Jena Malone is a tough little nut from Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Razor-sharp and streetwise, she rolls her words while dragging on a cigarette as if her life depended on it. She talks, at times, as if she has just delivered an insult or two, and is asking what you are going to do about it. But she has somehow managed to transform her sassy manner into a pristine performance, and a surprisingly perfect English accent, as the 15-year-old rebel Lydia Bennet in a new film version of Pride and Prejudice.
It was her edginess and determination that won Malone, 20, the role in the first place. “We had no real intention of casting an American,” recalls the producer, Paul Webster. “But we were interviewing British girls in LA, and she drove the seven hours from Lake Tahoe to see us. She read for the part in a sort of aggressive cockney, but she had something special.” Malone was duly drafted in as one of the five Bennet sisters, alongside the Brit actresses Keira Knightley (Elizabeth), Rosamund Pike (Jane), Carey Mulligan (Kitty) and Talulah Riley (the hapless Mary, who can strangle a song at 20 paces). Even the director, the unknown Joe Wright, surprised himself at the choice. And he delivers a few surprises of his own in a vigorous, youthful and, at times, brilliant version of the Austen classic.
“Lydia was the ‘problem teen’ of her day, before the word ‘teenager’ was invented,” says Wright. “She gets seduced at 15 by the cad George Wickham (Rupert Friend). The family is only saved from disgrace by Mr Darcy (Matthew MacFadyen), who secretly comes to their rescue by persuading Wickham to do the decent thing and propose marriage. We needed a special spark for what we were trying to get across — and Jena delivers that by a mixture of her attitude and her natural acting ability.”
That aptitude has so far helped Malone accrue a roll call of 23 films and television movies, covering half her life. She has always managed to make some sort of impact, however small the role. She was Gretchen Ross in Donnie Darko (2001) and the ferry girl in Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain (2003), and she did a star turn in last year’s Saved! as a Christian girl who offers her virginity to a boyfriend she fears may be gay. It is the sort of role in which Malone seems to revel.
“I get to play a lot of teenage girls with supposed problems,” she says. “But I don’t see them as problems — just part of the process of growing up.” Malone has experienced a few difficulties of her own, including legal action six years ago against her mother, Debbie, for mismanagement of her earnings and failure to pay taxes.
“It was not an attack on my mom, who has been great, but it was necessary to get my finances in order,” she says. “She has done her best in what many people would regard as unusual circumstances.” These include Malone being brought up by her mother and her female lover in a lesbian relationship. “I was the result of a one-night stand,” she says blithely, “but I was brought up in a loving home.”
There have been further family complications equally far from Austen’s imagination. Malone’s mother became pregnant for a second time by a different man, resulting in a daughter, Madison, now 8. Although she continued her relationship with her female lover after the birth, she recently married Madison’s father. “It is complicated,” says Malone, with a cheerful shrug. “I have about eight stepsisters and stepbrothers, for a variety of reasons.”
Perhaps such a background kick-started her interest in acting? “I started acting as a child because I loved stories and wanted to be part of them,” she says simply. “I thought it would be something I could do for a few years, but it shows no sign of going away.” She is still not banking on a long-term career. “I have always had to be careful not to create too many expectations,” she says. “I may end up creating too many disappointments for myself.”
There was no such disappointment in Pride & Prejudice, which is set in 1797, the year Austen, then 21, wrote an early draft of the book, rather than in 1813, when it finally appeared in print. “The trouble with historical settings is that you can never imagine living in them,” says Malone. “But with this, I could. The only problem was getting my accent right. You guys have intricate dialects, more so than anywhere else. So, in the end, I worked with a voice coach every day and learnt it by ear.”
She knew she had plenty to live up to. The classic BBC series of 10 years ago stands out like a beacon. Julia Sawalha was an energetic Lydia, opposite Adrian Lukis’s Wickham. And, although there has been only one significant film version, in 1940, with Ann Rutherford as Lydia, the role in a succession of television productions always seems to have gone to a lively young actress of the day. Prunella Scales was Lydia in 1952 (with the rakish Richard Johnson as Wickham), Lucy Fleming played her in 1967 and Natalie Ogle in 1980.
Malone takes it all in her stride, however. “It is best not to see what went before, so as not to worry about it,” she says. “And opinions change. I remember reading the book at school and finding it boring. Yet when I read it again, after I had been given the role, I realised what a good read it is, even today. Maybe I did not have the education to appreciate it at the time.” That education included 18 months at the Professional Children’s School in New York, and time on a slew of film sets. She also lived in LA for a while, with her mother, but bought her first home in Lake Tahoe, where she lived as a child. “I’m really a mountain girl at heart, who likes fresh air and open spaces,” she says. “For a start, I never wear dresses. A friend of mine who came to visit the set of Pride & Prejudice had not seen me in a dress since high school.”
The habit stuck, apparently, as she wears a dress for our meeting, during a fleeting visit to London. She arrives off an overnight flight from LA with a boyfriend in tow. But whatever she wears, and despite the journey, she is a naturally pretty girl who proves good company. She remembers the costumes for Lydia, though, with mixed feelings. “They constricted my eating and breathing,” she says. “They must have shaped the way women thought, moved and lived. The only way I would wear a dress like that is for Hallowe’en.”
She has a typically blunt view on how Lydia would be living today, too. “She would probably be first at the bar for underage drinking — and still have under-age sex. Lydia is in love with love. She enjoys dressing up, gossiping and meeting boys. Most of us can understand that.” And would she have had anything in common with her? “She would be the sort of girl I’d hate,” she says. “Far too loud and confident.”
Malone has more movies lined up, having just completed a comic drama, Four Last Songs, made in Mallorca, alongside Hugh Bonneville, Rhys Ifans and Roman Polanski’s actress wife, Emmanuelle Seigner. She is about to begin a drama called Lying and has been hired for Abigail’s Party, later this year, in an off-Broadway production with Jennifer Jason Leigh.
“I have gone with this career thing,” she says. “Just one step at a time, and see what happens.”
Pride & Prejudice is released on Friday
