It’s been one remarkable year for actress Carrie Coon, who first wowed audiences on stage with her Tony-nominated performance as Honey in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She followed that performance with the role of Nora Durst, a woman who lost her husband and two kids during the rapture in the hit HBO series The Leftovers. Now she can be seen in her first film as Margo Dunne, twin sister to Ben Affleck’s character Nick, in the big screen adaptation of Gone Girl (Oct. 3).
While all three of Coon’s first major roles are wildly different they do share the same dark tonal thread. Yet, the actress will have you know she’s not as disturbed as her on screen personas. “I’m not particularly depressive or a heavy person,” Coon tells VH1, “but I always play these really dark, deeply disturbed people.”
While dark in her own right, Margo — who, at one point, comes under suspicion for the disappearance of Amy Elliott Dunne (Rosamund Pike) — serves as the film’s comic relief, delivering some deliciously twisted, yet funny lines. It was something Coon enjoyed despite the serious nature of the set, which was very focused thanks to director David Fincher.
“When you’re on a David Fincher set, you’re working,” Coon recalls of the six weeks she spent filming in Missouri. “And he’s very respectful of actors’ time so if you’re on set, you’re probably working — you’re not sitting in a trailer for eight hours. You’re not having a lot of downtime.”
Despite the lack of downtime, Coon was able to connect with Affleck almost instantly to create a tight and, at times, forward brother-sister relationship that most real life siblings would find too close for comfort. “We were able to sort of banter right away. And I think he enjoyed having a sister — because he doesn’t have a sister in real life and I have three brothers in real life — so I was just totally went after him in that way.”
Yet, the closeness the two actors shared on screen did not carry over to Affleck’s much buzzed about full frontal scene: “He’s my brother. I don’t want to talk about that.” She did, however, open up about the actor’s on screen transformation, which sees him bulking up for his role of Bruce Wayne in Zack Synder’s Superman sequel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. “I noticed it because the costume department would be complaining about having to buy him bigger shirts, and also because I knew he was getting up at four in the morning and going to the gym.”
Between the nudity and the bloody nature of Gone Girl, it’s no surprise that Coon’s own grandmother might skip the movie in favor of something lighter. “[She] was like, ’Why aren’t they gonna let you do Born Yesterday,'” Coon says. “My grandmother wants me to do a comedy. She thinks I’m funny.”
After three heavy roles, even fans might enjoy seeing her in something that allows her to play for laughs and not just relieve the tension in the room. But considering how successful she’s been up to this point, it may be a while before her grandmother gets her wish.
[Photos: Getty/Twentieth Century Fox]