Rachel Weisz: she's always had heart, smarts, and a willingness to fly close to the edge. Now, with two daring new films, Rachel Weisz is poised to fill the footlights this fall

As tempting as it is to saddle Rachel Weisz with the title "English rose"--an image that a single look at her open, clear-eyed beauty readily calls to mind--the truth is that the actress cannot be so easily defined. For starters there's her brave choice of roles--in films like Stealing Beauty [1996], Enemy at the Gates [2001], Constantine, and the forthcoming The Constant Gardener and The Fountain--all of which explore the darker side of human emotions, relationships, experiences, and impulses. It's no wonder then that Weisz's future husband is none other than Darren Aronofsky, the director behind such determinedly unglamorous films as Pi (1998), Requiem for a Dream (2000), and The Fountain, and one of whose projects Weisz facetiously describes as being "just show tune after show tune." But then, as befits a woman whose last name is pronounced "vice," the actress has never presented herself as anything but human; when asked to describe her own vices she readily offers up, "I'm too much of a dreamer, which sounds sweet, but I can be a pain in the ass for myself and everyone around me. And I have a very Piscean quality of trying to swim in two directions at once." Here she takes the plunge in a revealing conversation with her Fountain co-star Hugh Jackman.

HUGH JACKMAN: Hello, darling!

RACHEL WEISZ: Huuugh! How's it going with Woody Allen? [Jackman is currently filming Allen's new film in London.]

HJ: Oh, I'm absolutely loving it--he's just hysterical, and it's a very funny script. And I'm home by 4:30 every afternoon.

RW: You're playing an English aristocrat, right?

HJ: Yeah, I'm playing an English aristocrat, devilishly handsome and incredibly charming and possibly a serial killer. But hang on, I'm doing the interviewing here! You're much more of a natural interviewer than interviewee.

RW: I know. I love asking questions.

HJ: Do you get to play English much?

RW: I haven't for a bit, though I play English in The Constant Gardener, which will be coming out around the same time as this interview. My character's an activist and an aid worker and sort of a busybody troublemaker who doesn't have a real group that she belongs to. She's just kind of a solo-flying activist. [laughs]

HJ: I know the film takes place in Kenya. Did you actually shoot there?

RW: We shot a little bit in Berlin and a little bit in London but mainly in Kenya.

HJ: I understand you slept in tents some nights, no?

RW: Yeah. One time the location manager put up this tented village, and we drove there late at night and ended up in the middle of nowhere during a sandstorm. We were all a little bit frightened because we'd lost the others. Finally we vaguely made out some tents, which we all zipped ourselves into and went to bed. The next morning we discovered we were in the middle of the plains of Africa. It was extraordinary, but it definitely wasn't luxurious.

HJ: Did you love it there?

RW: Absolutely. We were filming mainly in the slums of Kibera, where tourists and white people don't typically go and where a million people live in abject poverty with open sewers and no running water or electricity. Kibera is adjacent to Nairobi; there are no street names because there aren't streets, just mud paths. It's not a city in the way we think of a city, and yet it completely functions as one.

HJ: Did you feel conspicuous making a movie there?

RW: Well, the way in which Fernando [Meirelles] directed this film was very low-key; we didn't come in with huge cranes and lights--more like making a documentary. Fernando worked with the same cinematographer as he did on City of God (2002), a guy named Cesar Charlone, who just had a handheld camera, and he would film us as we walked around the slums in character, improvising. All the children learn a little bit of English there, and what they know how to say is "How are you?" They would come running up to us saying that and clambering all over us, and that became part of the film. The children stared at us because we were white and because they wondered what we were doing in their city, but they were very welcoming.

HJ: I've heard great things about the film from so many people. Have you seen it?

RW: I have, and I love it. it was an honor to work with Fernando.

HJ: Do you typically like seeing your films?

RW: Never--this was the first time I've ever really enjoyed watching one. The way Fernando shot Africa, it looks like Africa--all the kids, the people, they're not acting, they're just there. It's such a joy when you feel like you're not watching the technique of acting but rather are spying on something, like you're a fly on the wall. Somehow I think of this as being very Brazilian. [both laugh] They're very spontaneous. But speaking of being totally free, what you did in The Boy from Oz blew my mind. Every night you would improvise with the audience, interacting with whatever happened. It's heaven to watch somebody do that.

HJ: I had a blast doing it. [Jackman's cell phone rings] Oh, hang on, that's my wife in the other pocket.