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Michelle Monaghan Becomes ‘Trucker’

7 Dec, 2009 By: Billy Gil

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Michelle Monaghan’s performance in Trucker as Diane Ford, a boyish lout of a woman who bears little resemblance to the glamorous Monaghan of Made of Honor and Mission: Impossible III, should change the way people see this fine actress. The Tribeca Film Festival selection has been picking up wins at other festivals, and Monaghan’s performance has generated Oscar buzz from the likes of Roger Ebert.

“It’s incredibly gratifying,” Monaghan says of the attention. “I love this movie so much. I loved it from the first time that I read it.”

Monterey Media is releasing Trucker on DVD Jan. 5 at $26.95. The DVD includes a special feature on Monaghan preparing for her role, a process that involved learning how to drive a big rig.

“I went to truck driving school,” Monaghan explains. “It was just really an opportunity for me to be able to portray the character as honestly as it had been written. It’s her livelihood. I just knew it would inform me immensely.”

Director/writer James Mottern picked Monaghan to be in the film after seeing her in another drama involving women in stereotypically male roles — North Country, starring Charlize Theron as a miner who wins a sexual harassment case. Monaghan says that although the character demands a lot of the actress — from running across the street in her underwear to beat up some boys that mess with her son, to being involved in unflattering sexual situations — the research she did into the trucking industry was her biggest challenge.

“I had a lot of fun doing it. It was very scary and really challenging but incredibly fulfilling at the end of the day,” she says. “I can’t imagine having played that character without having the knowledge of driving a truck or trucking culture.”

She says the research erased many misconceptions she, and likely others, have had about truckers, such as that people become truck drivers out of lack of anything else to do.

“People are truck drivers because they choose to be truck drivers,” she explains. “The majority of them are very much free sprits. They love the open road.

“I spent a lot of time with female truckers. They’re fierce women, they’re feminine. There are a lot of sacrifices and a lot of risks that namely female truckers take when they’re on the road.”

Monaghan’s tomboy manners in the film can’t all be attributed to good research.

“There’s something to be said for putting on a pair of boots that make you walk a certain way and brings out a certain physicality in you,” she says.

Trucker co-stars Nathan Fillion, Benjamin Bratt and Joey Lauren Adams. The next projects Monaghan is attached to are Somewhere, the next film from director Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation), and Due Date, from Todd Phillips (The Hangover).

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