Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney in The Savages Andrew Schwartz/Courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures

Was there any sort of touchstone that helped you climb into the character of Wendy? Was it seeing the décor of her apartment for the first time or some other detail?
Well, those things all certainly helped. But for me it always boils down to the script. Or at least with this situation, there were so many opportunities for me to ask myself questions, which would then give me an answer, and then I could ask myself more questions. As far as learning and fleshing everything out, I could ask why until there was no more "why" to ask. And I would learn. Its answers would reveal themselves. You hear actors talk about being a detective, and that's really true for this script. It was more answering questions about why she was the way she was [and] why she did the things she did.

Did you develop a backstory for her too?
Oh sure, absolutely. And you flesh out every single detail in the script. You don't let anything go by. You stop and you figure out who is the neighbor who lived next door, even if it's just a passing reference. Who was it? What did they look like? What did their house look like? What were the experiences you had with them? All that. So that when you mention it, it actually means something. It actually has some weight to it. [So] if you talk about your neighbor next door, a whole flood of things come back: whether you liked them or didn't like them, what they looked like, what they smelled like, how they moved down the hallway, all those things. So even if the audience never sees any of that, it's part of the fleshing out of a human being.

Did you work out some of those things with Philip Hoffman, because you wouldn't have the same neighbor in your own minds?
No. We sort of had some basic things that we were in sync about. Basic things. And then we went off to our own corners and did all the actor sort of work that you do. And then you come back and you throw it all away. You come on stage, and you throw it all out the window and you hope that all that work that you've done will inform how you relate to each other. If the writing is really good, the phrasing of the language will give you a hint about how someone is moving or where they are emotionally.

But does working with an actor like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Philip Bosco (as Lenny Savage, the father), who's a stage veteran, change if you have different processes? Does working with them on the film sort of raise your game?
Yes. What it does is it makes you feel safe. And then you're relaxed. And then when you're relaxed, you can be specific with your choices. And then when you're specific you can be fierce.

There are some great inappropriate moments in the film. Did some of these things come about after rehearsal?
Nothing. It was all in the script. Everything was in that script. Everything. [Tamara Jenkins] worked on that script for a long time. And so everything was in there. Only during the fight in the car where Phil Bosco turns his hearing aid off is there some improv, and just because they needed more time. And the phone call that Phil Hoffman has in the hotel room where he's talking to his girlfriend on the phone was improvised. But everything else — every single little thing — was in that script. Everything. There was no need to do anything else to it.

Is there any way you could relate to Wendy?
Sure, I could certainly relate to her desire to want to be in the theater. There's this very specific kind of theater that she wants to do, which is the off-off-Broadway world, something that I grew up around. So I knew the world that she so desperately wanted to be a part of. So that I could certainly relate to.