Eva Green: “I’m actually blonde”

She grimaces, wrinkles her nose and actively gesticulates. There is nothing in her from that fam-fatal, insidious sorceress, beautiful witch, as we saw her on the screen. In reality, Eva Green is very consistent with her last name – she is somehow … environmentally friendly. Natural, without dyes and preservatives. I didn’t even recognize her when she walked into a cafe in London’s Primrose Hill (“Come there, I live nearby. It’s called Ben’s,” she invited me two days earlier, as if for tea).

Psychologies: You may be the only one of the stars of the new generation who entered the circle of spectator attention, frankly, scandalously. I mean your role in The Dreamers, known for explicit erotic scenes and full nudes of the performers, your exposure in particular…

Eva Green: Well, you are talking about the same thing. When they talk about “Dreamers”, the first thing they remember is my full “nudity”. I can see how the interlocutor remembers my chest and ass! Even my dad, who collects some kind of DVD collection of films with me and who has all the editions of all my other films, even in different languages, only this film did not put on his cherished shelf of “parental pride”. Yes, I almost starred in porn! But the movie is not about that at all! Eroticism in it is only a tool, a demonstration of the liberation of heroes from social taboos. This is a film about personal liberation and rebellion, about rebellion against the obsolete, about 1968, about a revolution in the minds.

Do you personally know this – liberation and rebellion? Did you survive your own rebellion?

EG: You know, the fact that I became an actress was my big rebellion against myself. That is, my mother was also against it – she was a professional actress in the past and even a star, she played in the French hits of the 1970s, even with Godard in Male-Female. She believed that this profession was categorically not for me – I am too fragile for tough competition and constant “self-proof”. After all, this work requires being persistent, confident, and sometimes arrogant. To belong to this profession means to be constantly dependent on idle judgments about you, which was not at all for me. I was even afraid to attract someone’s attention, there was no question of boys in high school … And my mother, of course, was right, and I did not fight with her opinion at all. It was a rebellion against my nature, my natural shyness, isolation, my self-doubt and my fears.

Were you shy as a child?

EG: In childhood and adolescence, I was afraid of everything – new people, circumstances, in general, everything new, including a smartphone and new programs on a computer like Skype. At school, I was a perfectionist and an excellent student, I even spent weekends reading textbooks – to hide from a different, extracurricular life. I was obsessed with being in control of everything that happened to me. I tried to please the teachers, I hated myself for the slightest mistake. I was afraid not to get used to it, I was afraid of mistakes, I was afraid to show myself true. It turned out that behind the uncertainty I no longer discerned what I was true. That’s what made me fight – not for acting, but with myself. Because I didn’t think of myself as anyone else, and in order to become an actress, I myself had to become different.

And you managed to become different?

EG: Well, kind of. But that was not the end of the riot. Then, having already played a lot in the theater, I suddenly realized that I was simply being eaten by these Juliet-like heroines, quivering and … actually quite brainless. It was then that I was about to quit this business – to leave the acting workshop. But there were “Dreamers”. A challenge that demanded to be naked. And not only in the physical sense.

So where did you get that courage for The Dreamers?

EG: It was rather not courage, but an inner necessity. Everyone has to go through their “fuck-off” period. Well, when you say to everything familiar: “Fuck off!” I’ve been right for too long. Our family is very bourgeois in the best sense of the word: strong, stable, with the right values. Mom, when my sister and I were born, left the cinema to focus entirely on us, on the family, on dad. Now she writes children’s books … My sister and I were good girls, there was no question of any stage-screen!

Joy is your twin sister. Are your characters similar too?

EG: No, Joy is down to earth, down-to-earth, just in the spirit of the family. She graduated from business school, married an Italian count … True, true, a count with an estate and a family name Antinori! They now have a stud farm – they raise elite horses. We are not identical twins and have never been close, not even talking to each other much, just growing up together. So, when my sister recently called to say that she had seen my new film, I was both surprised and terribly flattered … In general, we had a good Protestant bourgeois family. Then I studied frantically … So, “Dreamers” became my “fuck-off”. Of course, teenagers usually go through such a period. But then I only had the courage to borrow the image from Nina Hog, dye it radically black and master a sort of vampire-goth make-up. Then I went to London to study English, spent months in Ireland – and everything turned out to be very cool there: you are 16, and you are driving, drinking whiskey, and the coolest British guys are with you! But that doesn’t make you mature.

And what did you need to grow up?

EG: Make a radical, bold decision. And then – to understand that the parents are still right. Here is my mother – she is a much more sensual, emotional person than I am, I am too rational. Mom is very fond of the expression carpe diem, “seize the day.” In a sense – use what gives you today, do not try to control, just use it. So, I now try to live approximately under this slogan.

Are you close to your mother?

EG: Oh yeah! She is the closest person to me! And if I need to consult with someone, I immediately rush to her in Paris. But there are limitations here … For example, I would never invite my mother to the set – even if a week before I demanded her professional advice. Because if she comes, I will be her daughter, the daughter of an actress who played in iconic films of the 1970s. And I’m on the court – it’s me, and no one’s daughter.

So, you managed to cope with fears, with insecurities?

EG: It can be assumed that it is. Although I think, in fact, I just changed my attitude towards them. What I’m afraid of, I now perceive as … as an athlete – barriers. They just call them to jump over, to overcome. Here I am – if I am afraid of some act, choice, as if something is calling me to do it. It’s a strange feeling – like you’re high.

After The Dreamers, you had other images – a fam-fatal, a sorceress, a witch, a seductive offspring of dark forces, the forces of the night … Your heroine in Casino Royale is even called Vesper – Venus, the evening star. Why such a choice of roles?

EG: Why, this is the best way to get rid of yourself! Do not dictate yourself to the hero, image, role. I love glossy photo shoots: I can be a pin-up girl – yes, anyone! But I hate being asked to smile. Smiling is nature itself, and asking to be natural is such hypocrisy! I hate being myself on the screen, in photographs in magazines – in this area I am equal to my role. When they tell me how beautiful I am, I think about suicide – I’m used to not being myself in the eyes of strangers, spectators. You know, I’m actually a blonde. And in everything – I’m shy and somewhat infantile. But I dyed my hair – and now I’m a vamp! And in fact, I live for many years under someone else’s name. They know me as “Grin” because they read the name in English, but in fact it sounds like Gren, my father is Swedish. But this also helps – it creates a gap between me and what I play: it’s not me on the screen, but a certain Mademoiselle Green, and I have nothing to be ashamed of.

Does all this and the opposite mean that you are avoiding the game of life?

EG: Yes, in reality, I am completely real.

You want to say that you do not allow yourself even a slight coquetry in your life? In a romantic relationship, for example?

EG: Well, by the number of my close contacts, you can very well judge how good I am at playing and flirting! And there were them … Well, frankly, a little for a 33-year-old woman.

Are you not in love?

EG: You see, to fall in love, you have to love love. And I … When I am in love, I feel how love deforms me – I become real, some kind of illusory. In my own eyes I become unnatural. After all, when you love, you so strive to please the one you love, you please him in everything … At least, that’s how I feel it – and I can’t stand such deformation. You know, adults say that you need to work on relationships. Now I vaguely guess that they mean exactly this – that you need to work on ensuring that your attitude towards a person does not distort you.

In other words, work on yourself, change …

EG: To change is to get closer to your true self. Perhaps I value too much everything natural, primordial. By the way, maybe that’s why I’m interested in gardening now – my house in Primrose Hill is surrounded by a garden. And you know… At the age of 14, I got to the concert of The Blur and completely fell in love with them. And then recently, when I moved to London, I found out that their guitarist Alex James lives in the village on his cheese farm. You see, he makes cheese. And amazing! Soft goat cheese aged in cider brandy and wrapped in grape leaves. Or goat with thyme sprouts. His cheese has won all kinds of gastronomic competitions, he himself is a recognized authority in this field! This is what it means to keep yourself. James is not a bass player, not an artist, it’s all secondary. First of all, he is the builder of his life – whether in show business, whether in the production of cheese. He is able to build it in a new place from scratch. This is genuine. Everything else is just roles.