Cameron Diaz and Sofia Vassilieva in My Sister's Keeper.
In the midst of an action packed summer movie week comes a story of a young girl with cancer and a family who’s willing to fight for her life. Based on the bestselling book from Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper reveals surprising truths that challenge one’s perceptions of family love and loyalty and give new meaning to the definition of healing. Directed by Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook),My Sister’s Keeper stars Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, and Sofia Vassilieva.
The film is an emotional journey through Kate’s (Vassilieva) life. After being diagnosed with a rare form of Leukemia as a child, her parents Sara (Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric) decide the only way to save her life is by conceiving a perfect genetic match, Anna (Breslin) to help Kate with medical procedures. Eleven years into an endless routine of complications and hospital visits, Kate’s kidneys begin to fail. Her parents turn to Anna, but for the first time she denies her help and asks the question—“what about me?” Thus begins a moral questioning and a controversial lawsuit, when Anna hires her own lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to seek medical emancipation.
Cameron, this is the first time you take on the role of a mother—did you have any reservations?
Diaz: It didn’t really cross my mind. I didn’t really worry about it. I thought about the story, the people and this woman—who I judged—and then I realized that I couldn’t. I was completely taken by the story that I just wanted to be a part of it. I am not 25 anymore and so I could have a 16 year old child—I could and I might [laughs]. I’m sure I have a couple of them out there that I don’t know about.
How did you all feel when you read this script?
Diaz: Family is so important. What drew all of us to this story was the family, and the stories of each of these characters. Neither Sofia nor Abigail has a sister.
Breslin: In the movie, my character and Sofia’s character, Kate, are sisters, and my character loves her sister so much that she’s willing to go to any lengths to help her. That’s what I liked about the movie. You think that this family is all in this big problem, which they are, but they all love each other, even though they’re going through this whole thing.
Diaz: Reading this script, I think we all related to the fact that there isn’t anything that you wouldn’t give someone that you love that deeply. You do whatever it takes to keep that person alive.
What were some of the challenges you or your character faced?
Vassilieva: The biggest challenge was isolating myself from the character. To play someone that is so ready to let go and who has disassociated herself from the family –it was a constant struggle for me.
Breslin: Well, my character is at a point where she has to choose between her sister and her family. She is also at a point where she doesn’t know who she is and doesn’t know what her place is. I think that is definitely a hard thing [to go through]. What I learned through the movie was that you cannot take anything for granted.
Tell us about Nick Cassavetes, as a director.
Diaz: I think Nick being an actor himself, prior to being the director he is today, really helps his ability to communicate with his actors. He has a wonderful sense of humanity and what it really is to feel things on the level that these people feel.
Did you meet cancer patients before filming this?
Vassilieva: I met with cancer patients and doctors, and visited City of Hope. We all fell in love with a few incredible kids, including Nicole, Paul and Kelsey. They really were there, on a daily basis, to be a guide and a reference point, and lead the way.
Can you talk about feeling a connection with people who have actually gone through this, and how difficult it will be for someone who has had a family member go through this, or have a personal experience with it?
Vassilieva: One of my very big concerns, after having met with Nicole, was how is this movie going to affect those who have gone through it and who’ve lived this, day in and day out.
Diaz: Nicole was one of the girls who was Sofia’s ‘advisor."
Vassilieva: She was my guiding light. And so I sat down with her and said, 'You’ve been through this, you’ve seen this, you know this firsthand. How can you go see it (as a movie)?' And she looked at me and told me that we’d be telling the story of these people and these families. She told me, 'You go do them justice. You go show these people what [our] lives are like. Don’t shy away from hiding it, or being overly kind. Show the reality of it because that’s what it was.'"
Diaz: All we can do, as actors, is do the best that we can, if we don’t actually have the experience of it. Sofia looked like she was dying, but she was a vital, young girl. Same with myself. I’m not a parent, but I know what it is to love, very deeply, something that I wouldn’t want to have taken away from me. So, all we can do is just empathize with that.
Breslin: My grandpa had cancer, so I have had personal experience with it. You just take from what you do know and what you are familiar with.
Cameron, did you ever feel like you really were the mom?
Diaz: The wonderful thing about our job is that we pretend. There’s a place of pretending, and that is on set and in the film, when we were rolling. But, I would never try to be these two girls’ moms, outside of that. I had just met them, so our experience was very authentic to who we are, as Abby and Sofia and myself and Evan [Ellingson]. I don’t think they would like me as much, if I was actually their mother.
Breslin: Of course, doing the scenes, there is a certain time where you do have to stay in it, in between takes…but I think that we also managed to [do other things]. Cameron would cook in her trailer for us a lot. She made chili cheese fries one day.
Diaz: I would ask the kids, 'What do you want to eat today?' and each one of them got to pick what they got to eat for lunch, for a day. Evan always wanted fajitas, Abby wanted chili cheese fries, and Sofia was on a special diet for the whole thing, so I would try to force her to eat stuff that she wasn’t supposed to.
What do you know now that you want to share with these girls?
Diaz: Oh come on, I am twice their age and plus. The lessons they have to learn cant come from me…I did teach Abby how to say the f-word. I taught her how to drop the f-bomb in every way possible. [Laughs]. I even told her mother that I was teaching her to swear and she said, 'It's about time.'
When she didn't swear, I said, 'You're starting to offend me, Abby. If you don't start swearing every three words then I will fine you.' It was all in good fun—we didn’t really want her to swear.
After making this film, have any of you thought about becoming advocates for the cause?
Vassilieva: I’m an honorary ambassador for Stand Up To Cancer. And I recently took a trip to Memphis and visited the kids in the hospital, and really learned about this incredible facility, founded by Danny Thomas, which really, surprisingly goes all the way. They don’t just care about the child. If you can’t cover your medical expenses, they’ll do it for you. They care about the family, to a point where, when you have bone marrow aspirations and you’re getting transplants and you’re in isolation for weeks on end, they create a room next door for your parents with a shower and a couch, and they really make sure that everybody’s okay.
Breslin: I went to a Stand Up To Cancer event and I got to actually take calls and talk to some of the people who were making donations.
Diaz: I think all the organizations that have come to light in the last decade since we’ve found ourselves, as a society, riddled with cancer, are amazing. For me, a lot of my focus is going towards environmental thought of what’s creating this cancer for our society. What’s our overall health and what are we doing to cause this? So, my focus is more on education of how we can be healthy overall, every day, and hopefully cut out some of these things that might be causing the cancer.
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