‘In the Fade’ star Diane Kruger on her real-life agony
It is the most intense, critically-acclaimed role of her career, but Diane Kruger hardly had to act at all to play a grief-stricken woman robbed of her family in a bombing. Kruger was filming “In the Fade”-Fatih Akin’s German thriller about a woman who seeks revenge on the neo-Nazis who killed her husband and son-when she was told her stepfather had died. Wolfgang Bieneck-her mother’s longtime partner since Kruger’s parents divorced when she was a teenagerhad been a crucial part of her life, often pictured with her on the red carpet. She channeled her grief into the role.
“I felt like I was drowning in sorrow and grief. It just felt like there was no way out, ever,” the German-born 41-year-old, best known for blockbusters such as “Troy” and “Inglourious Basterds,” told AFP. “In the Fade” was filmed chronologically, allowing Kruger to tap into her character’s fluctuating state of mind, and her own fraught emotions were heightened by visiting grieving relatives of real-life murder victims. “I never felt like that tension, those feelings, like I could push them aside at night, or on weekends,” Kruger said in an interview at the plush Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills. Kruger’s work as the tattooed, drug-taking Katja has earned her critical acclaim and the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in May. The movie was nominated for best foreign language film at the Golden Globes, and three days later it was named among nine overseas films advancing to the next round of voting in the Oscars.
‘Dream director’
Kruger was on the Cannes jury in 2012 when she met Akin, an acclaimed German-Turkish auteur known for hits such as “Head On” and “Edge of Heaven,” at a beach party. “He was definitely my dream director, I’d seen all of his movies. I went up to him and said, ‘If you ever have anything, please remember me.’ It took five years but he did,” she said. Kruger moved to Hamburg a few months before shooting, contributing to the casting process and meeting two dozen people who had lost a loved one, mostly families of murder victims, in special workshops. — AFP