A terrific and informative article and interview with Chloë Sevigny from BlackBookMag.com, in which Chloë discusses among other things working on Mr. Nice and portraying Judy Marks, Big Love, Drew Droege’s “Chloe Sevigny” drag impression and growing up. Full article under the cut.

Chloë Sevigny on Going from Drug Smuggler to Pre-Op Trans Assassin

No one could ever accuse actor Chloë Sevigny of playing it safe. From her first major role as an HIV-positive teenager in Larry Clark’s KIDS to her Golden Globe Award–winning portrayal of a sister-wife on HBO’s Big Love, the 36-year-old actor and fashion designer has never been one to shy away from controversy. In her latest film, Mr. Nice, Sevigny plays Judy Marks, wife of Howard Marks, a Welsh drug smuggler who was alleged to have once run 10% of the world’s hashish trade. Up next, she’s planning a return to television with two very different miniseries: a Lizzie Borden biopic, in which she’ll play the homicidal lead, and a still-untitled project about a pre-op transsexual assassin, for which she’s readying her Irish brogue.

First, however, a chat — about everything from Patti Smith and bong hits to why her brother Paul won’t be DJing her first Opening Ceremony fashion show next week — from inside Manhattan’s Playwright Tavern, an appropriately unexpected place to meet an Oscar nominee.

Had you known about Howard Marks before signing on to play his wife?
No, but I asked my English friends, who said he was a huge counter-culture icon in the UK. He wrote a book, also called Mr Nice, that every kid over there reads. The alternative kids hero-worship him.

Have you read Judy’s blog?
No, I’m not really into the internet.

She says lovely things about you on it.
We didn’t meet until after I finished shooting the film, but we ended up bonding in Spain. I think Bernard [Rose, the film’s director] didn’t want me to become friendly with her because he didn’t want it to color my performance. He didn’t want me to become more sympathetic to her and to her children, even though I’d read all about it from the book.

She wrote that the two of you have a lot in common, one of those things being that you’ve both had your “fair share of messing about on yachts.” What did she mean by that?
She grew up in a sailing family and so did I. My dad was a big sailor and my brother Paul actually tried to sail in the Olympics. He went to the College of Charleston because of their sailing team. He used to deliver people’s yachts from Newport down to the Caribbean for money, and I’ve done that with him a few times. So that’s probably what she meant, but maybe it’s also a class thing because the English are so obsessed with that. Maybe she means we’re cut from a similar cloth.

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