Within the spectrum of actresses working today, Vera Farmiga is about as crunchy as it gets. The 35-year-old, who's spent most of her career playing hard-to-love characters in obscure indie films, lives an unequivocably earthbound existence far, far away from Fred Segal, the Ivy, and any cast member of The Hills. She and Renn Hawkey, her musician-woodworker husband, make their home in rural Ulster County, New York, where they keep two angora goats. Farmiga milks and shears them herself and even spins her own yarn.
So when the actress, who's best known for her role in Martin Scorsese's The Departed, had her first child this past winter, she did it at an "amazing" birthing center in the nearby town of Rhinebeck, where, she'll tell you, the doctors and midwives encourage mothers to have their "most idyllic birth." It's not a corporate baby-churning factory, says Farmiga, who had a son, Fynn. ("His father looks like a Viking, so I figured he needed a Nordic name," she explains.) "The place is like a gymnasium! You can hang from the walls, bounce on a ball, labor in a tub, have a six-handed massage." (Or, despite Farmiga's warm and fuzzy birth plan, have an emergency C-section.)
After delivering, did Farmiga spend a few months feathering her hippie nest, Fynn fused to her body in a hemp sling? Not quite. Just two weeks later, she became the first mother in the history of the Neugarten Family Birth Center to go straight into preproduction on a romantic comedy with George Clooney: Up in the Air, helmed by Jason Reitman (Juno). "It was an opportunity I could not turn away from," she says today, from the set in Las Vegas. "I mean, George Clooney."
Farmiga sounds tired but relaxed. She's just had "a good cuddle and feed" with Fynn, now 6 months old and on a stroll with her husband, and the movie is only a day from wrapping. "It's funny," she says. "Now that shooting is almost over, it's easy to say coming back to work so soon wasn't that hard, but man, it was. Talk about trying to balance work and family—I was in the trenches. There were days I'd come to the set and just cry and cry and cry." Though Farmiga was able to keep Fynn close the entire time (he and Hawkey came along for the duration, shuttling with her among locations in Los Angeles, Detroit, St. Louis, and Miami), she admits that she often felt overwhelmed. Between takes, the sleep-deprived actress pumped—the milk was then couriered to Hawkey back at the hotel—and, she says, obsessed about her baby. "I can't tell you how many silk shirts I ruined just thinking about him!"
With her pale skin, searing blue eyes, and totally ditz-free demeanor, Farmiga seems built for roles involving tears and struggle. Among the dark, complicated characters she's inhabited are a new mother with postpartum depression (Joshua), a mentally ill woman who wants to become a paraplegic (Quid Pro Quo), the wife of a concentration-camp commandant (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas), and a working-class mom in rehab (Down to the Bone, which won her a Best Actress award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association). Next month she costars in the thriller Orphan, in which she and Peter Sarsgaard play the adoptive parents of a demonic 9-year-old.
Farmiga, who grew up in Irvington, New Jersey, as the second oldest of seven children in a Ukranian-American family, says she and Hawkey (also one of seven) "didn't sweat" becoming parents: "I grew up with younger siblings on my hip." Still, she's had her share of miserable moments. One of the worst was attending her first postbaby costume fitting a mere two weeks after giving birth. "It takes a lot to scootch me off my game, but [at 15 pounds heavier than usual] it was the most insecure I'd ever felt," she recalls. She was still recovering from her C-section, so she couldn't exercise, but she also refused to crash-diet, for fear of compromising her milk supply. "When people tell you that by the time you start filming, you gotta lose the fat off your face—well, the only way to get through that is to try to maintain a sense of humor," she says wryly.
And to keep some perspective—which motherhood helps her do every single day. "When I see the way Fynn throws himself into each simple little task—eating, yelping, squeezing a fart—I think, Wow, this little guy isn't trapped in his head; he's operating to the hilt," she marvels. "And it occurs to me that this needs to be my attitude whatever I do." Clearly, this hippie chick is sticking to her roots, even though she may very well be headed into the Hollywood big time. "I can't wait to get home and dig my hands into the soil," she continues. "I have to say, I feel closest to God when I'm working with rat manure."
Next Page: A Deeper Peek into Her Mom Brain
