disappointment bubbling beneath. When Joan (Olsen) dies in her 80s, she discovers that the afterlife is as rife with hucksters as earthly life, but at least she gets to spend it looking 30. However, she has one week to choose what kind of eternity, and with whom: Will she choose her longtime husband, Larry (Miles Teller), whom she knows through and through, or her first love, Luke (Callum Turner), who died young in the Second World War and always left her wanting more? In other words, will she opt for the life she had or the life she missed?<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

In Eternity, Olsen\u2019s character Joan must decide whether to spend the afterlife with her husband Larry, played by Miles Teller, or her lost love Luke.Leah Gallo\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

\u201cI never read a rom-com that I wanted to do until this,\u201d Olsen says. \u201cIt\u2019s sincere. It\u2019s sweet without saccharine, and that\u2019s hard to find.\u201d Larry\u2019s brand of \u201cneurotic romance\u201d reminded her of her own husband, the musician Robbie Arnett, of the band Milo Greene, who just celebrated his 40th birthday. In Eternity, \u201cLarry chokes to death on a pretzel,\u201d Olsen says, laughing. \u201cThat\u2019s absolutely the way Robbie is going to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Joan, Olsen speaks in a jokey-dame voice, which she found by watching \u201ca lot of Anne Meara,\u201d and she borrowed Joan\u2019s \u201chummingbird quality\u201d from the young Shirley MacLaine, especially two of her cultural-touchstone films, The Apartment and Irma la Douce. Both of those women were wised-up, winning actresses who would have been role models for their generation when Joan was young. \u201cJoan would have watched them and internalized their rhythms,\u201d Olsen says. \u201cThey seemed older, even when they were younger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking of wised-up: To succeed in the Marvel Universe, Olsen says, \u201cYou have to summon the ability to feel stupid.\u201d She chuckles wryly, but she means it. \u201cI have to do crazy stuff \u2013 move my fingers as if fire is coming out of them. It\u2019s adorable when you see a girl or boy doing it on a playground, but as a grown woman, it\u2019s hard. You have to find a part of you that believes in it, the way people believe in astrology. You have to choose to commit to it. <\/p>\n

\u201cI feel a bit of that with Eternity as well,\u201d she continues. \u201cWhat if these absurd circumstances were real? Let\u2019s lean into it. Make it the world you exist in.\u201d<\/p>\n

I guess that\u2019s what all these great, somewhat stranded actresses are doing \u2013 Claire Danes in The Beast in Me, Emma Thompson in Down Cemetery Road, Glenn Close and Naomi Watts in All\u2019s Fair. They\u2019re leaning into what they can get. Making the best of the world they exist in. <\/p>\n

As if the universe was agreeing, as I left my interview with Olsen, I ran into one of her Eternity co-stars by the hotel elevator, the actor and comedian John Early. He plays an afterlife co-ordinator who helps Joan make her decision. \u201cElizabeth Olsen,\u201d he stated confidently, \u201cis the Holly Hunter of our time.\u201d But that\u2019s the question: Can she be? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Elizabeth Olsen attends a screening for her new romantic comedy Eternity in Los…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75,2922],"class_list":{"0":"post-308265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-noastack"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}