Meryl Streep's performance as a cancer-stricken and abusive family matriarch in new drama August: Osage County really struck a chord with actor Mario Cantone because his own mother died of the same disease.
The gay Sex and the City star, 54, shared his personal experience with Streep during an interview on U.S. talk show The View on Thursday (19Dec13), when he served as a guest co-host, and revealed he felt a real connection to the actress' character, Violet Weston, in one particular scene in which she bears the inside of her bottom lip to her kids to show them the horrifying affects of oral cancer.
As his voice quivered, Cantone explained, "My mother died of mouth cancer and there's a moment in the film when you go like that (expose the inside of your lip), and my mother did that to me, she showed me (how the disease was affecting her)."
However, Cantone admits his experiences with his mum Elizabeth's disease were very different from those shown onscreen with Streep's movie family, including Julia Roberts as her daughter.
He added, "It's interesting though, when my mother got sick, she was a very unhappy woman, she became much nicer and more passive and it's interesting that this woman (Streep's character)... went the other way."
Elizabeth Cantone died when the actor was just 21.
August: Osage County is based on Tracy Letts' Tony Award-winning play of the same name, a dark comedy which chronicles the drama that ensues when Roberts' character and her sisters reunite with their drug-addict mother at the family home.
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