Air's Gellar Finds Sorrow

From scifi.com

Air's Gellar Finds Sorrow

The ebullient Sarah Michelle Gellar told SCI FI Wire that she will play against type in the upcoming fantastical movie The Air I Breathe, playing a character called Sorrow.

"It's basically based on the Chinese concept of emotion," Gellar said in an interview last week while promoting her upcoming SF epic movie Southland Tales. "And each one of the actors represents an emotion. And the general concept behind it is that, until you've experienced all the emotions, you can't really live [any of] them. You don't know ... pleasure until you've known sorrow. You don't know happiness until you've known pain. ... So we represent those different characters."

Gellar plays Sorrow opposite Kevin Bacon's Love, Brendan Fraser's Pleasure and Forest Whitaker's Happiness. Other cast members include Julie Delpy and Andy Garcia. The movie is directed by Jieho Lee.

"At the end, you sort of realize how those emotions are all intertwined, i.e., how those characters are all intertwined," Gellar said. "So they're four seemingly unrelated vignettes until you realize how they're all sort of connected."

Gellar, best known from TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, added that she welcomed the chance to play against type. "For me now, it's all about challenges," Gellar said. "I've had wonderful success, and I'm so proud of what I've done. And now it's about growing and about taking projects, not necessarily the $100 million big movies, but being able to find myself as an actor and where that puts me. And I didn't realize how depressing it was going to be to play a character called Sorrow all day long. Like, it resonates for you for far too long."

Gellar's Sorrow is a pop star. "She's basically the epitome of the young girl who is part of the man-made machine, who has a talent but has never gotten to make decisions for herself and has never really learned who she is, just sort of goes through the motions of life," she said. "And what happens when something wakes you up and you feel real emotion. You learn pleasure."

The Air I Breathe is slated for release Jan. 25, 2008. —Patrick Lee, News Editor