Maria BELLO cuts such a memorable swath through such independent films as "A History of Violence" and "The Cooler" that it's surprising to find her in Universal's "The Mummy: Tomb of The Dragon Emperor," which opens Friday. Surprising to anyone but her, that is.
Sitting down to lunch at a Beverly Hills restaurant, the blond, brown-eyed actress launches into an account of her lifelong love for adventure stories, almost as if she feels the need to prove that her intentions are honorable. "Since I was 7 years old, I was addicted to romance novels," she begins. "The young girl dressed like a man who sneaks aboard the pirate ship and is a sword fighter and shoots guns and fights, and the captain falls in love with her, I always wanted to be that." When "Raiders of the Lost Ark" came out, she told her father she wanted to be Indiana Jones. He was confused. She wanted to be the girl in the movie? No. She wanted to be in a movie?
No. She wanted to be Indy.
But as it turns out, she did want to be in a movie, she just didn't know it yet. Growing up in a blue-collar family in Philadelphia, Bello had no idea acting was an option. She was a pre-law major in college, when someone suggested she try an acting class. Bye-bye, poli-sci. "And my biggest motivation, I'm not kidding you, was to do an action movie," she says. As a struggling actress in New York she used to write affirmations: "One day, I intend to be in an action movie."
It didn't work out quite that way. Early on, she landed a recurring role on "ER," as Dr. Anna Del Amico. She was nominated for Golden Globes for her gritty cocktail waitress in "Cooler" and her loyal wife in "Violence," and she killed as an alcohol lobbyist in "Thank You for Smoking." Considered a dramatic actress, people would ask her what role she really wanted, "expecting I would say Medea," she says, laughing. The answer was still Indy.
That role was taken, however. And over the years she started to think her swashbuckling dreams were unattainable. Last year, about a month before her 40th birthday, she was driving in her car. "I was at Cloverfield and Olympic, I'll never forget it," she recalls. "I thought, 'Wow, I've got everything I've ever wanted; I've done these amazing roles with these incredible people; I've got this amazing son and friends and family and a personal life, the only thing I never got to do was my action movie. And I sort of let it go, I said that's OK, maybe that just wasn't supposed to be in my path."
