One Tough Mama

By: Henrick Vartanian — Watch out for the beautiful and talented Melissa Leo starring as Alice, the chain smoking, tough-as-nails mother and manager to Mark Wahlberg (as boxer Micky Ward) in the movie “The Fighter” (Paramount Pictures / Relativity Media). The Fighter is an exciting, hard-hitting boxing movie, with a heart and soul carved in the middle. In a story about an unlikely comeback and redemption, Melissa Leo packs a few punches of her own.

Leo, is best known for her role on television’s acclaimed series “Homicide” as well as other critically hailed films, such as “Frozen River” (2008), for which she won best actress at the Independent Spirit Awards. Her transformation in bringing the peroxide blonde, big-haired Alice to the big screen is intense and exciting to witness. Alice Ward is the mother of a large dysfunctional family, and a fighter in her own ways. She keeps her family together through thick and thin, and in portraying her; Leo is memorable in every one of her scenes.

Leo admits: “In meeting Alice, I felt a great responsibility. She’s so different from me.  She’s a different age than I am, comes from a different class of people than I do; she speaks in a completely different way and has a different moral foundation.  So, it was a big leap to play her and there were a great many people who contributed to the creation of Alice.”

The award winning actress points out the additional elements that complete Alice for filming: “Johnny [Villanueva] who did my hair and Trish [Heine] who did my makeup are a very important part of Alice along with Mark Bridges who did the costumes and, of course, David O. Russell, who really helped me to create Alice on the screen.”

THE FIGHTER – in theatres: Dec 10, 2010,

more info: http://www.thefightermovie.com/