John Mitchell, Interview

March 10, 2014

In some ways Marion Cotillard seems like a movie star out of another era, as sultry and soft-lit as a 1940s George Hurrell portrait. Maybe that’s because—at least for American audiences—she appeared fully formed in her wrenching and accomplished performance as Edith Piaf in 2007’s La Vie en Rose (for which she won an Academy Award). She arrived, in other words, not as Girl No. 1 or even Cute Female Lead, but as a fully fledged artist and star. In her increasingly varied and ambitious roles since Piaf, Cotillard has maintained that elegant allure. The characters she inhabits are adults, very often haunted by the lives they’ve lived (as the crippled whale trainer in 2012’s Rust and Bone and the gangster moll in 2009’s Public Enemies), or even by lives merely imagined (as with her tragic dreamer in 2011’s Midnight in Paris, or the purgatory-bound wraith in 2010’s Inception). Often, Cotillard’s ability to open up wounds can be almost unbearable to watch.

MITCHELL: You’re doing Macbeth?

COTILLARD: I’m preparing it. We haven’t had the shooting yet. And, well, this is a lot of work.

MITCHELL: Yeah!

COTILLARD: Because this is something where you cannot just learn your lines and show up on set. It would be a disaster. So, yeah, we’re in the flesh. Not shooting yet, but we’re in the flesh.  […continued]

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