“When you say ‘no’ a lot as an actor, you’re going to go broke, and that’s been the hardest thing to go through in the last ten years,” Sideways costar Virginia Madsen says in a recent Guardian interview. Such confessions will not stop junket-press journos from asking actors “what artistic motives led you to play this role?” when the truthful answer, more often than not, is “I have two kids and brutal mortgage payments.” Or “I could have taken this far more interesting role in this indie film, but I’ve become lazily accustomed to my lifestyle and my kids like their I-Pods and their wardrobes, so I took the slightly dumber and shittier role in this big-budget genre film.”
