InStyle cover girl: Isla Fisher
Unassuming and playful, Isla Fisher has never lost her delightful Aussie charm, despite being based overseas for the better part of a decade. Together with her husband, comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, and their two daughters, Olive, 5, and Elula, 2, Fisher splits her time between LA and London. This month she talks to InStyle about her new role in the wickedly funny comedy Bachelorette, and being one of half of one of Hollywood’s most intriguing power couples.
In movies like Wedding Crashers, Confessions of a Shopaholic and now Bachelorette, you consistently play extreme women. What draws you to these manic roles?
“I played a bipolar nymphomaniac in Wedding Crashers and now I’m playing a coke whore. I’m just trying to make my dad proud [laughs]. Truthfully, I’ve always enjoyed playing characters that are unusual people. There’s a bunch of actors who can play normal people better than I can. I enjoy it more when I can play someone who exists in a heightened reality, someone a little more wild.”
It sounds like most of the family has moved on. What was it like growing up in Perth?
“I loved it. I really enjoyed my high school. I went to Memphis Ladies’ College and I had the nicest group of friends who I am still extremely close to. When I would go away and shoot they would save me a chair next to them at lunch. They never gave me a hard time for being an actress; there was no tall poppy syndrome. No one called me ‘Pig Face’.”
Can you reveal anything about your turn in the forthcoming The Great Gatsby?
“I can only say that I remember seeing Romeo and Juliet when I was 16 and thinking if I could work with Baz Luhrmann, I would die happy. I know it sounds like a cliché but it really was a dream come true and you could hardly wipe the smile from my face on set for the entire time. To be in Baz’s world—he’s such a visual genius and an incredibly unique storyteller—was an utter privilege.”
F Scott Fitzgerald wrote of your character, Myrtle Wilson, mistress to Tom Buchanan: “She carried her surplus flesh sensuously.” Did you have to gain weight for the role?
“I was breast-feeding at the time, so I definitely carried some surplus flesh [laughs]. I did gain some weight for the role, to be honest. I hopefully stayed as true to the book as I could. The Great Gatsby is one of those extraordinary books that changes in meaning when you read it at different stages of your life. I’ve probably read it 10 times, and each time I’ve connected with different characters.”