INTERVIEW: Jena Malone on her Johanna Audition: "I blew them out of the water"

Lady Gunn Magazine has a new lengthy interview with our Johanna Mason - Jena Malone (and some stunning photos). In the interview, she talks about Catching Fire, her career as an actress and how her audition for the coveted role of Johanna Mason went down.

Congrats on THE HUNGER GAMES, by the way. 

Thank you! Can’t comment on it yet, but I’m allowed to say how excited I am to be working on it. It’s a f–king dream! My little sister recommended I read it like two years ago and now she is dying. 

Having been a child actress who’s managed to lead a pretty normal life among the oddity of celebrity, how to you balance the normalcy within the parameters of fame? 

It’s like asking a native how he survives, how he is not susceptible to a modern society. He doesn’t know any different. The idea of fame is more of a construct than a reality. I don’t know, the only metaphor I can give you is high school. Everyone is going to be having weird shit happen or not happen, and I just happen to have a good head on my shoulders. I tried a bunch of things when I was younger, none of them really worked for my appetite. I never really had an inkling to go wild you know, in front of a camera. I feel like what’s so different about some of these women growing up in Hollywood today. 

Nowadays some girls are instant celebrities, whether they deserve it or not, because they played the “Hollywood” game. 

Seriously, you get one film, you hire a publicist and a stylist, all of that, and instantly you look like a celebrity. Where is your voice? Where is your point of view? That’s what made Julia Roberts so interesting when she was younger. And people like Madonna. That’s what makes Meryl Streep interesting every single time she walks out the door. She has a point of view. These other women buy their point of view from stylists or fashion people or agents. But they make far more money than I do. They are getting job offers that I could only dream of. There are some aspects where I wish someone would have just told me when I was a hot-headed 17-year-old, I could have just played the game a little straighter and I would have been able to have more doors open now. 

Well, THE HUNGER GAMES, c’mon, that’s a pretty big coup. 

That’s the funny thing, the only reason I got this is because I blew them out of the water in the audition. It wasn’t because I played the game right and wore the sexy skirt, it was because I went in there and really auditioned and they actually had a casting director that wanted to cast real actors. That is not always the case.

You can read the entire interview and more photos HERE.
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