There’s been a lot of Oscar buzz for Nightcrawler, in particular for the daunting performance by Jake Gyllenhaal, but the movie also marks Rene Russo’s return to the big screen after a long hiatus, broken only briefly to play Thor’s mother in the Marvel superhero franchise. It’s a welcome return for a classy actress with a strong Italian heritage on both sides of her family.
Nino Russo, Rene’s father, was an Italian-American mechanic, while Rene’s grandparents, Ciro Russo and Minnie Partinico both emigrated from Italy. Rene’s grandfather on her mother side, John Balocca, was also Italian.
When Rene was just two her father abandoned the family and she along with her sister were raised by her mother and her same-sex lover. It wasn’t the best of times, they were a low-income family living in a nondescript neighborhood of Burbank. She had to drop out of school. Her upbringing could only be described as challenging, but she pulled through and developed a thick skin that would later serve her well in her career.
Rene shot to fame in 1992 with Lethal Weapon 3 alongside Mel Gibson, in the role of internal affairs detective Lorna Cole. A part she fought hard to get by channeling her tough side born out of her childhood. Bringing out her inner street girl was key to convincing director Richard Donner to give her the part. She was already 37, most actresses find their film careers winding down in their thirties, but she made such an impression that she became a fixture in box office hits.
For a decade she co-starred with almost every single male A-lister of the time such as Clint Eastwood in In the line of fire, Dustin Hoffman in Outbreak, John Travolta in Get Shorty, Kevin Costner in Tin Cup and again with Mel Gibson in Ransom.
She knew to feel the different personalities when acting opposite those major movie stars, which translated into a terrific chemistry with all of them. Eastwood, who she describes as a man of few words, was the only one who she really felt intimated by, while Gibson she describes as having a “bouncing off the wall energy”.
Hoffman’s funny side would often erupt during the shoot; Travolta, whose sense of humor is completely different from Hoffman’s, she describes as a very sincere and kind man, while Costner is very focused and serious about his work.
By the end of the nineties Russo was at the top of her game and that successful streak culminated with the role of Catherine Banning in The Thomas Crown Affair remake to which she brought elegance and sophistication. She has an authentic, real quality that most Hollywood actresses don’t have. Then after a couple of box office disappointments she disappeared.
To understand it we need to take a step back and look at Russo’s life in her twenties. She had transitioned to acting from a successful career in modeling, gracing the covers of Vogue, Mademoiselle, and Cosmopo-litan. When she turned thirty and demand slowed down, she walked away. She always saw modeling as something with a beginning and end, same can be said for her acting career. It was never her dream to keep doing it for the rest of the life.
Right at the time when the roles started becoming less interesting she decided to dedicate herself to her family, to be closer to her daughter who was in her crucial teenage years at the time, and do things more meaningful in life. It may sound strange but Rene always craved a simple kind of life, resembling the one of her Italian ancestors. So she worked with the Department of Water and Power on creating native gardens to improve the drought in California. And then she started a dairy company in Buffalo. That company thrived so much to the point that Rene and her business partner, who used to be a chef, turned it into a yogurt business.
She had been out of the industry for six years when director Kenneth Branagh lured her out of retirement for Thor. Russo had no prior knowledge of comic books and superheroes, she just gave into Branagh’s persistency and because she thought it would be fun, to put it in her own words, to play a queen and play with swords.
Now she’s back with Nightcrawler, easily the best work of her career. She took on the role of Nina, a local TV news director in Los Angeles, hungry for ratings and with a dubious morality. A dominant role to which she added a tad of vulnerability, that her husband of twenty two years, renowned screenwriter Dan Gilroy in his debut behind the camera, penned for her even if she didn’t know it at first. At age sixty she showed that she still has all of her charm and seductive power that made her one of the brighter stars.
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