Arquette Co-Stars With Cage
In real life, they play the happily married actor couple. So perhaps it wasn't too much of a stretch for them to pretend to care for each other on screen as well.
Actress Patricia Arquette stars as Mary in Martin Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead, opposite her husband actor Nicolas Cage. CBS News This Morning reports.
In the film, Mary's father has a heart attack and paramedic Frank, played by Cage, revives him. Over the next few days Mary keeps a vigil at the hospital as she and Frank grow closer.
"I always wanted to work with Nic. We always looked for something. I didn't know we would get this great opportunity. And, you know, Martin Scorsese - it doesn't get any better than that," Arquette says.
This is the first time that the couple has worked together and Arquetter confesses that her husband does an amazing job in the movie.
Bringing Out the Dead, which opens Oct. 22, is a dark film, yet Arquette points out it has moments of humor.
"In those moments where you're in an emergency situation or sat vigil at a hospital, it's odd how you find yourself Â…laughing and then you feel guilty about that." she says. "But life forces its way through."
And she should know. During the making of the film, her own father was in the hospital having a transplant operation.
"As an actress sometimes you get an opportunity when you go to work to forget your life and to sort of have a break," she says.
In this instance, though, she was in the same frame of mind as her character 24 hours a day. "I did feel like I was coming from an authentic place because I was in that place," she notes.
Arquette comes from a family of actors, including her father and grandfather. Older sister Rosanna was the first of the Arquette siblings to make it big in Desparately Seeking Susan.
Now her brother David, married to actress Courtney Cox, has made a name for himself in the dramatic world as well. The other two Arquette siblings, Alexis and Richmon, also act.
"We always were doing skits and making each other laugh and being dramatic and having huge arguments," recalls Patricia Arquette.
Making her screen debut in the horror flick Nightmare on Elm Street III, she following that with True Romance, Ed Wood, and Flirting With Disaster among others.
Patricia Arquette also does a lot of fund raising for breast cancer research, following her mother's death two years ago from breast cancer.
For film information, visit the Bringing Out the Dead official Web site.
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