“I really wanted to humanize somebody with mental illness, and I wanted to make clear that it’s a family issue,” she said. “It’s not a person suffering alone. When someone in a family is mentally ill, it affects everybody. So the more it can be talked about, the more it can be treated.”
Mr. Ruffalo watched videos of his character’s namesake to get a better sense of the man upon whom his portrayal was loosely based. The writer/director also provided her leading man with letters written by her father and told him of his unique habits. Mr. Ruffalo even learned to tie his own bow tie without looking in a mirror, a trick at which her father was adept.
At the same time, Ms. Forbes allowed Mr. Ruffalo to find his own way with Cameron, not so much channeling her father as crafting a new persona along the way.
“I felt that Mark brought a lot of himself to the character,” she said. “There’s the scene where Cam’s picking up Maggie at the train station, and I wanted Cam to stay in the car, and [Mr. Ruffalo] said, ‘Cam would not stay in the car; he would help her with her bags.’”
It was strange watching scenes from her young life realized before her very eyes, Ms. Forbes said. To add to the surreality of the filmmaking process, Amelia, who was loosely based on Ms. Forbes herself, was portrayed by the director’s own daughter, Imogene.
“You don’t have time to analyze [the strangeness] because when you’re directing a movie you have to move so fast that you don’t have to think how weird it is,” Ms. Forbes said of her daughter’s portrayal of her younger self.
“Infinitely Polar Bear” was an even bigger family affair as Ms. Forbes‘ husband, Wallace Wolodarsky, served as producer.
Miss Saldana’s character, Maggie, is based on Ms. Forbes‘ own mother, Peggy, who left her daughters in the care of real-life Cameron in Boston to pursue an MBA at Columbia in New York — which also happens in the film. Much of what occurs in “Infinitely Polar Bear” centers around the times the two daughters are alone in Cam’s care.
Ms. Forbes said her mother was near 40 when she decided to return to college, and faced discrimination upon graduating not so much for her skin color but rather for the fact that she was a mother.
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