Gretchen Mol has been spending a lot of time in the past lately.
Her role in the new television police drama “Life on Mars” pushes her back to 1973. And her latest film, “An American Affair,” stretches back even further, to 1963 and the age of John F. Kennedy’s Camelot.
In truth, she says, the past is where she has spent “most of my career.”
“I mostly do period films,” she adds. “I’m not sure exactly why.”
Surely it has something to do with her look, a melding of cherubic innocence and pinup-style seductiveness that seems reminiscent of some hazy yesterday. That let her slip believably into a Marilyn Monroe-inspired Kennedy paramour for the Cold War-era Washington of “American Affair.”
And if yesterday is the territory to which she has been relegated, well, Mol can live with that.
“You have so much more information with a little distance,” the 36-year-old actress said. “You get all the stuff that’s going on socially at the time, and you can use that to explore who your character might be.”
There was plenty of social context to explore in this instance: Mol plays a tormented woman caught between her Kennedy entanglements and the tightening screws of her ex-husband’s CIA enforcers, plumbing her incessantly for information on the president. Witness to it all is a Catholic schoolboy who lives next door and has less than angelic designs on his glamorous neighbor.
“I sort of loved that she was in over her head in this world and that she was able to find some kind of pure relationship with this young boy — that she could kind of be her purest self with him,” Mol said. “But even that had a sort of tainted quality to it, because his own agenda got in the way.”
Mol pushed hard for the part. She auditioned and was offered the role but then found herself with a conflict when filming for “3:10 to Yuma,” the Russell Crowe western in which she had a small part, was scheduled for the same weeks as “American Affair.”
“I really had to beg them to work out the schedule … and do this whole song and dance,” she recalls. “It’s so hard to find good roles, and they get snatched up by a few great actresses.”
As with any independent film, Mol wasn’t sure that this one would ever see the light of day — or of a big-screen projector — but the opportunity seemed precious enough to render that irrelevant. “An American Affair” has not been released nationwide as yet.
Despite her fame and 13 years in the business, Mol is not so overwhelmed with choice offers that she walks away easily from any chance to work. In 1998 Vanity Fair put her on its cover and dubbed Mol Hollywood’s new “It Girl.” Not surprisingly, that simultaneously elevated Mol and set her up to fail.
Mol landed significant roles in films such as “Rounders,” “The Shape of Things” and “The Notorious Bettie Page” but also went through long periods where the work wasn’t as abundant or satisfying as she wished.
Good work has come in a steadier form than ever with “Life on Mars.” Mol was apprehensive about her role as a police officer on the ABC series, which is based on a British show, because of the hours. The mother of an 18-month-old, she worried that the demands would require too much time away from her son, Ptolemy.
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