Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Diane Kruger in the role of a lifetime
Diane Kruger takes on the challenge of ‘In The Fade’
Diane Kruger, who won Best Actress at the Cannes film festival, talks her intense new film, “In the Fade.”
Actress Diane Kruger finds that fear is one of her biggest motivators. After being terrified she wasn’t up to the challenge of “In The Fade,” she accepted the leading role anyway.
It turned out be a good decision because she not only racked up rave reviews for the movie but also netted the Best Actress prize at May’s Cannes Film Festival.
But, even now, when Kruger thinks back to her initial reaction to the screenplay, she still recalls feelings of dread and anxiety.
“I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to convey as much pain as my character’s going through,” says the actress. “I kept thinking, ‘how do I get from there to there?’ “
In the movie, which is directed by Fatih Akin, Kruger plays Katja, a woman whose life disintegrates when her Turkish husband and young son are the victims of a bomb attack by NeoNazis. A trial ensues but the perpetrators get off, leaving Katja to seek her own brand of justice.
“I started prepping the film as soon as Fatih and I agreed to do it together, about six months before [production began],” says the actress. “I started going to a lot of self-help groups in New York where the [participants] were families of murder [victims].
“As time passed, and I was able to observe and witness what those families were going through, and as I started listening to the individual stories, it started to creep up in me and then haunt me. At night, I couldn’t think about anything else.”
Originally, Akin imagined that “In The Fade” would be anchored by a male protagonist but as he began developing the screenplay, he changed direction.
“The hero was in the very early stage of the story a man,’ he recalls. “But that felt like Charles Bronson kind of stuff. It felt like stuff I had seen before. I wrote myself into several dead ends.
“Then, I had the idea to change the sex of the [hero] and suddenly all the dead ends were opportunities, like open doors. They all fell down and I knew it was right.
“Mothers, for me, are fascinating. They’re really heroes in a way. I live with a mother. They have tough jobs. Take the kid from the mother, and what’s left? That was fascinating somehow.”
Even though Kruger was born and raised in Germany, she’d never acted in a German film before. She moved away from home when she was 16 to pursue a modeling career and didn’t become interested in acting until years later.
Until her performance in “In The Fade,” she worked primarily in Hollywood, partnering Brad Pitt in “Troy,” Nicolas Cage in “National Treasure,” Liam Neeson in “Unknown” and Bryan Cranston in “The Infiltrator.”
“I’ve always wanted to make a German film,” says the actress, 41, who is fluent in German, French and English. “It’s just that I left so long ago and I don’t really know anyone in the German film industry.
“The appeal of this script, apart from the fact that it was Fatih, was also that it felt like a very universal film. Even though it’s in the German language, what it talks about is such a global issue. And the sentiments of grief, empathy and what my character is going through: I felt like the story could take place anywhere. It felt like it was a good fit for me.”
Before production began, Kruger moved back to Berlin, in hopes of reacquainting herself with German culture.
“I left 25 years ago so I wanted to go to the areas where my character lived, to try as much as I could to submerge myself [in her lifestyle],” says Kruger.
“To be honest, it didn’t really feel like I was acting. Many times I was just reacting to the scenes. We shot in order so it really helped me. It really felt like I was going through things as my character did, and I was coming out of it towards the end. “
Kruger has always returned to Germany to visit her family but, lately, she says noticed some scary changes taking place.
“It’s changed when it comes to Neo-Nazis,” she says. “They were always a part of [the scene] when I was growing up, especially when East and West Germany reconnected and the Wall fell. There was a big up rise in [hate groups].
“I remember them as a kid because they wore their hair a certain way. You just stayed out of their way because you knew they were extreme people. But now, perhaps because of the Internet, they’ve connected globally, and it’s a phenomena that’s popped up pretty much everywhere. It’s pretty scary because they can organize and are more powerful, in a way.”
Akin, a German-born citizen of Turkish descent, has been wanting to make a movie that tackles racism for more than twenty years.
“Sooner or later, I knew that I’m going to write something about Neo-Nazis as a topic for a film, “he says. “I was 19 or 20 when the two Germanys come together, and we had this rise of Neo-Nazis in Germany and a lot of killings of Turkish immigrants.
“That was the time where [racism] was very relevant for me, and it never left me alone, that feeling. Now the film comes out and everybody tells me how relevant it is. But I tell you, the world has always been like this.”