The Lovely Bones Press Conference – Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon and Rose McIver

Can you talk about the makeover scene?
Rose McIver: "Well, I think Susan just pushed me to see how far it could possibly go. We rolled and rolled and I think Pete and everybody was just having a laugh at me because I think there were about six eggs, seven eggs in the end and a whole pack of oatmeal.

She just kind of went to town on it. I think I got some ash in my face, a drink spilled on me. It was a really humbling experience."

Susan Sarandon: "I’m going for like an exercise video/makeup advice videos. My beauty regiment will be [fun]: 'The Susan Sarandon Eggs on your Face.' Then there’ll be a cooking part as you saw. I was also very good at cooking. But I think at that point, I don't know if I’m right or not, but it would seem to me like he really liked physical business and it was a nice respite from all the dialogue. We just had a lot of fun kind of coming up with as many different things as we could."

Susan, how do you tap into joy in real life?

Susan Sarandon: "I mean, I’m always trying to have a good time on set because that’s when things happen. That’s when you’re playful. I was that way during Lorenzo’s Oil, so I’m irreverent because that’s just the way I work. I haven’t really been trained or anything and I find that just to keep myself open and I can’t be bogged down all the time, so it’s a habit I’ve formed.

But certainly Peter creates, if I may speak for [him], Peter wants to work in a non-anxious set. I think that everybody that was in this project were people who didn’t have to be miserable to get to a place where they could create, which sometimes people spend a lot of energy doing things in a completely opposite way of working, where they’re antagonistic to get to a creative place. But none of these people that you see up here or that were even on the crew, at least in the United States, I didn’t have the privilege of going to New Zealand, but it was a good crew. I’d worked with a lot of the crew on various projects."

"Everybody was just trying to do their job and do the best they could. Everyone was supportive of each other. There were dogs, there were families around. I was close to my family so it wasn’t difficult to try to find a place of not joy necessarily but just where you felt secure and where people were having nice conversations, even when things weren’t going on in the midst of everything else. Because I think, for me, if you get yourself in a state, you try to hold onto that state, you just get numb. You can’t really feel anything anymore. At least I can’t. So even when I have to, in the movies where I’ve had to be really upset, I mean sometimes the crew tries to cheer you up, which isn’t helpful right before. Sometimes they’ll tell you a joke or something. You’re like, 'I just need a minute,' because they want to make you feel better but it’s right before a take and that doesn’t work for me."

"But on this one, I think what’s beautiful about the movie is that it tells you to live your life and be joyful when you can and when you have it because the scary thing about this tale is that it happens in such a haphazard way. And that’s how bad things happen sometimes and that’s the way good things happen too. Everything’s serendipitous and there’s no way of knowing who’s going to get sick or who’s going to get hit by a bus or who’s going to fall in love and who’s going to get pregnant. All the things that happen, it’s up for grabs so it’s kind of an exercise in surrender in a way. So I kind of just surrendered to the atmosphere of what was going on and the words were there, and the cigarette and booze. It’s always more fun to have lots of props and find a way to never let them go."