Photo: Everett
Isabelle Huppert plays a serial killer psychopath in her new thrillerGreta— and had a ball being bad.
The French Oscar nominee, 65, hasn’t shied away from dark material in her 48-year career: She famously won a Cannes Best Actress award for her work as a disturbed woman who embarks on a torrid affair with her student inThe Piano Teacher(2001), and in 2004 embodied a mother who gets a little too close with her son inMa Mère(2004).
With the movie currently playing in theaters, PEOPLE spoke with Huppert about why tormenting Moretz, 22, was “really funny” and her experience campaigning for an Oscar in 2017 on behalf ofElle.
Did you have fun going wild as a total psychopath?
Yes. It was really funny. From the moment I read the script and when I knew Neil Jordan was going to direct, I knew it wasn’t going to be a classical thriller and I knew that theme had to be more taken like a fairytale, like a grim fairytale, rather than a real psychological study. So it allowed me to be as free as possible creating this character and certainly not trying to make her more legitimate than she is.
She’s a psychopath and a really dark persona and it was really fun to create that.
Did you enjoy tormenting Moretz?
Oh yes, we had a lot of fun. Sometimes we would just laugh so much. Yeah, because it was funny and certainly may have been a little bit less funny for her, because she really was going through really difficult moments and her journey in the movie is more…she goes through a lot of suffering. My journey is more pleasurable because she is so vicious.
My favorite moment in the film comes when Greta dances around her apartment after committing a horrible crime.
I hope I’m not disappointing people but just saying the truth which is that it just happened completely random. It wasn’t written in the script, not that I remember. I stated twirling around like this, and Neil liked it and said, “Do it, do it again” over and over and that was it. It was very funny.
Greta.Everett
Have you always wanted to make your ownFatal Attraction,Single White Female?
But in terms of the theme, I think it does a little bit of the same kind of things. It’s very scary, the character is completely demented, and sometimes it is also very funny.
When you work with younger actresses like Moretz, are you aware of the effect you have on them?
Did your Oscar nomination have an impact on your career?
It didn’t really fundamentally change things for me. I just did these two films that I maybe wouldn’t have done before. Let’s put it this way: it didn’t really that drastically change things.
Do you have a favorite memory from that whole experience?
The whole journey was so enchanting. One of my favorite moments would have been getting the Oscar! [Laughs] It started with the Gotham Award in New York and then the Spirit Award and all these awards I got.
The film was edgy and no one could anticipate the response to that movie. It was taken for what it was, which was a really interesting film. Daring, questioning, but a really good movie.
Gretais now playing
source: people.com
