Nia Vardalos doesn't need to research what it's like to struggle financially. That's what being an actor and screenwriter is for.
"It's not like suddenly when you become a working actor, all your friends are in the same situation. I have friends who are still handing out flyers for their one-woman show and trying to make ends meet."
So she was well-prepared to work on the screenplay for Larry Crowne, a comedy about a middle-aged man who, after he's downsized, enrolls in a community college. Opening Friday, it stars Tom Hanks, who also co-wrote and directed.
The movie's message is clear: by persevering through hardship, Larry opens himself up to people he would've never otherwise met -- from a lively free-spirit (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) to an embittered professor (Julia Roberts). He also studies economics and takes a job as a short-order cook.
It's a work ethic Vardalos, who grew up in Winnipeg, says she can relate to.
"I was a child of immigrants, so everyone worked. I had a job at 16. And although I didn't like that, I'm very, very grateful for that now because it taught me to be self-supporting."
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It's a trait that served her well as she pursued her comedy career.
"When I worked at Second City in Canada, they brought me down to Chicago on a work permit. I was thrilled to be in Chicago, but I didn't know is that you only make $65 a show," she tells journalists at a Beverly Hills hotel.
To earn extra cash, she sold T-shirts in the lobby for $7 an hour.
"I'd been raised by parents who taught me not to think you're better than you are ... And that I think is what Larry Crowne is going through. Larry will do anything to make a living and that is indicative I think globally and much more so in this country -- people are just trying to get by. There's a relevance to Larry Crowne that's fortunate and unfortunate. This is not a downer movie, this is an uplifting movie and yet it is not out of the realm of ordinary. It's what can happen if you keep your heart open ... Tom has this optimism and this way of looking at things."
For all the discussion about the economy, however, the film's topicality is unintentional. Hanks approached Vardalos with the idea for Larry Crowne well before the recession struck.
"It was Tom's idea; he came to me around 2005 or 2006. We were developing (her 2009 romantic comedy) My Life in Ruins and Tom said 'I have an idea for a movie -- do you want to write it?' So we sat down in his office and he laid out the entire idea -- it was very clear in his head -- of what would happen if a man at 50 years old lost his job through no fault of his own because of downsizing and had to reinvent himself," she says.
"He wanted to keep it a very quiet story."
The movie continues her long professional association with Hanks. He and his wife Rita Wilson produced My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the 2002 sensation that on a shoestring budget grossed $368 million worldwide.
And although Larry Crowne faces steep odds in the competitive, summer movie season, Vardalos is hopeful audiences will respond. "We all say we want adult movies," she says. "Otherwise, you're just going to be reviewing -- and we're just going to be acting in -- Transformers 12."
Vardalos's passion is acting
What Nia Vardalos really wants to do is act.
"I really, really don't like writing at all. Writing is very lonely -- it's very daunting," says Vardalos, who wrote My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Connie and Carla and Larry Crowne (with star-director Tom Hanks).
"I have a voice in my head the whole time telling me I'm a fraud and no one will buy it. And you just click away, click away and push through.
"Like most writers, I love having written. But it's not that satisfying ... I sometimes feel like, again, I'm grateful to be working always, but it's not what I want to do. I write so that I can act."
Turns out, she does have a small, if unseen, role in Larry Crowne: the voice of the GPS in Julia Roberts' car. "So yes, I will be getting some (Screen Actors Guild) residuals from this movie, thank you very much."
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