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From Scifi.com

Sarah Michelle Gellar

Strickland Takes On The Grudge

Monday 27 September 2004, by Webmaster

KaDee Strickland, who co-stars with Sarah Michelle Gellar in the upcoming horror film The Grudge, told SCI FI Wire that she enjoyed working with Japanese writer-director Takashi Shimizu, even though she didn’t always understand what he said. "There was a language barrier, but eventually you really understood [what he was trying to say]," Strickland said in an interview at the Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention. "He’s specific down to the way you breathe. He knows what he’s trying to create, which was beautiful. At times it kind of felt like a dance."

The Grudge is a remake of Shimizu’s own 2003 Japanese film Ju-on, about a murderous ghost that feeds off of rage, and features a cast of expatriate Americans in Tokyo. Strickland, who plays Susan Williams, said that Shimizu directed her to pay closer attention to behavior than to dialogue. "It’s movement," she said. "It’s breath. It’s not about talking and really going through [the feelings], which I loved. I thought it was a fantastic experience, and very challenging. To be crude about it, if you have a room full of people that don’t understand your language, their bulls—t meter is going to be much greater. You have to really do your job, and that’s what was exciting to me. I really, really wanted to be as clear as I could about the performance, and that’s a great way to do it."

Strickland, who recently starred in Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, said that she relied on training she received when she began acting five years ago to attune herself to her character’s behavior. "I had a fantastic acting teacher in New York, and she encouraged me to watch movies with the sound off," Strickland said. "If you can understand what the actors are doing without the sound, then that’s really creating the character’s behavior. This was a way in which my skills could either come up or get squashed, and I wanted to do it better.” The Grudge opens nationwide Oct. 22.