INTERVIEW: Ana Ularu heads to ‘Siberia’ for latest film
Photo: Siberia, a Saban Films release, stars Keanu Reeves as Lucas Hill and Ana Ularu as Katya. Photo courtesy of Saban Films / Provided by KWPR with permission.
The new movie Siberia finds two characters running for their lives after getting caught in a battle between federal agents and the buyers of expensive diamonds. Keanu Reeves and Ana Ularu play the couple on the run, and the thriller turns gut-wrenchingly intense as the action heats up.
Ularu’s character is Katya, a pivotal role in the romantic thriller, which is set in the cold, cold expanse of Siberia. Molly Ringwald also stars in the Matthew Ross-directed film.
Ularu is a successful theater and film actress who has had many high-profile roles over the years. She’s best known for playing West in TV’s Emerald City and tackling cinematic roles in The Marker, Muse and Inferno, among many others.
She was attracted to Siberia because of the interesting character of Katya and the overall storyline.
“I think this one was just an amazing balance of romance and action, of thrills and tenderness, and intimacy and intense moments,” Ularu said in a recent phone interview. “So when you have something like that, of course, you want to be a part of it, and also the role itself, Katya, and the way she was written was very intriguing to me. And I felt like I really had something to sink my teeth in and just tell a story that hasn’t been told in a long time in this particular way.”
Ularu said working with Reeves, an actor best known for The Matrix trilogy and the John Wick movies, was a positive experience. They are like-minded performers who pay attention to detail and the subtle minutiae of creating a character.
“We’re very attentive to everything that goes on, and it was just a pleasure to create those back stories and talk about them and talk about our characters and discuss and have controversies about them,” she said. “It was a great process to do this with Keanu and Matt in the rehearsal process, and then every time we shot, it was just wonderful kind of picking apart a scene and going about it and see how it moves and see the rhythm of it and the soul of it. It felt like good theater. I think we actually said that a couple of times because we’ve had all these wonderful actors coming in for two days or a week and so on and so forth — people like Pasha D. Lychnikoff and Dmitry Chepovetsky and basically everyone.”
She added: “Whenever they yelled, ‘Cut,’ we had that feeling of, oh, we just told the truth here. We’ve just created something beautiful, so that’s a great feeling for an actor, for an artist — to not be jaded and still enjoy it like a child, when you’re drawing something beautiful I guess.”
Before portraying Katya, Ularu conducted research and considered the character’s backstory. The actress asked herself where Katya may have lived in her life and what she had done in the past. To prepare for the role, Ularu studied Russian and looked at maps to figure out different locations in Siberia.
But ultimately, she said, one’s research into a character goes nowhere without a supportive cast and crew.
“I think there’s a certain truth that can only be told with a team, not with solitary work, because I come from theater and because it is teamwork at the end of the day,” she said. “We all kind of function together to bring something to life, rather than than me inventing something in my lab and then doing this show-and-tell thing. So I’m the kind of actor that will study a lot on a character and their surroundings and their historical context, I guess … and I will let myself be inspired by paintings, by pieces of music. Sometimes I’ll make playlists for a character and whatever, but you can only tell the truth when you’re in the room and when you’re in the scene and with the right boiling temperature.”
Ularu started in film 24 years ago in Romania. She expanded to different parts of Europe and also took on many theater roles. In fact, she has been on stage since she was 15 years old. Today, she’s able to balance her creative work in movies with her theatrical roles.
“I was very lucky on many levels, but one of the essential ones is that theater [in Romania] is repertory,” she said. “So we don’t have a run of a play. We don’t do three weeks of something. We work on a play for two months or three months, and then we have maybe two shows a month, etc,. etc. So I can make my films, and then I can go back and for many months just do my plays. At the moment, I have eight of them, and it has not impeded me from making Siberia, for example, or even making the series, NBC’s Emerald City, which was, of course, seven months of work. But I still go back to theater all the time. I like mixing them up.”
That character of West in Emerald City, a reinterpretation of The Wizard of Oz, was one of her favorite roles. “There was so much love in that cast, and we’re all still really good friends,” she said. “So that was a great one as well. I’ve kind of been blessed with really beautiful experiences in this career.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Siberia, directed by Matthew Ross and starring Ana Ularu, Keanu Reeves and Molly Ringwald, is now playing in theaters, on demand and on digital HD. Click here for the trailer.
