Never Cool

The actress told the crowd that she was never cool: “It’s true. I’m challenging people’s ideas because they think I am cool, because I’m an actor and I do what I want, I say my opinion, and that’s cool. But the truth is, it’s a journey. When I started my journey, like all of us, I was not cool. In high school, I wasn’t bullied, I wasn’t expelled, but I never managed to fit in. Yet, I didn’t try to be different.”

What’s cool and what’s not cool is an Illusion

“I would have been happy to fit in, but I didn’t.  I remember wearing a tie, thinking: ‘Why is no one doing that?’ To me, it was just beautiful piece of clothing. I didn’t give it much thought. So I went to school with my tie, and of course, immediately they thought that I’m into girls, and that’s problem, and I just ignored it. I decided not to think about it. I didn’t finish my studies because I had a child too early. I never wanted to, but I ended up doing things that put me on the outside. It’s an illusion what’s cool and what’s not cool.”

Social media

“There’s a big misconception, when you have Instagram or social media and the internet. Not that it’s only bad, but a lot of it is bullshit, because it tells some sort of tale of celebrity, which is not true. Celebrities are usually people who are stuck in another role they’ve been given, which is ‘now you are famous’.”

Portraying both historical figures and fictional characters, what’s Krieps’ secret to nailing her roles?

“I actually choose to not prepare. It’s a conscious choice, because what I’m trying to avoid is becoming the exercise of Vicky Krieps, the actress, and saying, ‘Look at how well I did my homework. I really walk like someone from the 1800s. Or: I really speak like Ingeborg Bachmann.’ Because to me, then I let down the audience, because then I take away this moment where I am truly taking off my skin, and I’m truly trying to find something. You’re watching me trying to survive, to find an answer to something where there is no answer.”

She thinks actors may have two brains: “One brain is always doing the homework, so the minute I know I am playing Austrian Empress Sissi, anything I see around me that is Sissi, I will absorb and it will calculate.”

When she played Austrian author Ingeborg Bachmann in Margarethe von Trotta’s Ingeborg Bachmann — Journey Into the Desert, Krieps didn’t seek out interviews with her. “I didn’t want to even listen to her speak.  I heard her speak once before preparing for the movie, and the crazy thing, the brother who’s still alive came to me and was in shock because he didn’t understand why I spoke like his sister. He was ‘How did you know?’ It was not only about the voice, it was about certain movements people wouldn’t know, but he knew. By removing my preparation, I make space for something to come in, which is inspiration, like in music.”

“With the great musicians, there is something that makes the way they play things different, and it has to do with something they don’t really control. I think with actors, it’s the same. You can open yourself to some different kind of knowledge that is not you.

Krieps shared: “One fear I always have is that of the imposter, that someone will come and say, ‘Oh, look at her just trying to pretend,’ because I am not her.”

“I did not have a phone for year, and it was wonderful. I might do it again. But fighting it is very difficult, also, because fighting only generates fighting. If you fight something, there will be something coming back. I’ve decided to just not care. I don’t care if I am good for them or the internet.”

Feelings about AI?

“I cannot lose energy on fighting something that is, for so many people, so important. They can have artificial intelligence, but I will just look at the tree, and they can do what they do, and they can talk about what they talk about. But I will be more interested in the tree.”

Krieps is happy to avoid the hype and noise. “I like silence,” she told reporters. “There’s so much noise nowadays that I just believe in silence. Whenever I can hold silence in a movie, I’m holding it, and I’m holding it for everyone else. I’m inviting everyone into the silence.”

Stopping work as an actress?

“I would love to. I’m kind of stuck in this, also financially. … Having to raise two kids and being the sole provider, because the father of the kids doesn’t earn money. I can live off this, which is already cool, and I’m proud of that. But I couldn’t yet build financial cushion. I would like to take break and maybe write script or something. I just need the time and the possibility.”

Jarmusch: “Father, Mother, Sister, Brother”

“What I really, really love about [Jarmusch] is that he is still just making a movie. He’s not trying to make the next Jim Jarmusch. He’s not trying to go to Cannes,” Krieps said. “He’s really trying to figure out how to make the movie on set, like a student would make a movie. And that is very, very beautiful. That’s very loving, so it was a very loving set, very careful set. Working with Cate Blanchett and Charlotte Rampling was gift, and we just had much fun, we were laughing.”