USA: Sienna Miller, Guy Pierce and Mena Suvari walk the red carpet in New York at the premiere of their latest film, "Factory Girl"

Starlet and fashion icon Sienna Miller hit the red carpet in New York on Monday (January 20) for the premiere of "Factory Girl," in which she portrays "it" girl Edie Sedgwick. Bulbs flashed while Miller dazzled on the red carpet, braving the cold temperatures to talk to reporters. The work was a passion project for Miller, who says she loved feeling through the ups and downs of her character. "What I loved about her was just her vibrancy and luminescence and ability to draw these people around her and everything else was sort of secondary, even though that's what she wanted." "Factory Girl" tells the story of the rise and fall of the New York it girl, fashion icon and Andy Warhol muse -- and her brief, yet intense life. Sedgwick appeared to be an American princess, who had it all - beauty, blue blood and family money. But when she met up with Andy Warhol, everything changed. Thrust into the epicenter of a revolutionary art scene universe teaming with sex and drugs - Edie ultimately falls into a downward spiral. Focusing on the year or so in the mid-1960s when she burned brightest and crashed most dramatically, the film boasts its own intensity. Director George Hickenlooper captures the energy and ultra-irony of Warhol's drug-infused scene. The biopic has been reworked and some of the changes might have to do with Bob Dylan's objections to the original script and threatened legal action. He apparently was concerned that the film would draw a cause-and-effect line between the end of his relationship with Sedgwick and her suicide. (Sedgwick has long been viewed as a key inspiration to "Blonde on Blonde"-era Dylan, but whether they did indeed have a love affair is less certain.) Miller says however that accounts of Dylan's legal threats were not what the media made them out to be, and ultimately, "he's fine with the film," she told Reuters. "I mean there's no lawsuit it was kind of hyperbolized by the press. It was really not an issue. He's fine with the film and there's no legal issue, it's all been blown up, so I feel good. I love Bob Dylan, I'm his biggest fan," she said. While the character modeled on Dylan goes coyly unnamed in the film, the famous, scruffy musician who temporarily draws Edie out of the Warhol orbit is clearly based on him. If anything, though, the character, played by a charismatic Hayden Christensen, comes across as the sole voice of reason in Sedgwick's increasingly out-of-control life. Warhol, the other focus of Sedgwick's life, is portrayed by Guy Pearce, who says Miller delivers a powerful performance. Pearce too is compelling and witty as the pallid Svengali, for whom society gossip seeps into even Catholic confession. "There were days that were quite freaky on set when I wasn't shooting and I'd be watching her on the monitor and her and I had watched a number of pieces of video and film and watching her was as I say quite strange, she was just quite brilliant," he said. Actress Mena Suvari who plays Richie, a friend of Sedgwick's who supported her through rough times, said she felt the pressure of portraying the famous characters. "I was very excited to be part of this film, but I definitely felt the pressure. I mean like I said I didn't really get a lot of time to spend with Richie; and this was a film that I know from knowing George for a while that he's been trying to make for years. And I think everybody was really expecting this film, because it was a tragedy what happened to Edie," she said. Director George Hickenlooper who contextualized the artificiality of Warhol's world, says the draw to "Factory Girl" is not just that it's a story about icons, rather, that it is the story of a striking beauty and would-be artist whose unique glamour snags Warhol's heart, in as much as he will admit to having one. "It was a story I wanted to tell because it was a story about loss and love and people wanting to fall in love. I didn't really care about the iconic status of Andy Warhol. I certainly have a lot of respect for Andy Warhol and still do, I have profound respect for his work, and I have profound respect for Edie for what she contributed to the fashion scene in the mid 1960s but that was never my intent in making the film." "Factory Girl" was shot on location in Louisiana with final filming completed in New York City, where the story is set. The movie will be in limited release beginning on February 2, and then goes on a wider release in March 2007.

ITN Source | January 31, 2007

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