EW Holiday Preview: Why Dragon Tattoo Won't Get Oscar Love, Williams on the Soul of Monroe, Renner's Career Lesson

Entertainment Weekly's Holiday Preview lands on news stands November 11. Here are some highlights, from why the Academy won't like "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" to Charlize Theron on mean-spiritedness and Michelle Williams on what she was after when she prepped to play Marilyn Monroe.

Steven Zaillian, screenwriter and exec producer of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo": “It’s dark, it’s scary, it’s dramatic, it’s suspenseful...It’s a David Fincher film. We all know what that is.” Why won't it get Oscar love? “There’s too much anal rape.”

Has Rooney Mara seen her performance as Lisbeth Salander? “I keep turning [Fincher's offers to see the film] down. I’m just not ready to watch. I don’t think I’m really going to enjoy the experience.”

Charlize Theron, on her role in "Young Adult": "What I love about it is that it’s not nasty-sexy, and by that I mean the sexy drug addict or the sexy alcoholic. It’s about mean-spiritedness, the thing that is innately webbed in all of us.”

Tom Cruise on his "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" co-star Jeremy Renner's long road to recognition: “You look at his career and it’s a lesson: Don’t give up! Talent always wins and passion always wins. This business, you have to deal with a level of validation and evaluation, and he’s someone who just kept going.”

Michelle Williams on playing Marilyn Monroe in "My Week with Marilyn":

“What I really was after was her soul,..All she wanted was to be taken seriously. She kind of imprisoned herself. She developed this character which got her a lot of attention, love, praise, and adoration, but at a certain point she wanted out. She had built herself a prison, and what she wanted was to be appreciated as an artist, as a woman, as a real person. She never got the love she needed as a child, so  everything— the crowds, the public, the husbands—was a temporary fix. I wish she could have had a child, because I think that would have done the trick.”