Isabelle Huppert: Confessions of a Mask
From a cinema in Paris, the iconic French actress discusses The Piano Teacher, why she doesn’t think she is prolific, and why getting into character means getting into the right shoes.
Christine Cinéma Club is not a place for popcorn and sweets. Located on a quiet street in the Latin Quarter—a now touristy, once revolutionary enclave of Paris known for existentialism, jazz bars, and bookshops—the theatre, which was first opened in the 1970s, has grand green double doors that slide across and open spectacularly onto a foyer drenched in red. Vintage posters for titles such as Agnès Varda’s Le Bonheur (Happiness, 1965), Barbara Loden’s Wanda (1970), and Luis Buñuel’s Él (This Strange Passion, 1953) adorn the walls. Above the small, glass-fronted ticket booth, chalkboards reveal the programming for the day. Salle 2, upstairs, has electric blue seats. A built-in ashtray punctuates the wood-panelled spiral staircase towards Salle 1, whose upholstery is red velvet. Explore further and you’ll find shelves of DCPs and cardboard boxes of 35mm film tucked away behind the projection booth, their titles labelled in schoolish French cursive. Le Mépris (Contempt, 1963). The Big Lebowski (1998). Darling (1965). Parasite (2019). La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher, 2001). “Cinemas were always like this,” says actor Isabelle Huppert, wistfully. “Cinemas whose purpose was art et d’essai.” Arthouse cinéma, dit autrement.
Huppert always loved going to the cinemas in Saint-Germain, the Quartier Latin as it is called in French, and especially here, at the cinema once called Christine 21 (now called Christine Cinema Club) along with Écoles 21 on Rue des Écoles (now called École Cinéma Club), both programmed by her son, Lorenzo Chammah. Christine and Écoles are ’rep’ cinemas, which—now a rarity—screen cinematic classics alongside deeper cuts. “It’s really a celebration for movie lovers and movie buffs,” says Huppert. “You could go from an old film by Robert Bresson to an old film by David Lynch or from a classic Orson Welles like Citizen Kane (1941) to, right now, a selection of the ten best Westerns [Red River, John McCabe, Meek’s Cutoff]—really revisiting all the great directors’ heritage. It’s really wonderful—you could spend a whole day there and never get bored.”
If anyone is qualified to be fond of such a cinema, it is surely Huppert. The actor, who has starred in over 120 films and was voted second in The New York Times list of the greatest actors of the 21st century (beaten only by Denzel Washington), is synonymous with arthouse film itself, having worked with everyone from Jean-Luc Godard and Michael Haneke to Mia Hansen-Løve and Hong Sangsoo. Known for playing malevolent, twisted, but ultimately sensitive and strident characters, Huppert (or la machine Huppert, as Patrice Chéreau called her), at the time of writing, has just finished a theatre run of Jean Racine’s Bérénice (1670) in Paris (staged by the great Romeo Castellucci); recently premièred The Richest Woman in The World, about L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, in Cannes; and wrapped screening on Ulrike Ottinger’s The Blood Countess. As we speak, however, she is set for some travel in China, time “for herself”, followed by a visit to the “Chinese Sundance” (China’s First International Film Festival, in Xining), where she will head the jury of the 19th edition and attend a screening of L’Avenir (Things to Come, 2016), her film with Hansen-Løve. Then she is set to start filming Parallel Lives by the renowned Iranian director Asghar Farhadi: “All I can say is that I play a writer; it’s enough to make people travel in their mind.”
We are at the cinema for our cover shoot with Huppert—which has also been chosen as an opportunity to enlister her for Cinema Saves—A Rabbit’s Foot’s campaign to promote movie-going. A willing participant, Huppert has been styled as a classic Parisian ticket seller. For the second look, she has been dressed in a look inspired by Claude Cahun, a French performance artist and photographer for whom masks or a painted white face were a recurring motif. Towards the end of our shoot, Huppert, still in costume, bites into a jambon-beurre in the street, greeting punters who have arrived for the day’s matinée. Many look a little bemused that the presence of one of the world’s most respected actors, and the patron of their favourite cinema, has come as a freebie with their ticket.
But who is the woman behind the mask? Speaking to Huppert afterwards in the lounge of Relais Christine, an elegant hotel just across the street, I find the actor—in sunglasses and a large trench coat billowing around her— to be enigmatic. Both closed and open, serious and warm (she twice addresses me as “ma chérie”—my dear), curious and aloof, matter of fact but also poetic, she speaks in a way that often resembles a riddle or philosophical tract. Huppert has long insisted that she finds acting “easy”. And in an era when we expect actors to mine into their psychological depths and suffer for their art (and awards), her approach exists in stark comparison. “I don’t think a lot about acting, but I also think a lot,” says Huppert. “Preparing is thinking. That’s it.”
Kitty Grady: Was there a moment when you realised you wanted to become an actor?
Isabelle Huppert: No, it was gradual. Although it took very little time because I started being an actress quite early in my life. But there wasn’t a pivotal moment. Maybe it was there forever. It was not like a revelation, because I was myself. I was not a movie-goer as a child and I had very few connections to movies. I think you end up being an actor when you don’t know how to do anything else. Forgive me this practical metaphor but acting is a bit like taking the leftovers from dinner. If you are not able to be a singer, a philosophy teacher, a great dancer, a great singer, a great intellectual, you end up being an actor.
KG: I find it fascinating how you talk about acting and the ease with which you approach it, that you always get it on the first take…
I like to say that. Except when I have to wake up at 4 o’clock in the morning, then I don’t find it so easy! But, yes, I like to make people believe it’s very easy because it’s partly true, partly untrue. But mostly true. It is not so difficult, except for the energy it requires, but apart from this, yes, I do it easily.
KG: It’s very different to when you hear American actors and there’s this rhetoric of mining the depths of their souls when approaching a role. It’s like your approach is more anti-psychological. Would you agree?
IH: Psychological, I don’t know what it means. It’s not the problem whether it’s psychological or not psychological. When I decide to make a film, I think a lot about it, but when I do it, I don’t think a lot. I do it very instinctively. I ask myself the right questions, not the wrong ones. I always say that cinema is a language—so whatever questions you have you get the answers through cinema itself, not by endless explanations. It’s like sculpture. You take a piece of unshaped earth and then you shape it gradually. It’s the same when you do a role. There’s no answer you can have before doing it.
KG: And in that metaphor, are you the artist or the material—or both?
IH: I don’t think an actor is an artist. Artist is a word I’m a little wary of! But I think I know what you mean. Let’s say it’s an exchange between the actor and director. It’s a whole process. A director watches an actor moving and being, and through them, this is how he portrays his story. It is quite mysterious, actually.
KG: You are known for playing darker characters, but I’ve also always been drawn to your lighter or more whimsical characters, such as Claire in Hong Sangsoo’s Claire’s Camera (2017). Do you approach these characters differently?
IH: It’s not really about lighter or darker. I think any character has darker or lighter sides. Comedy is never far from tragedy, and vice versa. If you take Hong Sangsoo’s film, on the one hand she is light but there was also a lot of melancholy. It’s definitely more light and funny than tragic, but behind her there’s a certain weight of life. Even in The Piano Teacher, you have some funny moments with dark humour. I don’t try to calculate “darker” or “lighter”.
KG: Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher has been re-released recently, and has been playing in cinemas in London. I’ve had messages from many people saying how incredible it is. Why do you think that film has endured so much?
IH: Because Michael Haneke is a great, great director. I think that there was something very harsh and very rejecting on the surface in that film, but unconsciously people could feel that behind that there was a great sensibility, a great suffering. So it was all about contradictory feelings, and I think that the movie is not only harsh and negative, it’s also a love story. A very strange love story, of course. But it’s also as simple as a love story.
KG: What is your interpretation of the ending of the movie—when she stabs herself with a knife and walks out of the conservatoire?
IH: The ending is almost quite funny. She wishes she could be a great romantic heroine and die like one, and even in that she fails!
KG: You worked with Haneke later, on Happy End (2017). And you worked with Claude Chabrol seven times—which, I think, is the most? Where does that desire to repeatedly work with directors come from?
It’s a very nice feeling, because it’s a confirmation of how two people can get along. But the desire comes from the director first. That’s how it works. Of course, you can have actors asking for a director, but usually it goes from the director towards the actor and that’s the process. There is nothing revolting about that. So it’s the confirmation of that interest, of that desire to work together again. It’s really nice when it goes on and on. I have been lucky enough to have this happen a few times in my life.
KG: And the latest of these collaborators seems to be Sangsoo. What has it been like to collaborate with him? He is known for making films fast, for a low budget?
IH: He is very special. He’s not the only one doing films for a really low budget, but he pushes that to an extreme more each time. At some point on Claire’s Camera, which was the second film, there was still a crew. And on the last one, it was only him and a tiny little camera and no lights. It’s like a little miracle. No script, no character. Dialogues, yes. It’s improvised, less than you would think. But at the end of the day you have a film.
KG: He feels very in the French tradition, somehow, of Éric Rohmer.
I was never very into this comparison with Rohmer. People say this because there is a lot of talking in their films. But in fact, they are very different. It’s a quick comparison. I love Éric Rohmer, he was a master, undoubtedly. There is something more erratic in Hong Sangsoo, more poetic.
When you see these imaginary science fiction stories, where they go to a different planet, travelling, it’s exactly what you do when you are acting. You travel within yourself and you travel to the director’s imaginary world. This is priceless.
Isabelle Huppert
KG: I read that you get into character when you find the right shoes.
IH: That was a funny line from Chantal Akerman. She was once asked how do you find your role and she said, “In my shoes”.
KG: Do you wish you could have worked with Chantal Akerman?
IH: Yes, I would have loved to. In fact, we discussed it, because I knew Chantal for a long time, from when we were very young, and for some reason it never happened. Not long before the end of her life, we spoke about working together. Life decided otherwise.
KG: What is your process of discovery with new directors?
IH: I think it’s always the same. Things happen and you create circumstances for them to happen. And sometimes they do happen and sometimes they don’t happen. But it’s a general way of being curious, of being alert. I think it’s a mixture of the unexpected—you don’t do anything and it happens, and it is also a movement you know how to create.
KG: Does being very prolific take the pressure off because you don’t have to be too precious with each decision?
IH: I do things one after the other. You can call it prolific if you want. And whatever I do, I know exactly why I do it and how to do it.
KG: Well, you are often working on many projects at a time… Is there a certain feeling you are chasing?
IH: The main feeling I want to repeat, even without knowing it or expressing it too consciously, it’s a way of escaping reality and jumping into
an imaginary world. That is really comforting. It’s the feeling of escape—not the feeling of being someone else and all this cliché of what it means to be an actress, but rather escaping to a different world, which happens to be your world for some time. Because I’m not a different person: I’m a character, but I try to make it as close as possible to myself. When you see these imaginary science fiction stories, where they go to a different planet, travelling, it’s exactly what you do when you are acting. You travel within yourself and you travel to the director’s imaginary world. This is priceless.
KG: When you act in English, your second language, does that allow you to access a different realm?
Oh no, English is not my second language. I dream about having been raised in the English language as a child! I have this fantasy, a very strong fantasy: I try to persuade myself that’s the way it happened, to make me freer in my way of speaking English. Even when I’m watching films, I can’t understand everything. I am fascinated by truly bilingual people.
KG: Are there characteristics that great directors have in common?
Trust. You really have to trust your actors, and then the trust becomes reciprocal. It’s a pact; a strong word. It’s a seal between you and the director. Without this pact, it can’t work.
KG: Many of my favourite films with you are by female directors—Mia Hansen-Løve, Claire Denis, Catherine Breillat… Does working with women change the dynamic at all?
IH: I loved doing all these movies. Especially Things to Come with Mia. She’s a great director. And even more recently with Élise Girard in Sidonie in Japan (2013). That said, I always have a hard time defining the differences between working with a woman or a man. You still need to feel you are doing the same journey together. It’s the same necessary trust.
I don’t know what it means to be prolific. I do things one after the other. You can call it prolific if you want.
Isabelle Huppert
KG: What are the current problems you think are facing the film industry?
IH: The problem is that we need people to continue to go to movie theatres. Jean-Luc Godard, he was very pessimistic. He said that it would soon be the death of cinema. I persist to think the opposite!
KG: I was thinking about how you worked on Heaven’s Gate (1980)—a film that comes up a lot in your career—which is this big American blockbuster that tanked commercially. How does it feel as an actor when that happens?
IH: Heaven’s Gate is a unique and special case. The gap between the rejection and the immense genius of Michael Cimino. But it’s part of the history of Heaven’s Gate, this rejection. Over the years, people started to realise how meaningful the film was and how, you know, the film was a masterpiece—at the same time a very harsh criticism of America. So it’s a very special story. As we were doing the film we had no idea of the disaster, how it was going to end up. It was really what we call a cinema d’auteur. Sacrificing nothing to the demands of commercial filmmaking. It was a Western, but so personal, with long scenes and a phenomenal budget. What makes me sad mostly is how Michael Cimino never really got over it, and even though he did do some great films, like Year of the Dragon (1985), deep in his heart, he never got over that failure until the end of his life.
KG: How do you judge success in your own career?
IH: It’s not up to me to judge the success. What I’m happy about in my situation is that I can make the choices I want. It’s an immense privilege, an immense luxury.
KG: Are there any directors you would still like to work with?
IH: I always thought this question was vain, because of course, by definition I want to work with all the best directors in the world. Who wouldn’t want to? It’s more about who is interested to work with me.
KG: What do you do between roles?
IH: When I was on stage, I couldn’t go to the movies. I mean, I can, of course, do whatever I want, but now I would just like to sit and see movies. I’m a good spectator, I’m very curious, and I love watching films, going to the theatre. That’s basically what I do when I’m not working. It’s very banal, not exceptional.
KG: You recently walked in Demna Gvasalia’s final catwalk show at Balenciaga. How was that experience?
IH: It was meaningful because it was his last show. I loved my outfit. I felt protected with this hood and big glasses. It was like hiding myself behind a character. Demna is very interested in movies and theatres. He came to see all my theatre performances and he liked them. We mutually inspired each other and I had fun following him into his extravagant creativity. There’s something very theatrical with fashion designers, but even more so with Demna. When I wear all these outfits, I feel like I am wearing a costume as I would do in a fiction, but I also feel myself. It’s not like I was disguised and clumsily being someone else.
KG: You were walking alongside Kim Kardashian. I was wondering what your relationship to fame is like?
IH: Fame is not something I really think about. Maybe I should sometimes, to better understand how people perceive me. I know the game and its limits. But as long as I’m able to go beyond these limits, I am fine.
KG: You mentioned in a discussion with Mikey Madison in Interview Magazine that you have a cat, whose name is too difficult to pronounce. I’ve been so curious as to what her name is. Can you tell me?
IH: My cat is called Oubala. Don’t ask me, I just say “my love”. But she’s the most beautiful cat in the world.
Foot Note
We asked some of Isabelle’s collaborators to say some words about the actor….
“Working with Isabelle is like being inside a hurricane. At times tempestuous, at times strangely calm and tender. Always elemental. Unpredictable and Immediate. And the laughter! Perhaps that is the most essential part. Her roiling sense of fun.”
Cate Blanchett on Isabelle Huppert
“She is the only actress I know that can think abstraclty and can take a rigid form and fill it in in her own way without sentimentally illustrating it. She can deal with multiple things at the same time with a certain transparency.”
Robert Wilson (director of ‘Mary Said What She Said’) on Isabelle Huppert
“To me she has always represented this ultimate actor, who loves being in stage and on a movie set and is an absolute perfectionist and workoholic. Also I always found Isabelle super sharp with her taste in clothing and the wear she wears clothes in general. I love the Isabelle Huppert attitude, where clothes are complimentary, they are just there to help express that attitude, they are like witnesses of her being Isabelle. Meeting with her confirmed everything I have always imagined about her as a person and I really had an immediate connection intellectually but mostly humanly. And on top on that she can wear anything and it looks super chic and elegant on her. The first time I saw her play Mary Said What She Said I went home so inspired and in awe that we changed the soundtrack for my upcoming show and have Isabelle narrate it. To me she is an absolute icon of contemporary cinema and theater and I am so happy and grateful to know her and be able to work with her.”
Demna Gvasalia on Isabelle Huppert
Creative Director: Fatima Khan
Creative Assistant: Kitty Spicer
Production: Anna Pierce
Production Assistant: Luke Georgiades
Photographer: Emma Picq
Photography Assistant: Bettina Nuwendam
Hair Stylist: John Nollet
Hair Stylist Assistant: Pierrick Sellenet
Make-up Artist: Morgane Martini
Stylist: Jonathan Huguet
Stylist assistant: Rebecca Perrier
Nail Artist: Julie Villanova
Special thanks to Cinema Christine 21 and Relais Christine
Black and white look: Pierre Cardin, 1970s selection
Cinema look: privately sourced
