Marcia Gay Harden at the 2007 Toronto Film Festival Photo by Matt Carr

VIEW: 2007 Toronto Film Festival premiere
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READ: Into the Wild review
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The last time Marcia Gay Harden worked with Sean Penn, costarring in 2003's Mystic River, she received an Academy Award nomination. Now under Penn's direction in Into the Wild, she takes on the role of Billie McCandless, a suburban mother trying to keep together her family, including husband (William Hurt) and daughter (Jena Malone), following her son's (Emile Hirsch) flight from home.

Based on author Jon Krakauer's bestselling nonfiction book of the same name, the film tracks the wanderings of Christopher McCandless, a 22-year-old who walks away from the privilege of his upper middle-class upbringing in search of a life devoid of the trappings of consumerism and materialism. Tormented by family problems, including the discovery that his father had been married to another woman when he fathered McCandless and his sister with their mother, the young idealist cut all ties after graduating from college and disappeared on an odyssey that took him across Arizona, California, South Dakota, and, finally, Alaska, where he perished after subsisting by himself for 113 days in the wilderness. Penn adapted the story for the screen.

Harden talks about her meeting with the real Billie McCandless, her perception of Christopher's motivation, as well as her personal understanding of grief, having lost her niece and nephew in a house fire in 2003.

When did you first meet Billie McCandless?
Sean was in communication with the family because he had had the story for, I think, ten years. And it was on again, off again whether he could do it. And then when he did get the blessing to do it, he wanted me to meet her. And I wanted to meet Billie. And finally she said "yes." She was really gracious. I flew down, and she picked me up at the airport, and we spent the better part of a day together, went to the house, looked at pictures, and talked about her son [Christopher] and [daughter] Carine. Then we went out to eat and [I] felt that when we were together, eating away from [her husband] Walt, that there was an even greater openness. And I found that she was even willing to give up what the conflicts were, what some of the history and past were for her. Certainly she is still keeping some things reserved. She was very generous, and I learned a lot about her from just spending a little bit of time [with her].

Emile Hirsch in Into the Wild Francois Duhamel/Courtesy of Paramount Vantage

Some see Christopher as a free spirit trying to find himself in the world and others have suggested that he seemed to be on a suicide mission.
Well, that is interesting. I wonder if that is criticizing the film or criticizing the boy and his actions. To me it is more the boy. And there are people who are wondering what is the statement that Sean is making. Maybe there are some people who think that he glorifies the kid. I feel that is what is great: people's response to the boy himself. Certainly, the nature of his journey, of his departure, his lack of communication with his family was extremely aggressive — passive-aggressive, if you will. But so aggressive because it was so fueled by his anger at his parents. And that act — I feel there is a right to criticize it. It is very anti-social; however, the need to be away, the need to find himself without the confines of parental boundary and structure and criticism and all that, anyone understands — because that is the journey that youth goes through. And certainly that age of youth has that kind of righteousness about it. That is why great warriors and great philosophers are usually rather young, because they are thinking in a different way than the generation before them. The people who invented the Apple Mac were like 12 when they invented these new things [smiles]. So I understand that. I wouldn't have thought that it was a suicide mission especially because of the entries in his journal. He tried to come back. And the fact that he tried to come back and then being bound by the waters that were flowing at the end of the summer — that is to me the climactic sadness if you will, the twist in it. He wanted to come back and try to merge into some kind of society. I don't think he would ever have been living in a city. I don't think he would even have ever been over to the house eating chicken with mom and dad. But he, I felt, based on his writing and his reading of Dostoyevsky — and he last said "Happiness is only happiness when it is shared," I think was the phrase — [he] would have found a way to do that with people, to be in a world with people. And then he couldn't do it because he was ill-prepared.