Robin Wright Penn as Pippa Lee

One of the performances this year I’m most curious about is Robin Wright Penn as Pippa Lee in Rebecca Miller’s upcoming film (Miller is married to Daniel Day-Lewis and is the daughter of Arthur Miller). I missed this Fall Preview in NY Mag a while back and it features Penn. Here is a bit of it:

Penn plays Pippa, a woman who is not so much crazy as emotionally dormant—the gracious, dutiful wife of a much older, charismatic book publisher (Alan Arkin). When they move to a retirement community in Connecticut, her seemingly perfect marriage begins to crack. As the older Pippa (Blake Lively plays her as a young adult), Penn elucidates a largely internal awakening that feels entirely organic. “Rebecca and I talked at length about the emotional calluses of age. She said, ‘It’s the onion—let’s just peel it very slowly,’ ” says Penn, who developed the part with Miller over the course of a year. “There are so many layers to Pippa. It was the chance to portray the unveiling of an identity, but without rushing to answer every question.”

It’s a horrible thing to say but I’ll just say it anyway. Often, a divorce or a bad breakup can do wonders for an actress in the Oscar race. Here is a TV clip about Pippa Lee:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NYO8_8ViSc[/youtube]