SIXTY SECONDS
THE BRITISH ACTRESS, 39, ON GHOSTS, WHY A MARVEL COMEBACK IS UNLIKELY AND WHY SHE’S NOT ON INSTAGRAM
Do you miss England now you’re based in New York?
I miss loads of English things, though it’s bit of a false misconception about me that I’m so very English, because my mum is from Detroit and I’ve always spent a lot of time in America. I have tried to recreate an English cottage garden, which doesn’t really work in an American climate, so there are a lot of wilting foxgloves that make me think of home.
What’s the elevator pitch for new film The Night House?
It would probably be – woman grieving her husband loses mind, or does she?
It’s very scary – did you get scared watching it?
Oh yes! It premiered at a midnight screening at Sundance, where you are all delirious from the altitude anyway, so by midnight everyone is very raw and vulnerable and ready to scream. I was truly terrified, even though I knew what was happening, because I hadn’t appreciated just how palpable and alarming the jump scares would be because of sound.
This is your second scary movie after The Awakening
I have a soft spot for ghost movies, I am not really sure why, because
I don’t particularly believe in paranormal activity. I haven’t had any personal experiences with ghosts, despite doing the Ouija board at school, but I believe in the potency of the story. When genre films are done well they address subject matters in an indirect way that can be more powerful than films that tackle something head on. I think ghost movies exorcise certain human anxieties around death.
Which film haunted you most?
I’m not a huge fan of a lot of contemporary horror, because a lot of it seems to be a bit more like torture porn, which I find a bit harrowing, so the films I love tend to be a bit older. There is a 1960s film with Claire Bloom called The Haunting, directed by Robert Wise, and a movie from 1980 called The Changeling and the 1940s version of Cat People always sticks in my mind as being quite chilling and weird.
You have 101k followers on Instagram but only posted three times. What happened?
I just decided to go cold turkey but I didn’t actually delete the account because I felt bad about it somehow. I probably should. I was momentarily persuaded on to social media because everyone kept telling me how good it was for marketing independent films.
So, I did give it a try and I hated every second of it. I know it is incredibly unfashionable and unpopular to say this, but as an actor I’ve always believed in maintaining a certain amount of mystery so that people can believe what I do on screen.
What was your first acting gig?
I voiced Lucy in The Tale Of Mrs TiggyWinkle. She is the one who loses her pocket-handkins and then finds that the hedgehog is ironing them. I was nine. My daughter is three and she has a lot of imaginary play with two actors as her parents [Hall’s husband is actor Morgan Spector]. She likes doing the casting, so there’s a lot of, ‘We are going to play Winnie the Pooh and Mum you are Winnie the Pooh and Papa is Tigger.’
You got burnt by Marvel over Iron Man 3 when your part got heavily cut. Would anything tempt you back to the superhero universe?
It was a big stipulation I had on Godzilla Vs Kong that if you are going to change the story halfway through shooting, I would like to know about it well in advance and I would like to be heard if I don’t agree with it, which they were really respectful about. As actors, we make endless leaps of faith on films that we have no control over whether they’re going to come out good or not. So it is frustrating and unfair if you sign up to do one job and then halfway through filming it you find out you’re a completely different character from what you imagined. That said, this industry is too crazy and unpredictable and there is so much nonsense I don’t think it’s worth bearing grudges. I don’t go around saying I will never work with Marvel again, though I don’t think I could, because they killed off that character [Maya Hansen].
I have a running joke – every time I open a script, it’s ‘an attractive, yet brilliant, scientist’
Do you get typecast as ‘the brainy girl’?
I have a running joke – every time
I open a script, it’s ‘an attractive, yet brilliant, scientist’. The industry has become a little bit more self-aware now. For a long time it was much sillier and the description of how beautiful the scientist was always proceeded her intelligence.
You were a very shy child, how did you overcome that?
I honestly don’t know that I have. I don’t think that it is something that you can actually change about yourself. As I’ve got older
I have a different language for it. I don’t think that it’s exactly shyness, it is just that I am by nature quite introverted and need quite a lot of time on my own. People don’t think of actors as being that way, they think of them as being the life of the party. I can be the life of the party for a bit but then I have go to and sleep by myself for two days to recover.
The Night House is in cinemas today