MARCIA GAY HARDEN HAS HECTIC HOME LIFE

As the mother of two year-old twins, Marcia Gay Harden finds it hard to relax at home after a stressful shoot.

Marcia Gay Harden plays the mother of prostitute and crack addict Brittany Murphy in The Dead Girl. Her own personal mothering skills couldn’t be further from her character in the film that in many ways refuses to acknowledge her emotional pain or her daughter’s.

It must’ve been a relief to come home to her children after working on a seedy and tawdry set in Los Angeles, but quite the contrary. Marcia admits coming home to New York to a pair of two year-old twins after a hard shoot isn’t exactly peaceful.

“Basically when you go home and it’s the reverse of what it used to be for the man where he walks in and goes, ‘hi how was your day? The dishwasher is broken. This and this.’ I come home and I open the door and there they are and they need me and want me. Mommy, mommy. I just pick right back up in the flurry of home life that any mother will tell you exists. It’s a relief just to be home with the family but it’s also a very full exhausting and stressful time, it can be at home.”

You can say Marcia is experiencing the terrible twos times two.

“Exactly they’re two years old and eight months and they’re fantastic. They’re talking, they’re potty trained. All of that is great but they’re very, ‘mommy, mommy.’ And they’re learning, ‘no’ which is one of their favorite words and they’re experiencing their power. It requires a lot of patience and it’s lovely patience but it’s definitely there.”

Patience is a virtue especially in the world of The Dead Girl where children become runaways and turn to a life of prostitution. Marcia hopes the film will inspire audiences to be grateful for the families they have and not take their children for granted.