Gretchen Mol: 'Millers in Marriage' is 'about still having something to say'

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- Gretchen Mol says her character in writer-director Edward Burns' new movie Millers in Marriage, in theaters and digital video-on-demand Friday, moved her personally. Mol plays Eve, a former musician who gave up her career ambitions for her family.

In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Mol, 52, said Burns allowed her to choose the character in the film she wished to play. Having acted since the '90s, Mol said she related to Eve rediscovering her desire for self-expression.

"Ed addressed this so well," Mol said. "It is about still having something to say and finding out where and how to say it."

Burns has also been making movies since his 1995 debut, The Brothers McMullen. In addition to writing and directing Millers, he plays Eve's brother, a divorcee finding new love.

Eve's husband, Scott (Patrick Wilson), discourages her from revisiting her music, claiming she gave it up because it was not popular enough to sustain a career. However, a reporter, Johnny (Benjamin Bratt), interviewing Eve for a story on Scott, encourages her to pick up the guitar again.

"I think a lot of people find themselves at this age feeling like they laid down some definitive tracks for your life and that is it, and it's not," Mol said. "You can make changes at any time. I try to instill that idea in my children too. If that doesn't work, you pivot and do something else."

Mol's path in acting appeared to be on a certain course when the September 1998 issue of Vanity Fair asked if Mol was "Hollywood's next 'It' Girl." Playing the female lead in the Matt Damon poker drama Rounders and a role in Woody Allen's Celebrity that year certainly made it a possibility.

"Certain parts of a dream did absolutely come true for me and I feel so grateful for that," Mol said. "It then becomes a job and you have a family and you have a life and you have other priorities."

Though Mol never had a blockbuster starring vehicle, she still worked steadily, including playing Bettie Page in a 2005 biopic and starring in five seasons of Boardwalk Empire and episodes of the Perry Mason reboot.

"I don't have regrets," Mol said. "It's interesting in a career, sometimes it's the things you have no control over what hits and what misses, but you give the same effort to all of it."

For example, her first of three films released in 1999 was The Thirteenth Floor, a sci-fi movie about people living in a virtual world. Coming out one month after The Matrix, it suffered at the box office, but Mol said she did not see the films as competitive.

"It was a quirky script that I had trouble understanding while we were making it too," Mol said of Thirteenth Floor. "It's such a fascinating film and this is what I love. People continue to discover it, people that are science fiction fans."

Likewise, in Millers, Johnny rediscovers Eve's music and reawakens her passion for it. Still, it was important to Mol that Eve does not jump right into bed with Johnny. Scott's hostility almost pushes her into Johnny's arms, but Mol appreciated Burns' approach to the love triangle.

"I thought it was okay for her to walk up to the line," Mol said. "She needed the catalyst to see her life again and almost be able to see herself through his perception of her."

Mol learned to play the guitar for a scene in which Eve starts writing a song again.

"I got to learn how to play the Cranberries' 'Zombie,'" she said of her guitar lessons. "I was happy that Ed used that piece of me singing because it was so important to see her in her creative process and then being interrupted by this husband."

The end credits for Millers in Marriage feature another song by Mol recorded in a studio.

"We didn't spend hours and hours and hours on it," she said. "We went in and laid it down. It was fun, really fun."

Millers in Marriage is not the first time Mol has sung for a movie -- she previously performed for The Blackout and American Loser.

In addition, comedy The Ten has all the characters sing an absurd rock song at the end, another role upon which Mol looks back fondly.

"I wish I could do more of that kind of thing," she said of the film.

Since Millers in Marriage, Mol has also wrapped the film Horse Girls, in which she plays the mother to a neurodivergent teenager. Her most recent standout role may be her portrayal of John Dutton's (Kevin Costner) late wife in two episodes of the hit series Yellowstone.

"How fun that I stumbled into this thing," Mol said. "It's such a phenomenon really, so that's just lovely to be a part of it in any way."