While much of *Girl, Interrupted* (1999) followed the script written by James Mangold, Lisa Loomer, and Anna Hamilton Phelan, the film is noted for a collaborative atmosphere where actors—particularly Angelina Jolie and Brittany Murphy—were encouraged to bring spontaneous physical and emotional details to their roles.
According to director James Mangold and behind-the-scenes accounts, the following scenes and moments involved improvisation or actor-led "orchestration":
### 1. Brittany Murphy and the "Colace" Interactions
Brittany Murphy was particularly noted for improvising physical and emotional tics for her character, Daisy Randone.
* **The Colace Scene:** In the scene where Daisy is trying to get laxatives (Colace) from the nurses, Murphy reportedly "orchestrated" her own interactions to make the scene more dynamic. Specifically, she made a point to involve **Christina Myers** (who played Nurse Margie) more deeply in the interaction than the script originally called for, creating a more crowded and frantic energy that reflected Daisy's obsessive-compulsive nature.
* **Emotional Beats:** Crew members and production notes mention that Murphy improvised several of Daisy's most vulnerable moments, particularly the small, jittery physical movements and "bird-like" eating habits that weren't explicitly detailed in the screenplay but were developed to show the character's fragility.
### 2. Angelina Jolie’s Physical Performance as Lisa
Angelina Jolie’s Academy Award-winning performance was highly spontaneous. While she largely followed the dialogue, Mangold has stated that she would frequently surprise her co-stars with her choices in "long takes."
* **The "Buttons" Monologue:** While the core of the "too many buttons" speech in the final basement confrontation was scripted, the specific **pacing, physical gestures, and vocal range** (alternating between "mousy" and "menacing") were improvised by Jolie during filming. She purposefully chose unusual moves and gestures to make the sociopathic Lisa feel unpredictable.
* **The "Salon" Diary Scene:** In the scene where Lisa reads Susanna’s diary aloud to the other girls in the basement, Jolie improvised some of the mocking inflections and the way she physically interacted with the other actresses (such as her "empty" stare noted by director James Mangold) to maintain a sense of genuine intimidation on set. To keep the tension real, Jolie reportedly avoided befriending the other cast members during production so that their wary reactions to her would be authentic.
### 3. Whoopi Goldberg’s Ad-libs
James Mangold’s sound team and mixers have noted that the dialogue on set was often "loose" with a significant amount of ad-libbing.
* **Nurse Valerie’s Reactions:** Whoopi Goldberg, known for her improvisational skills, ad-libbed many of her dry, authoritative "comebacks" and reactions to the girls' antics. The sound mixers mentioned that they always had extra microphones on set to capture "every line, scripted or not," because Goldberg and the girls would often riff during the ward scenes to create a more naturalistic, lived-in feel for the hospital environment.
### 4. Winona Ryder and the "Downtown" Scene
* While Winona Ryder spent months learning to play "Downtown" on the guitar and practiced with a coach daily, the **vocal performance** in the scene where she and Angelina Jolie sing together was kept raw and "imperfect." The decision to have them sing in a way that felt unpolished and spontaneous was a deliberate performance choice to emphasize the bond between the two characters rather than a choreographed musical moment.