CELEBRITY DOPPELGANGER

‘Lost in Translation’ Star Addresses Rumor About Character’s Real-Life Inspiration

“I was always a little annoyed with that accusation,” she admits.

Lost In Translation actress Anna Faris is ready to put a 20-year conspiracy theory about her character in the Oscar-winning film to rest once and for all.

In the film, which is heavily based on director Sophia Coppola’s real-life divorce, Faris, 49, plays a bubbly, blond Hollywood actress who many viewers believed to be a caricature of Cameron Diaz. The actress has finally addressed the rumors, two decades after the film’s release.

“Can I tell you, I was always a little annoyed with that accusation,” Faris said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast on Thursday.

“It felt like it took a little something away from my flavor,” she explained. “And because I had auditioned for it and earned it as that performance, I always felt like, no, I’m not part of some grand weird sabotage.”

In the Oscar-winning film, Faris plays Kelly, an actress who draws the attention of Scarlett Johansson’s director husband, leaving her sulking, alone in a Tokyo hotel.

Viewers have long since drawn comparisons between Kelly and Diaz because the film clearly drew inspiration from Coppola’s own husband, director Spike Jonze, who had just finished filming Being John Malkovich with Diaz.

The Scary Movie actress admitted that she “only kind of” cleared the air with Diaz, 53, directly when the A-lister joined her podcast in 2023.

“I only had 25 minutes with her. I didn’t know if I should launch immediately into like, ‘I’m really sorry. I wasn’t doing that,” Faris explained. “And then I never had the courage to ask Sophia to clarify it for me.”

Coppola, however, addressed the widespread theory about the film on the film’s tenth anniversary.

“The character of the actress was based on a bunch of people—just that type. I could probably name eight people that she was based on, just that bubbly, extroverted blonde that you see on talk shows," Coppolla, 55, told the Daily Beast in 2013.

The director did acknowledge Johansson’s direct inspiration from her own life.

“It was the opposite of the Scarlett character, where I was feeling very introverted and didn’t know what I was doing,” she said. “It was just a certain actress type that I was hanging around sometimes. It wasn’t a slight at anyone in particular. But the character of the husband, I was just married and trying to figure it out, so that relationship was based on what I was going through at the time.”

Obsessed with pop culture and entertainment? Follow us on Substack and YouTube for even more coverage.

Owen Mason-HillEditorial intern, Obsessed

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.