Grandma knows best

Susan Sarandon says Peter Jackson wooed her for the role of Grandma Lynn. Photo / Supplied

Sarandon plays Grandma Lynn in The Lovely Bones. The character, who comes to help her daughter's family cope in the wake of the murder of young Susie, acts as the liquored light relief in a movie where almost everyone else is paralysed by grief. Or dead and gone somewhere else.

Talking in Wellington, a few hours before the film's New Zealand premiere, Sarandon says she was happy to play the happy one. After all, she has already done plenty of on-screen suffering.

"I have done the agony - I've lost any number of children on celluloid and got sick children and died myself, so I didn't miss not having to go through the agony. It was quite nice to be the one to remind people to live and letting in the light. I didn't miss the agony at all."

Sarandon was a fan of the book and remembers how it caught a mood in the wake of 9/11. Among her steady screen work, the New York-based actress appeared in and toured with play The Guys, about a magazine editor helping a Manhattan fire chief compose eulogies for his fallen comrades.

"I specifically remember it being passed around the firefighter wives," she says of the novel "and it had that very consoling notion that the energy of that person is still somewhere around - especially in a violent unexpected death."

Fittingly enough for someone who ends up playing a major part of it, Sarandon says it was the story of Susie's family that grabbed her more than the novel's otherwordly realm. "I have to say I was not interested in the Inbetween, at all. For some reason it did not resonate with me. It was more the idea of the family and how that was going down.

"So I always tell people who ask 'should I read the book first?' ... I say, 'No, go see the film and you won't be looking for the subplots that didn't get in there and you won't be distracted by that. But you will have a great idea of what the Inbetween is like and you can read the book and find out all the other stuff that didn't make it into the movie'."

Jackson sought Sarandon out for the role by mail. She was intrigued by the idea of what the director might do with the film.

"I thought Heavenly Creatures hybrid with The Lord of the Rings. He wrote me a lovely letter explaining why he thought the character was important and who that character was and why I would be the best person to play it.

"To work with a director who has an autonomy and power to deliver that vision is really rare and so I was flattered that they asked me and really excited to play that character.

The role is also the screen veteran's - she's 63 but looks 10 or more years younger in the flesh - first grandma. "It was, and it has seemed to have traumatised most of the press," she says, laughing. "but she was such a ballsy funny character that it didn't register as much as a grandma as much as a drinking, smoking, consistently inappropriate person who unexpectedly saves the day.

"So that I just found so interesting. It's a great period, the way it looks and all of that. You can trace the character's arc through my hair. How my great hairdo deconstructs as I get more involved in everyday living."

Asked earlier at the film's Wellington press conference, how she had prepared for grandma's constant imbibing, Sarandon deadpanned: "You have to drink an inordinate amount so you don't get a problem with your elbow when you are drinking constantly."

"I started training as soon as I got Peter's letter. I started drinking in the evenings, during the day and on the weekends but I didn't start smoking until I actually got to Pennysylvania because I didn't want the children to see that."

It's not her first film with a Kiwi creative mind behind it. Way back in 1975, one of her first big screen roles was playing the wide-eyed innocent Janet in the Rocky Horror Picture show written and starring Hamilton's very own Richard O'Brien.

"I never realised he was from New Zealand."

Don't think he did, either. More like outer space ...

"Yeah. I love The Rocky Horror Show. I get letters from people saying 'The Rocky Horror Show started kind of freeing me and after Thelma and Louise I left wherever I was'."

Sarandon last saw the cult classic Rocky Horror last Halloween.

It was in New York, where she owns a ping-pong club and bar called Spin, and where they put on a screening complete with enough live accompaniment to put you off your serve.

"And all these young people who do that in front of the screens, did a whole presentation that night. It's just unbelievable that people are doing that all these years later. It's unbelievable."

Lowdown

Who: Susan Sarandon actress and activist

Key roles: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), The Other Side of Midnight (1977), Pretty Baby (1978), Atlantic City (1980), The Hunger (1983), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Bull Durham (1988), White Palace (1990), Thelma & Louise (1991), Lorenzo's Oil (1992), Little Women (1994), Dead Man Walking (1995), Stepmom (1998), The Banger Sisters (2002), Alfie (2004), In the Valley of Elah (2007).