Melissa Leo: A Leading Light in the Hudson Valley

Meet local Melissa Leo. She's called the Hudson Valley home for nearly 30 years. The Academy Award winning actress (The Fighter) — she also snagged an Emmy for an outrageous guest performance on Louie — eats organic and prefers homeopathic over conventional medicine. She's a staunch supporter of the Woodstock Film Festival and drives her Audi through the country lanes, perpetually awed at the ever-changing local light show that's been around long before the Hudson River School started tossing it on canvas in the 19th Century.

I love the way your funky vintage frame home is always evolving -- what's your favorite thing about your house?

Getting to be home in it! It's situated here in a very safe place to live in the foothills of the Catskills. I feel very secure here in my little nest in the Hudson Valley on the West side of the Hudson River. I go about my business, do my laundry, my grocery shopping.

You're into natural food, so is this paradise?

I do like to use the local grocery option from Woodstock's Sunflower Natural Foods Market to Nature's Pantry in New Paltz. I can drive just far enough to get what I need. I don't go out that much when I'm here because I do that when I'm gone. When I do eat out — whether I'm in Woodstock or New Paltz or High Falls or Stone Ridge or Kingston — I can find a yummy meal for myself at some nice joint or other. But when I'm not shooting, I do more dining at home, cooking what's available to me. I appreciate the local produce and the efforts of Hudson Valley farmers and organic growers. The growth of the High Falls Food Co-op helps me sustain the healthy lifestyle I prefer.

What's changed since you first moved to the Hudson Valley?

You never used to see the bears and you see them pretty regularly. Also, the amount of people who are here — the newcomers to old-timers ratio — has changed. But I'd say it's what's stayed the same that I love the best: it's the land itself that makes it feel the way I like more than the people. It's the trees the hills, the spectacular light glowing into my house right now, the afternoon light in the winter. I have a neighbor on my road that sits out in the morning sun even in the winter. I love the way that the clouds shift and move and change. I love the weather, and we get a fair amount of it here.

You have been a part of our film production renaissance. Why is it so appealing to shoot locally?

The great thing is that I can be at home and have my summer and work. With Francine, the writer-directors Brian Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky actually wrote that script entirely as they drove up and down along Route 32 using the locations they saw. That was the Hudson Valley Film Commission and my good friends over there including Laurent Rejto. When I heard Brian and Melanie were looking for actors, I asked if they'd already cast the title character because I happened to be home for the summer. It's probably one of the best films I've ever made. I also shot the shorts Bomb, Patch and Persephone. And we shot Racing Daylight with locals David Strathairn and Giancarlo Esposito at writer-director Nicole Quinn's house nearby. I also made a trailer for the Woodstock Film Festival with the fest's Meira Blaustein, and the features Stephanie Daley and Why Stop Now?

Are you shooting your next film locally?

No. I'm driving down to Tennessee to start on an independent film called Novitiate written and directed by Margaret Betts with Dianna Agron and Julianne Nicholson. I get to play Reverend Mother — a nun — in the 1960s. And, yes, I will wear the wimple. In 1962, the Vatican in its great wisdom offered to reinvent and modernize, and to take the scant power that nuns still held in the church hierarchy and banish it completely. Vatican II knocked the wind out of the order. And, you know, once all the nuns leave, now the priests aren't being minded and that's when they really started going after the boys — at least that's my theory of what the repercussions were.

After a single memorable scene in The Big Short, in theaters now, you're starring in Oliver Stone's Snowden opening wide in May, right?

I play documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zachary Quinto. Working with Oliver? I remain quite effusive. It really was, first of all, a delight to be asked by him, and an honor to be there telling that story, playing that woman, for that filmmaker. It was a very good experience in my life.