Eva Green

By: Interview by Yasha Wallin | Photography by Rankin | June 10, 2011 | Profile

“I’m the money,” asserts Vesper Lynd (aka Eva Green) to Daniel Craig’s James Bond in the 2006 remake of Casino Royale. As the sexually charged banter ricochets between Green’s character and Craig’s, her smoldering blue eyes give off an intensity sharp enough to penetrate the cold heart of her colleague, yet warm enough to win over her audience, who, despite her guarded exterior, find Vesper vulnerable, sweet, clever and likeable. She’s smarter and more sensual than your average Bond girl, and in this breakout role, we watch Green evoke more range in one gaze than many actors do in an entire feature.

That was five years ago, and since this killer performance — which won the young actress a BAFTA — Green has been steadily carving her niche as master of dark, impassioned roles. She took to these very early on, starting with her film debut in the Bernardo Bertolucci incestuous drama The Dreamers, where she memorably bathes with her onscreen brother and their modest American “protégé.” In Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven, she’s the fierce Queen of Jerusalem at the time of the Crusades, and in The Golden Compass, again alongside Daniel Craig, she’s the queen of witches, but this time her powers allow her to fly. Currently, Green stars as Morgan in the new cable series Camelot on Starz — a network known for original series with penchant for sex and drama — as a Goth seductress and the ambitious heir to King Arthur’s throne, battling her brother for control of the kingdom. Next is her dream character, Angélique Bouchard, in Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, a remake of the classic 1960s vampire TV show, scheduled for a 2012 release. Alongside Johnny Depp, who plays Barnabas Collins, Green is a love-scorned witch — a siren, but like none we’ve ever seen.

But for all these powerful female roles, where she reduces her lovers to pieces, in person, the French-born Eva Green is anything but. The self-proclaimed “shy” actress is actually quite mellow. Save for her remarkable good looks, it’s hard to imagine this calm starlet — whose wry humor that every once in a while cuts through her serious demeanor — as a man-eater. With a throaty voice that sounds well beyond her 30 years when speaking English coupled with a breathy French dialect that could win over even the most staunch Anglophile, Green at times appears to live in two separate worlds.

One half a set of fraternal twins, Green grew up in Paris in what she describes as a “bourgeoisie” lifestyle with her mother, the famous French actress Marlène Jobert, who was cast alongside Bridgette Bardot in Jean Luc Goddard’s Masculin, Féminin, and her father, Walter Green, a Swedish dentist who was once appeared in the ’60s film Au Hasard Balthazar. She began acting at age 14 first in theater before moving into film. Though she is now based in London, we caught up with her during a visit back to her parents’ house in Paris.

What are you working on right now?
I’m starting shooting in a few days for the Dark Shadows movie with Tim Burton. I’m prepping like mad. It’s quite a tough, unusual character, and it’s the first time I’m doing an American accent, so it’s a challenge.

When speaking English, you have quite the British accent. How is your American coming along?
Well I hope it’ll be fine. It’s my standard American. It’s a bit of an old-fashioned American accent.

How did working with Tim Burton come about? Did you audition?
It’s came really quite easily. We met a couple of times. He wants to connect with the person. He wants to hear you thinking about your role, and he looks at your previous work. He’s kind of old-fashioned in a very nice way. It’s a big machine, people are doing auditions, auditions and people get stuck, and instead, he just wants to connect, and that was just wonderful. And I got fucking lucky.

And they’ve already begun filming on Dark Shadows, yes?
They have. That’s why I feel like “Oh my god! What if they don’t like me?”

You play Angélique Bouchard. Describe who she is.
Well, I can’t say too much, but she’s a woman who is madly, madly in love with this guy called Barnabas Collins. They are attracted to each other, but from her point of view … I mean, he doesn’t think that he’s in love with her. It’s kind of a man-hates-love relationship. There’s a lot of banter, and it’s a passionate, obsessed love story. It’s a great, great character. We’ve never seen a character like her. She’s really koo-koo.

How do you prepare for this kind of role?
I work with a dialect coach, and I work with my old drama teacher that I used to have in drama school years ago when I was young. We talk a lot about the character because there are so many possibilities, so many options, so it’s good to explore them with someone else. I love prepping; it’s great. Now, of course, I’m very nervous because it’s next week, and I’m like, ‘Aaah!’ I find it exciting and stressful.

Do you generally need a lot of time to prepare to get into character?
I think I’m never ready. I will never be ready. I think I can’t wait … just the beginning is so difficult — getting to know the people. And then you get comfortable, and then it gets better.

It seems like you’re drawn to more English-speaking roles as opposed to French — why is that?
I don’t know, it just happened that way. I think because my mother is rather well known, in the beginning — even in drama school — people were like, “It’s easy for you. It’s going to be easy. Your mother is famous.” And then the Bertolucci thing happened, and I got an English agent. So it was a way, maybe in my subconscious, to tell them I’m capable. So, I started doing movies in English, but things just happened that way. And I never actually read something in French that I really fell in love with.

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