Julianne Moore Explains What She Needs in a Film Director
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Accura. Precision crafted performance. Listener supported. WNYC Studios. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. A co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. At the New Yorker Festival recently, we were joined by a film actor we can legitimately call a legend.

Whether she's playing a 1950s housewife, a 1970s adult film star, a linguistics professor losing her memory, or Sarah Palin, she brings depth and humor and tragedy and incandescence to all her roles. And she's the author of the best-selling children's book, Freckleface Strawberry. Staff writer Michael Shulman sat down last month with Julianne Moore. The following is only a partial list of the directors she's worked with.

And she's just added to the list Pedro Almodovar in his first English language feature, The Room Next Door, co-starring Tilda Swinton. Have you decided where we're going? That's why I called.

Please welcome the gigantically gifted Julianne Moore.

God, I'm so flattered. Thank you very much. Thank you. I mean, let's start with that list because, my God, I mean, that's just an incredible roster of people. And I'm curious, when you choose roles, how important is the idea of wanting to work with someone or wanting to work with someone again?

versus like a particular character or the script? Do you actually have like, do you have like a life list, like a birder or something of directors? Well, you know, first of all, we don't have as much choice as you think. That's what's sort of interesting. And as you're going through that list, I thought, wow, I never ever thought in my life I would work with that roster of talents.

And my film career didn't even start until I was 30. And before then, I was really working in television. I started on a soap opera and I did lots of, yeah, right on. It's here for As the World Turns. But I just, you know, I just got the jobs I got, right? And so I came to New York thinking that I was going to work in the theater. And then I also thought that somehow I could work at a regional theater for the rest of my life, which is not, which is difficult to do.

and ended up mostly doing television stuff and auditioning for Broadway things and not getting it.

And feeling frustrated by not getting any film work. And then when the independent film world started in the early 90s, suddenly my life changed. And one of the people who changed it was Robert Altman. Right. Shortcuts. Right. Because he saw me in a production of Uncle Vanya that became Vanya on 42nd Street, which Louis Moll filmed. And at that same time, I also auditioned for Todd Haynes for Safe.

So those three movies came out at the same time in the early 90s and completely changed my life. And it was sort of, it wasn't intentional, you know, that I didn't seek these people out. It was just this weird confluence of opportunity. And I suddenly had this film career.

Yes. However, I mean, when I look at this list of directors, and I've been throwing myself a Julianne Moore Film Festival over the last couple weeks, which I've really enjoyed, what's striking is how, you know, these are all very visionary, auteur kind of directors that you've worked with. They're all very different. And yet you're able to really...

find, you know, fit yourself into all of them. And I can only imagine that, you know, an Altman film is completely different than being in at least a Cholodenko film or, you know, a Cronenberg film. Um,

How do you figure out sort of what that means for each director? Are you like going back and watching their previous movies? Are you like just sitting down discussing with them? Like, what is the style that you want? Or is it like more intuitive? That's an interesting question. I think that, I mean, the most important thing about a director is point of view. Um,

And when people ask me, they'll say, why is Ridley Scott so special? Or why is so-and-so different from this other director? And I'm like, I don't really see the differences. What I see is that through line of point of view. All of them have a really distinct way of telling a story. And a lot of them, you know, write their own scripts as well. That's something I've been very drawn to, people who are also writers. And I can feel...

sort of tell in the language, especially with first-time directors, what they're trying to communicate. So that's really important to me, the language. And then you see it in the frame. You know, it's like I could... Todd and I, when we did Safe, we didn't have a lot of time. We didn't have any time to really talk. We had a little bit of rehearsal. I felt like the language was very specific, but then I would always ask him to show me the frame before we... You know, and he had a lot of storyboards too. And then I could kind of see...

from the way he was looking at it in combination with the language where I was supposed to be in it, how he saw me. I was like always searching for, once again, his point of view. Where does my character exist in this narrative? Okay, see, but this is totally fascinating to me because a lot of the actors who I have spoken to absolutely will not watch themselves on playback

I mean, someone like Adam Driver, for instance, I profiled him. He won't ever watch anything he's in. And if you try to make him, he'll run to the bathroom and throw up. How does that not make you get inside your own head, self-conscious? What are you getting out of watching yourself as you are shooting? Well...

you know, interesting enough, I don't like to watch the final product. I also don't, back in the day when we had dailies, I hated dailies because dailies are, that's the footage that you shot that day. So you've already shot it. And it used to be that people would watch their own dailies and then, I don't know, but it made me feel sick because I can't change it at that point. I've done it, but I love playback because,

Because playback, I'm like, oh, there's the frame. There's the camera movement. That's where I am. That's what, oh, that lens is bigger than I thought. Oh, I'm further away. I need to do. So playback helps me adjust. Storyboards are fantastic. I like to look through the lens, all of those things play.

inform what I'm doing. Once it's done, forget it. I don't want to see that. That's a mess. But in the process of making it, it's very exciting to watch it. I mean, that's probably partly why you're such a director's actor, because that's a kind of directing of yourself, like analyzing how you look in a frame and figuring out what to change. Yeah, I feel like it's a tool, right? I'm always like...

What do they see? What are they communicating? You know, everything in film is a kind of a communication. You know, that's why I always hate that. Let's see what happens kind of directing because I'm like, no, or the script is a blueprint. I'm like, no, the script is not a blueprint. It's specific. You know, shots are specific. All of those things add to our understanding of a story.

I mean, without naming names, are there other things that like directors have done that have sort of turned you off or made you sort of alienated you from their process where you're like, I just, I can't really work like that? When they don't have a shot list. That's really, really hard because then I'm like, well, wait, you know, if you get to the set and the director hasn't prepared and they don't know how they want to shoot something, I feel lost because I'm like, well, wait, well, I don't understand. I don't understand.

how you see it. So how am I supposed to, you know, do, do my work too? It's not, it's not, um, yeah, it feels too general to me actually. Hmm. What were, I mean, what was Altman's process like? Cause he seems like it was very freewheeling in a way. I mean, maybe I'm thinking of like Nashville, which is sort of like a sprawling. Well, exactly. So I'm not, I don't think I mean like you have to be strict about,

with your shots so that they have to be tight or something. But Altman, first of all, he was a person that made me want to be a film actor because I just, I had never, I made it kind of all the way to college without ever having seen an Altman film. I missed everything in the 70s and it wasn't until the 80s when I got to college and I saw three women in a revival house and

That I was, it kind of woke me up and I'd never seen that kind of acting before. And I'd never seen that point of view before. And I'd never said it was kind of naturalism to it. And I was like, that's what I want to do. I want to work with him. I want to do that kind of work. So he, he had such a generous attitude.

kind of viewpoint of humanity. He so loved individuality and flaws and just everything that was sort of like weird about us. And he put all these people in a room and everyone thought it was chaos, but it was very, even with the improv, you might say something and then the next one he'd go, okay, now you say that and you say what you said before. So it was like there was this incredible shape to it

Right, right. So what about Amadovar? I mean, what struck you about just, he obviously talked about some of the point of view is a very strong one.

What stood out to you about just his process of directing? What I didn't understand about Pedro was that everything in his movies is so intensely personal that, you know, I think I thought, because I'm an American too, when I first saw like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, I was like, oh, Spain must be like that.

I know. I know. And then I sort of learned, I was like, no, that's not Bane. You know, but when we were there and Tilda and I walked into his apartment, I saw every single one of his movies in his apartment. Like all of the stuff.

the red kitchen and all the little figures and the stacks of books and DVDs and their opera was on the lights were low and I was like so overstimulated I was like I don't think I can concentrate but that's his world and then after working with him and meeting like his producers and other people in the crew I realized I'd seen them all in his movies too like even the people are in there and

So everything that he does is drawn from his life. You know, he would bring jewelry to the set that you say, you know, if anybody wants to wear this pin, you put that on today and be like, OK, you know, but all of it. That's his that's his language. That's his imagination. You are you're in it. And I think he also has seen everything in his head. And and so you're always thinking, OK, how do I fulfill this vision that he has of this of this film?

My colleague John Law wrote a profile of you in The New Yorker in 2015, and there's a quote in it from Wallace Shawn, who is in that Uncle Vanya production with you. He said,

Her orders are to turn into a complete maniac on Tuesday at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and so she guiltlessly does that. Is that right? Is that how the military brat life rubbed off on you in a way? No. No.

No, you know, my father was the person who was in the army and he was a paratrooper and a helicopter pilot, a really smart, wonderful person who's very liberal and not, you know, rigorous about behavior or anything like that. I think I like...

I love to learn. I like to read. I like to ask people about what's going on. You know, I like all of those things, but I do. Yes. I love structure because I think that I can do all that kind of stuff. And then when the camera's rolling, I'm free, you know, I'm free to, and it's safe. One of the things that makes me always rubs me the wrong way is when somebody calls an actor brave, we're not brave.

We're having a great time. We are pretending. And that's wonderful. So you've created all these circumstances to be free and to have that moment to think like, what would that feel like? How can I make myself feel that? How can I engage in that? And the minute you say cut, you're like, oh, I did that. It's like a little bit like back with Bob Altman. He made you feel safe. He gave you a container so that you can explore this

And I think the instinct to act or for any creative endeavor, I think, I mean, I think there's pleasure involved. You know, why are we attracted to it? We don't have to do this. But like you start doing it and you're like, I like this. It feels good. There's pleasure in it.

Well, so as you mentioned earlier, you know, your first kind of big break was as on, as the world turns. Yeah. I mean, my impression of being on a soap is that it's like you get in there, you have to cover like 30 pages in a day and it's just like, go, go, go, go, go. Is that what the process is like? It's really, really fast. And you learn to be prepared, know your lines, know what you want to accomplish and then try to, you know, and then, and that's, I actually would watch myself on television to see how bad I was. Yeah.

And it helped. That was like an early version of watching yourself in the playback. Yeah, it kind of was. Because I would be like, I was stiff. I had a terrible voice. I sort of had a voice like this on television. I didn't know how to relax. You know, I didn't know how to do it. So it was a really way to learn. Kevin, I told you to go away. I told you I was staying. I don't want you here. I don't want to see you again. Is that why you kissed me yesterday?

Why are you doing this to me? Why are you doing this to us, Franny? Julianne Moore in her early years on As the World Turns, and she'll be back in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

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Have it all in the heart of it all. Learn more at callohiohome.com. Todd Haynes, who you've made, I believe, five movies with at this point. Of course, there's Safe, Far From Heaven, most recently, May, December. But we have a clip from Safe. Basically, you're playing Carol White, who is a woman living in

LA in the 80s and she's like redecorating her living room and stuff and suddenly she starts experiencing these bouts of mysterious affliction like a coughing fit or a runny nose and she's not sure what's happening with her this is a scene with her and her uh psychiatrist so let's take a look do you work no I'm a house um I'm a homemaker

I'm working on some designs for our house, though, in my spare time. And you have one child? My husband's little boy. He's not my son. He's my stepson, Rory. He's 10. How long have you been feeling unwell? About two months, three months.

I've been under a lot of stress lately. And then my friend Linda and I, she's probably my best friend. She lives down the... Anyway, we started this fruit diet together. I think that sort of set it off. Poor old Carol. I know. Yeah. It's a great movie. Do you remember anything about that particular scene about sort of...

about being inside of that scene and how you approached it? I, that was, I think that was Todd's mom's suit that I was wearing. Oh my gosh. We shot a lot. We shot in his grandparents' driveway. We shot at his uncle's house at the beach. Um, you know, it was all very, it was, it was a million dollars making,

making the movie. Wow. I mean, well, you can tell obviously that the sort of breathy voice, why was that the thing you, was it instinct or did you really have like a sort of intellectualized reason for that? It was instinct. I think when I first read it, but I also thought this is a person who's not comfortable in her body.

So she can barely make contact with her own throat, her own vocal cords. She doesn't want to make any sound. She doesn't even have, like she talks about her son. It's like her son. It's her stepson. She doesn't have a, she doesn't like to take up a lot of space. She wants to be attractive and offensive and doesn't want to offer herself. Like she's like, he's like, we want to hear from you. And she's like, what? Yeah.

You know, she's been completely defined by the world that she lives in, by consumerism, capitalism, by her marriage. She's not working. She's kind of absorbed. You know, she spends her time on a fruit diet and at aerobics and buying her couch. And then suddenly she feels terribly ill.

Like the, you know, the fabric on the couch makes her feel sick. She starts to have a, she has like a seizure at the dry cleaner and she doesn't, she's confused. She's like, so everything that tells her who she is makes her sick. And she doesn't know why. That choice about sort of where her voice lies reminds me a little bit of in May, December, your most recent Todd Haynes film, where you had a list that kind of like,

Did it come and go a little bit? I noticed at certain moments more than others. We were very specific about it because people only lisp on certain sounds. And so there are sounds where the lisp will be more pronounced. But Todd and I talked about that. And what I wanted with the lisp is that a lisp is often a characteristic of childhood.

Because it can be like a tongue that's not quite developed yet. Now, obviously, when people have actual speech issues, there could be a lot happening that's not addressed. But with this particular character, I wanted it to be a signifier of how she thought of herself. Yeah.

This is a person who thinks of herself as a child and thinks of herself as a princess. She's not the queen. She's still a little girl. She's still the princess. He's the prince who rescued her. In order for him to rescue her, she has to be the princess. So this was like another manifestation of the way she felt in the world and what she was projecting there.

you know, in the world. So Todd and I talked about it and we talked about the specificity of the, the lisp too. It made sure it was always really, really specific. Um, it's interesting to see that clip where she stumbles over the word housewife because you've played a lot of great housewives. Um, of course I remember the year when you were nominated for two Oscars or playing two different unhappy 1950s housewives and the hours and far from heaven. Um,

Is that like a fluke, playing people who are sort of stuck in the domestic realm? Or is it something that you sought out that you were interested in for a particular reason? I think that was a fluke. And that year in particular was frustrating to me because those parts were so different. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, I don't know that I seek out things in the domestic space, but I do think I'm really drawn to ordinary lives. I'm like people. I've never been like, I'm going to play an astronaut next.

I don't think that way. I always think, what is this emotional dilemma? Why is this compelling to us? I always think of that thing in the New York Times, My Sunday Morning, and we all read it avidly. Like, oh, she gets up at 8.30, and then she has one cup of coffee, and then a banana, and then she goes for a run. And I read it all the time, and I'm like, why do I care about the banana? Yeah.

And I care because she's a human being like me and I'm really interested in how she approaches her life and what she does and what she thinks and all of these things.

hopefully give me a deeper understanding of what it is to be a human being. And so the stories, a lot of these stories, domestic stories, well, that's the biggest story of our lives, right? How do we live? Who do we live? Who do we love? Um, where do we live in our communities? You know, those are the things that we are all, we all know about. We know about that. I don't know what it's like to be a queen. I've never met a queen. Um,

Maybe I'll try to meet a queen. I don't know. But, you know, but I do know about this. We all know about this. Well, I mean, you are yourself a kind of ordinary person. Yeah. One other interest of yours, which is the Knicks.

How did you get, you're at Knicks games all the time. How did you get into basketball and like, what do you see when you're watching the Knicks? Frankly, it's not me. It's my family. It's my husband and my son who are here with his fiance. Not my husband's fiance, my son's fiance. Oh,

But they're big basketball fans. And so it's a really, it's a family thing. And I didn't know, I grew up with a dad who watched football and I never really watched basketball. But what I love about watching basketball is that you can see their faces and there is so much drama and you see their faces and you see their bodies and all these other sports. Like I feel like in baseball and in football, they're all, I don't know what's going on, you know, but they're so exposed. Right.

And I really like that. And I love the drama of it. I mean, sometimes it's heartbreaking. Really, right? Yeah. Well, Julianne Moore, thank you so much for doing this. It's such a privilege to be able to talk to you. Thank you.

Julianne Moore at the New Yorker Festival last month. She's co-starring in The Room Next Door alongside Tilda Swinton in It Just Opened. I'm David Remnick. That's our program for today. Hope you had a great holiday. We'll see you in the new year, whatever that may bring. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Louis Mitchell.

This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Sommer. With guidance from Emily Botin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Guan, and Alejandra Deckett. Special thanks this week to Catherine Sterling, Amanda Miller, Nico Brown, and Michael Etherington. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherena Endowment Fund. ♪

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