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The Difficult Task of Not Judging Deirdre: ?At first when I looked at it I was just like anyone looking at the story, but then once I start to work on something? A good actor doesn't judge the character," said Bening. "None of us do. You have the luxury and the pleasure of just trying to get behind someone and say, 'Now why?' That's the task. It's actually much easier to judge them. It's harder to then say, 'Well, why did they do what they do?' That doesn't mean that I can't still look at some of the things that she did and not feel horrified as a mother.

I certainly do. Watching the movie ? I haven't seen it in a couple of months, but the last time I saw it I just got a stomach ache. I just wanted to save the child. I just wanted to jump out of my seat and say, 'No. Wait a minute. Stop! Someone needs to protect this child.' But I think that's probably a reflection of the movie being a good movie, because you feel that dramatic tension. For me it's worth it because of where it goes. He eventually does say, 'Okay, enough. I'm getting out of here. I'm going to transcend it.'?

Getting Into Character: Playing a woman who?s so far over the edge is a therapeutic experience, according to Bening. ?I hope it is. There are days it feels more like it's taking a toll, but I think that if you're at your best it's cathartic. I wish that I could always feel that. I did a play recently and I wanted to have that cathartic feeling every night. I feel like in a way that's what one should have, but some days you don't feel it as much. Some days you feel that it's more of a wear and tear.

It's so different on a film, though, because you're really only working on a given scene for maybe a day or two days. You really only have to go down that road those times. It's not like repeating it over and over and over. So on those days there is an excitement, even if it's a very painful thing. It'll be that thing of, 'What will happen?' That's the feeling. Maybe something surprising will happen, and that's what I want.

I want to be off-balance. I want to have that controlled anarchy because you are the author of your own out of control-ness. You want to find yourself on uncertain ground, not just playing someone who is unstable. Even with a stable character you want something surprising to happen, hopefully, because that's what the camera loves the most. That's what is great about film. It's that something that happens that's unexpected. It's great to even be in the room when you're trying to do that or when you see someone else do it. It's very palpable. I know you watch a lot of movies and you can see when something is planned, and when it's not that's the hardest thing to do because the whole mechanism conspires against it. There's all these traps and there's all these people and you're in your trailer and it's like, 'What time are we shooting it?' All of that stuff that hopefully in the end, you're not even aware of when you're watching the film.?

The Frustrated Poet: The real Deirdre went through her adulthood believing there was a great poem burning inside of her, aching to be released. Even though she received rejection letters from numerous magazines, she remained firm in her belief that she was a talented writer. ?She got a lot of rejection. There's that scene where she got the rejection letters. That, to me, is a fascinating question about creativity and just dreams in general. Now, Augusten, of course, ended up becoming a writer and transcended everything that happened to him through his creativity and having the will power and the dream. Why does one person sort of get their dreams answered, as it were, more than another?

I don't think that her desire to have a serious life and a life that really had some meaning was different than anyone else's. Who of us can judge another and say, 'Well, you have less right to have the life that you're sort of imagining than someone else.' I found that very much in the writing. The writing at its heart is about that. That's one of the things that it almost inadvertently questions. It's that whole thing about creativity and aspiration. Now, I know a lot of it with this character was about being famous and what she imagined that life to be. And part of that was because she was this kind of really eccentric and bright and interesting woman, and then as she got more and more ill I think that it became a reflection of her delusions rather than her real aspirations. But she did have all of that and I find that moving.?