QUOTE : We tried a few times, but Roger said Maria didn’t have it in her to be a leading lady. Too much grit in her lopsided grin, too much nose to her raw-boned face. Killer as the foil to the sweetheart, sure, but too saw-toothed for a happy ending. He casts her as the femme fatale, the big bad, and it works: Maria’s expressions were a broken heart caulked with bitter pride, vulnerable and crystalline. If you ask me, we didn’t need the girl. Maria could have done it, played the wounded thing come home to a country full of someone else’s ghosts.