Hollywood actress Amanda Seyfried is determined to play a musician onscreen and has her heart set on portraying Dolly Parton on the big screen because she’s “one of the best human beings on the planet”.
Amanda Seyfried wants to play Dolly Parton on the big screen because she’s “one of the best human beings on the planet”.
The Mean Girls star has opened up about her career hopes for the future and revealed she really wants to take on the challenge of playing a musician who plays the guitar revealing she was once lined up to play folk star Joni Mitchell but the project fell through.
In a question-and-answer session for Deadline.com, she explained: “I would love to play a role that requires me to play an instrument as well on camera …
“Joni Mitchell. I did prepare for that role. It was a project that was kind of on the verge and I had an incredible time learning her Blue album and I learned the guitar in a new way.
“It was musically so incredibly challenging and so fun because once you really, really nail the songs when you play them enough it becomes like second nature and it’s just like so fulfilling and so life-affirming and yeah I would love to play a musician who plays the guitar because that’s like the thing that’s hardest right now. “
When asked who she would consider playing, Amanda said: “Eva Cassidy has a story out there. There’s a story there. And you could make a Dolly Parton musical. There’s a story there too obviously. My God. And her voice. Her sweet, sweet sweetheart voice.
“Dolly Parton is one of the best human beings on the planet. So it would be fun to portray her. “
Amanda will be see showing off her singing skills in her new film The Testament of Ann Lee.
The Hollywood actress plays the title role in Mona Fastvold’s new film based on the story of the 18th-century founder of Christian sect the Shakers who emigrated from the UK to the US in 1776 with a small group of followers – and Amanda admitted recording the musical numbers was tough.
She told Variety: “Some of it was un-singing. There’s no such thing! De-singing? Anti-singing? A lot of it was animal sounds as opposed to melodic sounds. “And it was less about listening to myself. In the studio in Budapest, I was hearing myself, but it was not happy-making – it was stressful, because I understood that I didn’t have to sound beautiful in a way that is beautiful to me.
“It was more like a woman on her knees. And it was f****** hard. We did the birthing song Human Treasures so many times because I had to release my s***, my ear, my needs, Amanda’s needs, in order to find the voice that held the passion, the rawness, the grief and the desperation.”
Amanda has previously sung onscreen in two Mamma Mia! films as well as the big screen adaptation of Les Miserables and she admitted this time it was very different.
She explained: “I realized it takes a long time for me to stop listening to myself when I’m singing. I can’t watch Les Mis without thinking: ‘What the f*** was I doing?’ “I was listening to myself the whole time and hated it. [My Les Miserables character] Cosette was full of self-loathing because that was Amanda’s self-loathing, which is not the character of Cosette!”
Amanda Seyfried wants to play Dolly Parton
