“A Complete Unknown” convincingly transforms Monica Barbaro into Joan Baez

Talk about inducing whiplash. Is there anything greater than going from the role of a pilot in the U.S. Navy’s Top Gun program to portraying the country’s leading folk singer and civil rights activist?

For actress Monica Barbaro, these are different appearances – as she stares down Tom Cruise as Phoenix in 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick” and as Joan Baez with Timothée Chalamet in the new Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” (out now in the cinema) duet – promising fame.

“It’s a little overwhelming,” says Barbaro, 35, smiling broadly. “I’m looking forward to coming home for the holidays.”

Growing up in a small town north of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Barbaro excelled in public school acting before setting off to study acting and dance at New York University. She quickly found steady employment and landed roles in the NBC justice series “Chicago Justice” and alongside Josh Groban and Tony Danza in the Netflix comedy series “The Good Cop.”

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Then came Cruise, followed by Chalamet, and the challenge of his life: singing and playing guitar in the style of one of the most famous artists in American music history.

Joan Baez, lively and spirited at 83, was a major folk star when she met Bob Dylan on the New York music scene in the early 1960s. She was on the cover of Time magazine; he was new to the Big Apple.

They both quickly fell in love and developed a close personal bond that lasted for several years until Dylan’s rising celebrity derailed their relationship around 1965. “Dylan broke my heart,” Baez said in “I Am A Noise,” a 2023 documentary about her life. “I was just intoxicated by this talent.”

It took years, but she finally put this groundbreaking public pairing into perspective. The turning point came when she looked at a painting she did of the singer as a young man, “and he was this young face with baby fat, we both had baby fat at the time, and I put on his music and started crying.” she told USA TODAY. “All that resentment is completely washed away.”

Barbaro reached out to Baez as she prepared for the film. Their conversation was enlightening for many reasons, she says, including because it shed light on the nature of their breakup, which is dramatized in “A Complete Unknown.”

“She told me there was a lot of love and a lot of disappointment there,” Barbaro says. “Not just because he was moving away from her, but she also just wanted to say something with her music and change the world and talk about things. At first he was also this voice of protest, and then he didn’t want to do it anymore.” She was also in love with his potential, but said she really appreciated what he did with his talent.

Monica Barbaro took on the role of Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown without any formal singing or guitar skills

Barbaro had never spent much time singing before, which sounds terrifying – like an actor who’s never swum being asked to play Michael Phelps. So she spent a whole year with a singing and guitar teacher, taking lessons a few days a week and practicing every day.

“We started with her iconic qualities, that tight vibrato, the high key, that angelic soaring voice, those very identifiable characteristics,” she says. “It was difficult for me because I had no relationship with my own singing voice at all. So I really just wanted to try to sound like her, even though it’s impossible to sound like Joan Baez.”

Barbaro is featured on “A Complete Unknown,” where she accompanies herself with complex fingerpicking on Baez’s signature Martin six-string. And yet the actress had never played the instrument before.

“I worked on it a lot – really, the music process for this whole film changed my life for a year,” she says. “For me, fingerpicking was like learning to walk at 30. It was a lot.”

For Monica Barbaro, the key to playing Joan Baez wasn’t just playing Joan Baez

Ultimately, Barbaro found a way into her character that loosened the reins on her preparation. Suddenly, she stopped pressuring herself to emulate Baez and instead encouraged herself to be her own version of the famous artist.

In a recent Baez interview, “she talked about how perfectionism robs art of what makes it interesting. So I borrowed it,” says Barbaro. “I needed that for my own work. To be able to let go.”

Barbaro seems both relieved and pleased with her experience. She even plans to go to a local movie theater with friends at home to see herself in Mangold’s biopic.

She is safe in the dark. But after this star role, it might be harder for her to leave the theater since she’s no longer completely unknown.

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“A Complete Unknown” convincingly transforms Monica Barbaro into Joan Baez

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