The Many Magnificent Layers of Toni Collette
And the movie you haven’t seen that showcases them all
Toni Collette can be whomever you need her to be — even if you need her to be multiple people at once.
Sure, she did that literally for three seasons on Showtime’s United States of Tara as the series’ namesake, a woman with dissociative identity disorder whose multiple personalities include a beer-swilling Vietnam vet, a wannabe Stepford wife, and a flirty, rebellious teenager (just to start). Produced by Steven Spielberg, written by a post-Juno Diablo Cody and featuring a pre-It-girl ordained Brie Larson, the show’s progressive look at mental illness provided Collette with a bonafide parade of layered characters to embody, and that she did: Collette could be Chicken, a baby-talking, childlike representation of Tara at five years old, one minute and Shoshanna, Tara’s all-knowing pseudo “therapist” the next, and not only would both incarnations of what is ultimately the same woman be utterly believable, but the transition between them would also be subtle and flawless. Go ahead and gather all of Tara’s alters in a room together, take a minute to catalogue even just a few of the completely distinct mannerisms given to them by Collette, and you will see why she inarguably deserved all the Golden Globe and Emmy Awards the performance brought her. (We’ll wait.)
But Collette doesn’t have to be playing a woman with such literal layers of personality in order to convey the many theoretical contradictions that can coexist within a single character. Since her breakout role in 1994’s Muriel’s Wedding, the Australian actress has excelled at communicating many things about a person at once. Muriel is rather a social misfit, with a predilection towards elaborate, escapist bridal fantasies (set to the songs of ABBA, of course) who would likely be dismissed by one of our current presidential nominees as simply a “loser.” But thanks to Collette’s performance, she is more than just a stereotypical awkward girl who dreams of love and friendship; she is also a warm, charmingly kooky individual who manages to stay hopeful in spite of her not-exactly uplifting surroundings, and because of this we understand why the charismatic Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths, in her first film role) befriends her.
And — fun fact — this ability to convince others to see what she wants them to see is apparently intrinsic to the Sydney native. As a clearly precocious preteen, Collette first tested out her performance abilities on a team of poor, unsuspecting doctors, faking appendicitis so convincingly that they actually performed surgery and removed her appendix — something she does offer emphatic, if still rather funny, apologies for as an adult.
Thus an unnecessarily appendix-free Collette first came stateside post-Muriel’s Wedding for a small part in The Pallbearer (thanks, Schwimmer) and subsequently filled out her mid-‘90s resume with a string of supporting roles, but it was her quietly devastating performance in 1999’s The Sixth Sense that launched her (and writer/director M. Night Shyamalan) into the zeitgeist, earning her an Academy Award nomination in the process. In the supernatural thriller about the boy that now infamously sees dead people, Collette manages to elevate her character above any emotional single mother stereotypes to portray a genuine person whose concern for her troubled son transcends her confusion over what is happening to him and whose at times heartbreaking reactions to it always prove ultimately relatable — if at times tear-inducing. (If this sounds like a lot to achieve in an M. Night Shyamalan movie, just remember: there was a time before the plot twists became expected when he was touted as “the next Spielberg.” And James McAvoy certainly still believes in him.)
Collette brings unmistakable depth — and a healthy dose of humor — to another, completely different single mother in 2002’s About a Boy, a genuinely clever, unsentimentally affecting Nick Hornby book-turned-movie about a thirty-something ne’er do well played by Hugh Grant who is momentarily obsessed with shagging single moms and unwittingly finds himself befriended by an at times odd 12-year-old whose own mother (enter Collette) suffers from depression and has attempted suicide. Sound like the plot of a bad, made for TV movie? (It did later get turned into a TV show.) Fear not: Thanks to the solid, inherently likable performances of its leads, any conveniently created circumstances of plot are easily overlooked.
She anchors 2005’s surprisingly moving story of odd-couple sisters, In Her Shoes, and breathes life into the scattered matriarch of the endearingly fractured Hoover family in the sharply funny Little Miss Sunshine. But Collette’s ability to contain multitudes truly comes to the forefront in 2003’s oft-underrated Japanese Story, an unexpected cross-cultural love story with a shocking twist that essentially breaks the movie in two.
“I love the human dynamic that happens in the movie with Toni Collette’s character, that I think is very rare,” said BD Wong in his November Shortlist, Seeing Ourselves On Screen. “And I think it’s because she is in an exceptional situation.” As Sandy, an ambitious if slightly put upon Australian geologist who is sent to a remote desert mine to meet a visiting Japanese businessman/potential investor who initially mistakes her for his driver, Collette takes us through the veritable gamut of emotions. What starts as palpable cold dislike softens to quiet warmth and then sheer adoration until, in the blink of an eye, tragedy strikes, and we realize we are not in fact watching the movie we thought we were.
But Collette displays the ability to, much like the movie itself, turn on a dime and reveal a completely different side of herself; one that is, inevitably, always worth watching.
