Patricia Arquette: ‘I’ve buried a lot of people I love’

As she returns to TV in the mind-bending Severance, the actor talks about life in the ‘never-ending emergency’ that is America, why she’ll never find Trump funny, and her need for a low-drama lifestyle

‘How did I feel?” repeats Patricia Arquette, clearly irritated. I have just asked the actor how it felt to land a role in Medium, the supernatural drama series that won her an Emmy – only to be asked to lose weight for the role. Although it happened in 2005, it is still clearly a sore point. “I felt annoyed and crappy. But I feel like it’s been a conversation my whole life. When True Romance came out, some critics said I was too fat or too heavy. I changed channels recently, happened upon True Romance, and thought, ‘Oh my God, look how young I was! I had a beautiful body. What are you talking about?’”

After True Romance, the Tony Scott-directed film in which she played a sex worker who falls in love with Christian Slater’s comic-book nerd, Arquette went on to star in plenty of acclaimed films, from David Lynch’s Lost Highway to Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead. The latter starred Nicolas Cage, who she married in 1995. Their marriage lasted nine months.

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Rosanna Arquette: ‘They said I was a pain in the ass. It’s not true’

Ever since she was abused by Harvey Weinstein, Rosanna Arquette says she has lived in fear. She talks about harassment, the collapse of her career – and the thin line between caution and paranoia

Rosanna Arquette sounds panicked. She thinks someone wants to stop our conversation taking place. For 30 minutes, a BBC publicist has tried to patch us into a conference call; now, Arquette has taken matters into her own hands and phoned me directly. “This is what happens! All the time!” she says, her voice rising. There are no pleasantries. It’s as if we were already talking before I picked up.

“Why is it disconnecting every time?” she asks. “There is something strange here. Really strange. I don’t understand what’s happening. Why can’t we get on the phone with each other?” She laughs, a nervous sort of placeholder laugh.

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