Though most of the films with Oscar dreams were released during the holiday season, a startling performance can be found in one of the movies released early last year -- Chris Cooper's terrifically nuanced turn as the traitorous FBI agent Robert Hanssen in "Breach."
Cooper, 56, won a supporting actor Academy Award as an outrageous orchid thief in 2002's "Adaptation" but is considered a dark-horse candidate for an actor nod for "Breach," which hit movie screens in February 2007.
Hanssen was a mass of contradictions. A devout Catholic, he taped he and his wife having sex and was interested in pornography. Though a company man for the FBI, he stole information from the agency and sold it to the KGB, causing not only potentially devastating breaches in security, but also the deaths of many American agents. The film, which was co-written and directed by Billy Ray, also stars Ryan Phillippe as Eric O'Neill, a young FBI trainee assigned to work with and keep tabs on Hanssen.
Cooper, a slight, soft-spoken man, sat down in the Beverly Hills office of his publicist to talk about "Breach" just prior to attending a screening at the Aero Theatre late last year.
The ending scene when Hanssen is in the elevator is so haunting.
Apparently it's Billy's favorite scene.
Well, it's that look on your face and the deadness behind your eyes. How do you get into that mind-set?
Billy gave me several suggestions and I think in all we did 14 takes of different suggestions. And I knew when he made the suggestion for this take that this would be the one. The suggestion was so strong -- you will never see your family again. And what I also tried to get across was -- and you would really have to study the film to see it -- is from the time he was captured to the time you see him in the elevator, he has been interrogated for 30 hours straight. The FBI had done their job and he knows what his situation is now, so that suggestion was the most true to work with.
How did you become involved in the project? Did Billy Ray come to you?
The people I work with got ahold of it a little early and I flipped because this was the best script I had read for a long time. I knew it was a stretch anyway because I had never played -- and it's still in question whether it is a lead or a supporting role -- a lead for a studio film. And so I said I want to do this, can we hook up with Billy and see if he is interested. Billy was. Then I had to realize that in a few weeks -- and indeed it did happen when word got out how good a script this was -- the big names were knocking at Universal's door. And something I have never done before, I called the head of Universal, I said I am sure you have talked to Billy and he wants to work with me, but I know you'll have bigger names coming to you for this character and if that is the case, I understand. But she stuck by me.
What was it about the script that made you so determined to play the part?
The structure and the character and the relationships were just rock solid. I remember when he had been captured . . . the news coverage only lasted three days and then it was gone. And since then I have had my theories as to why that was. Now after all the research and all the books that came out about Hanssen since his capture it became crystal clear why -- it was such an embarrassment for the FBI. When they started piecing together how long Hanssen had been doing this and the amount of information, they didn't know what state this country was in and how vulnerable it was. Because when you dig into Hanssen's background and the stuff he did give the KGB it was monumental stuff. He told them that the Russian Embassy in Washington was bugged and he gave them all the information on technology, codes, agents, Russian agents who were being turned to work for the United States
and he gave away the continuity of how and where we will be to run the government if there would ever be a nuclear attack.
Actors have frequently said that they won't take a role if they can't find some aspect to like about a character. Do you feel that way?
It is not so much "like." I don't necessarily have to find something to like about the character. I have to believe the character. There was a psychological study of him after his capture and just as he was able to justify and believe those parts of his life that he compartmentalized, I had to believe whatever those scenes called for however contradictory they were.
Is it hard to break free of a character like Hanssen when you aren't on set?
It depends on if my wife is with me. If she's with me on location, she is not going to put up with me bringing the baggage home or the character for one minute. I was pretty much on my own up in Toronto when we were shooting "Breach" and it is a fine line. It is not like I go home to the apartment and I brood and carry this character with me, but he is always on my mind because I have got scenes to shoot tomorrow and the day after and the day after and I'm still working on this guy. So I can behave socially pretty normally with people but when I walk into the apartment I'm thinking about the guy.
Did you talk with Eric O'Neill to get insight into Hanssen?
A whole lot. We had the luxury of having him for a week before shooting. I had been given as much video as there was. I didn't have any audio of his vocal qualities, so it did get to the point that I said to Eric, give me your best impersonation of this guy, physically, how he delivers his dialogue. But that wasn't going to work because his delivery was so slow. So many people, even his wife, said he is not the life of the party, never has been. So all that stuff kind of had to go out the door. And I'm not 6 foot 3, or 6 foot 4. But what was constantly in any interview going back to his high schools students -- they said he was not a guy who stood out.
Maybe selling the secrets to the KGB was his way of standing out? To make him important.
That was my secret justification for this character. It wasn't money by any means. He was such a wholesale giver of information he could have spread this out and demanded much more and he would have gotten the money. I think his ego craved praise for what he was doing. And the KGB handled him really well. In no other form, not in his family life, not in church, not from the RBI did he get that praise and that feeding of his ego where he was important.
susan.king@latimes.com
