Kent’s acting training improves her filmmaking skills

Jennifer Kent credits her “rigorous acting training” for making her a good filmmaker. The ‘Nightingale’ director underwent classic training when she was younger and it gave her “a real respect” for writing and allowed her to be more “rigorous” with her actors too. She said: “I think I had a very rigorous acting training, I had the best training as it was years spent devoted to the art of performance. I got to know the classics and all of the great writers and so you start to inhabit these incredibly complex characters. It gave me a real respect for writing and for story and for experience doing it and it makes me rigorous with my actors.” And the 50-year-old actress turned filmmaker has been “attracted” to scary stories since she was a child. She added: “I wrote this story called ‘Scottie and The Land of Terrible creatures’ and my mum gave it to me when I was thinking, ‘Am I ever going to make a film’ and she handed it to me this book that I made when I was a kid and it’s really the story of ‘The Babadook’ which is really bizarre. I’ve been attracted to scary stories since I was a kid, and one of the first films to hit me was Bambi, it was a dark film.” Jennifer took the crafting of her new movie “very seriously”. Speaking on Collider’s horror podcast, ‘The Witching Hour!’, she said: “I think ‘The Nightingale’ is a war film so I had a commitment

that I made to telling that honestly and that involved a lot of research and for both films, love and kindness runs underneath everything that is going on. Especially with ‘The Nightingale’ I feel disturbed by the lack of empathy in our world and I see it vanishing and the importance of it so to get to that light you have to go through the darkness. It was very tough and I took it very seriously.”