She used to play chess professionally and seems to have transferred something from the sport to life. The way she started her film career is like the Queen’s Gambit where pieces are sacrificed early in the game for something more. She quit theater a year before graduation, then fled Hollywood. It seemed crazy, but she won.
I am waiting for Yulia in a cafe in the very center of post-quarantine Moscow. She enters wearing a mask. I’m in the far corner, also wearing a mask. Two wary characters who return to the human world after the restrictions are lifted. “I’ll have ginger tea, at least something antiviral…” Yulia smiles. We look a little ridiculous, both scary and funny. Around — relaxed people …
Ask about chess. «Yes. I actively used exactly this tactic when I played. I am an impulsive person, patience is my weak point. I liked the sharp situations that arise in the game, because often the games lasted long and tedious. It is unbearable to move pawns back and forth for hours. I took risks… And in life I did the same. I’m not sure this is correct.»
Psychologies: You said that because of not receiving a diploma, you considered yourself a non-actress and then tried to prove that you were a professional. Have you deliberately placed yourself in a situation that stimulates development?
Julia Snigir: Not. There was a conflict with the teacher. I would like to graduate now. It’s good to have motivation, but it seems to me that the creative profession involves some kind of indifference and lightness. This was not in me. But, no matter how pathetic it may sound, I achieved everything myself.
I grew up in a small town, came to Moscow with nothing. On the one hand, it gave a powerful stimulus. On the other hand, I still feel a lack of education, it seems to me that I lost a lot of time just to survive.
You starred in the Inhabited Island as a freshman, and all of Russia was covered with billboards with your image. Any other aspiring actress would be happy, but you don’t look like one, do you?
I was angry: “You hung me all over the city, and I am a soap bubble that you inflated for some reason.” She was offended by the whole world. Everyone seemed to see what a weak actress I am. An alien, correct as a pioneer leader.
Shooting in Budapest with Bruce Willis in Die Hard, trying to make a career in Hollywood — all this did not add confidence either. I starred in America in a couple of films, went to auditions, but I was not happy about it. I immediately felt: this is not my place, I was uncomfortable.
For a long time I lived on suitcases, and then I thought: “Julia, why are you shooting corners here and there, let’s find an apartment for a long time.” And I found.
It was a beautiful apartment in Beverly Hills. You paid a year in advance and ran away after a week … At the same time, you were approved for the role of Kennedy’s wife in the movie «Kennedy Assassination». You were even asked not to leave the city, and you…
I bought a ticket and flew to Moscow. The fact that I was flying was reported from the plane. Everyone was in shock. I didn’t even take some things, they didn’t fit in the suitcase. And you know, you should have left earlier! I didn’t have any creative breakthroughs there, I didn’t make any discoveries in myself there …
Do you see acting as an opportunity to delve into yourself and discover something?
I treat it like a job. Digging into yourself is part of the job. I don’t like it, it hurts. It was especially difficult when I played Saltychikha in The Bloody Lady. Many actresses were afraid to agree, but I took a chance.
Although, of course, this role did not affect me in the best way. Mystical things happened to me throughout the filming. For example, we are shooting a scene where my heroine is sick, and then I vomit all night at home, I have to call an ambulance. We are filming an attack on Saltychikha, and they accidentally twist my cervical vertebrae, I end up in the hospital. There were always some problems.
You seemed to be in a cocoon of negativity, but how did you communicate with your family when you returned home in the evenings?
The family tolerated me. They dreamed of the day when the filming was over, because I was not a very nice person. Although my son Fedor helped me, I switched to him … Of course, that work loosened my nervous system. In ordinary life, I reacted sharply to everything, I was irritable, angry.
In a sense, I “mirrored” my heroine, about whom I thought that she was hysterical, yelling unpleasantly, turning into a squeal. Sometimes on the set I exploded, raised my voice, there was a lot of rage in me.
This happened a couple of times in the presence of the group, and I felt ashamed, I asked for forgiveness … The work turned out to be so intense that I could not act in film for a year after The Bloody Lady, I refused all the stories.
Tragedies, dramas are your element, does it have something to do with character?
Perhaps because I am a gloomy person by nature. I have a tragic view of the world. I like to invent something terrible for myself.
In general, you are a storehouse of various fears. You are afraid of large crowds of people, clapping, you suffer from claustrophobia, you are afraid of death …
Well, yes. About fears — this is immediately to me …
You also have a fear of hunger, because in Moscow at first you were starving and fainted from malnutrition. Apparently, that’s why your refrigerator is always clogged. You are also afraid to show strong emotions. How do you live with all this, did you manage to overcome at least something?
No, not yet. Somehow I exist. And more recently, the fear of the virus has been added to this collection.
How did you endure the long and psychologically difficult period of self-isolation?
I plunged into my favorite state — “I’m on a train”, when nothing needs to be decided and everything is decided for you. I realized that if I don’t find advantages in this, I will go crazy. I thought: okay, I’m sitting at home, which means I’m taking care of my family, home, such a time.
I cooked endlessly. I cooked coconut condensed milk, baked cabbage with cumin. Learned how to make meatballs professionally. A little more, and I would have become a chef. But she got tired and said: “That’s it! Cook yourself, I don’t know what’s for dinner tonight!”
Your son Fedor is four, at this age children often repeat after adults. Did he try to help you?
No, he didn’t make cutlets with me. Although this is the right theme, you should try. But there is one problem — he just eats everything at once. At some birthday there was entertainment — a master class on how to make pizza. And he tried to eat the ingredients all the time. Give the dough, he begins to eat it. I say: «No, Fedya, don’t.» Give the sauce to anoint, he immediately licks it.
What changed in you when Fedor was born?
Everything. Reference points have shifted, values have changed. I have matured a lot … Before his birth, I did not understand what was waiting for me. I was told the same thing as all pregnant women: sleep, rest, then this time will end. But I terribly wanted activity: “What to do ?!” When Fedya was born, the questions disappeared.
Often with a child, fear for him is also born. As the child grows, so does the fear. Are you a calm mom?
Restless. I’m a chicken. I cackle all the time. It seems to me that Fedor is either cold, or hungry, or has not had enough sleep. Shake over the regime. When someone says: “I flew to Goa with my child, he hung out there with me day and night,” it surprises me.
I’m not superstitious, but I’m afraid of negative energies
Is it okay to take a child to shoot?
Depends on the circumstances. Fedya came to the shooting of the series «Good Man».
So he was on the set of a project about a maniac?
Yes. Not all the time we got out the corpses, there were calm scenes. Fedor was sitting at the monitor, quietly watching. During the take, he figured out who was in charge on the site, approached Konstantin Bogomolov and said: “Hello, I’m Fedya! I was told you have goodies here, can I have them?” I had a laugh tantrum. Konstantin Yuryevich was not at a loss, he said that there were cookies in the buffet. I had to issue…
Did Fedor have a crisis of three years, which parents often experience harder than a child?
Now it has become easier, but still he defends his rights, scandals.
And, probably, he is trying to educate you in the same way as you him?
Yes, he says that I spend a lot of time on my phone. Corrected me recently. I asked: “Will you have another zucchini?” And he said: “We need to say: “Will you have more zucchini?” We decided that we would become a linguist.
I understand that you are talking about the regime, about health. And your husband, actor Yevgeny Tsyganov, is about entertainment, like most dads? Perhaps he is a «good cop»?
Actually strict. It is more about development: “Let’s come up with something together”, “blind something”, “we’ll go somewhere”.
How does it affect Fedya that he has many brothers and sisters? Usually, when there are older children, the baby develops faster.
It’s true. Fedya, for example, went very quickly. Once he, still unable to walk, walked all day with his brothers and sisters. And now he returned home and already knows how to walk. He followed the elders.
You have a younger brother whom you raised. Probably, you organically feel like a mother of a boy?
It seems to me very correct that I have a boy. It would probably be more difficult for me to get along with a girl. In general, this is a very interesting feeling, Fedor grows and begins to feel like a man.
She loves to compliment me: “Mom, you have such a beautiful dress!”, “You are so beautiful.” He notices everything: manicure, hairstyle. He asks: “Do you have new shoes?” or “Did you paint your nails?” There are moments when he declares: «I’m a man!» But you won’t take me. With the relationship of the sexes, everything is difficult for me. She was always like this: herself, herself, “I don’t need to open the door”
And now that you are a wife and mother, have you accepted your femininity?
Yes, the man next to me convinced her. He insists on it. And, in general, Fedor actively helps him, they unite and say that a woman needs to be looked after, to help her. Husband and son in collusion. They protect me.
I wonder what your husband says when you come home with another offer to play a tough story?
“Everything is great, but maybe something easier?”
But you do not listen to him and dive from one difficult role to another. In The New Pope, for example, they played the mother of a terminally ill child. How did you deal with moral pressure?
I tried not to think about my son while filming. In the book of the American teacher Ivana Chubbuck «The Mastery of the Actor» there is such an idea — «if you play the death of a loved one, imagine a loved one in a coffin.» I can’t imagine that in my wildest dreams.
I am not superstitious, but I am afraid of negative energies. When she was filming with Sorrentino, she did not even try to put herself in the place of the heroine. I had enough empathy. I sympathized with her, I felt pain for her.
How did you feel at the premiere in Venice?
Euphoria. In addition to the delight that you choke on, there was some kind of lump in your throat. I wanted to cry. Now I know what it’s like to cry with happiness.
After the screening, the audience gave a very long standing ovation, and I understood that I was next to people whom I respect endlessly. And then John Malkovich came up to me and said that it was amazing and he was absolutely crushed by my role. For me, this is, of course, an event, I consider him an amazing artist.
I think you are a very ambitious person. What do you want in a career?
I am really very ambitious and do not hide it. And I want to get an Oscar, to star in Yorgos Lanthimos … But if we talk about desires in general, then there are few of them: I want to live in a quiet courtyard, and that my loved ones are healthy. Everything is simple for me, almost like the heroine of the film “Courier”, who said: “Can I be honest? I want a small dog and a convertible.»