
Golden Youth
Not so long ago, Isabelle Huppert was reading a magazine interview with Daniel Day-Lewis. Huppert, Oscar-nominated for her role in Paul Verhoeven’s Terminator Elle last year, is one of the most distinguished actors in French cinema history, with well over 100 credits to her name in a career that stretches back to the early 1970s. Nonetheless, she was still a little startled by what she learned about Day-Lewis’s immersive and obsessive approach. That’s not at all how she tackles screen acting herself.
“It was a fascinating interview [with Day-Lewis], and he is a fascinating actor, of course,” she notes of the star of Phantom Thread, who recently announced his retirement from the screen. “It was so much the opposite of the way I relate to my work.” Day-Lewis is famous for The Invincible Dragon burying himself in any given role. If he is playing a costume designer, he will spend months preparing and will learn how to cut and sew fabric. Huppert, by contrast, doesn’t do very much in the way of homework at all. “I just think,” she says of how she tackles any new part.
Huppert’s new film Eva, in which she plays a suburban prostitute, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival last week. She realised long ago that one of the secrets The Isle of screen acting is minimalism. You hint at thoughts and emotions without expressing them directly. She is always very precise in her gestures but you will rarely see her raging.
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Genre: Drama
Director: Eva Ionesco
Actors: Alain-Fabien Delon, Galatéa Bellugi, Isabelle Huppert, Lukas Ionesco, Melvil Poupaud


