So you’re a professional actor living in Kansas City and you make a life here and you keep at it, building an impressive resume of stage work, television commercials, Internet ads and the occasional made-for-TV movie.
Then one day, the roulette wheel spins just right, and you find yourself in one of the best movies of the year.
In 2009, Schultz landed a job playing a small but key role in “Winter’s Bone,” a grimly realistic film based on Daniel Woodrell’s novel about a gutsy teenage girl’s search for her missing father in southern Missouri. The movie is a stroll into “hillbilly noir” territory — an almost sociological look into the violent world of meth-cookers and rural organized crime.
Schultz appears early in a scene with the Oscar-nominated film’s two principal characters — Ree, the girl looking for her father (played by Jennifer Lawrence), and Teardrop (John Hawkes), her uncle.
Schultz plays Victoria, Teardrop’s wife.
The scene is our first glimpse of Teardrop, who stumbles into the kitchen from the bedroom with a cigarette dangling from his lips. He’s an ominous character, but Victoria leavens his presence with a sympathetic but guarded view of Ree.
Schultz said the scene was completed in one day of shooting, and the vibe on the set was consistently positive. Working with Hawkes, perhaps best known as Sol Star on the HBO series “Deadwood,” was a pleasure, she said. “He’s great. Everybody there wanted to be there.
Lawrence,was also fun to work with. “She was very sweet and energetic,” Schultz said. “And very young. It was only … a year-and-a-half ago that we shot it. I forgot how much energy an 18-year-old can have. She has good instincts, too.”
Hawkes and Lawrence both earned Oscar acting nominations for their performances. “Winter’s Bone” claimed the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was recognized as the best film and as having the best ensemble cast by the Gotham Awards.
The movie so far has claimed 10 awards in North America and Europe and has made it onto many critics’ 10-best lists for 2010.
Schultz is happy for the film’s success but seems a bit nonplussed by her involvement in it. “Weird, huh?” she said. In one sense, it was just another day of employment for a working actress. But it elevated her profile, and she said it could lead to more local commercial work. “It was really cool,” she said. “I really do wish more of that kind of stuff would come through here, because it’s a unique experience to do something like that. It’s so different from stage acting.”
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/01/26/2609910/kc-actress-at-home-on-many-stages.html?story_link=email_msg##ixzz1D1bK6wrV