“I put everything on one card”

Greta Gerwig, your 1980s perm in White Noise is pretty impressive. Did you enjoy that professor’s wife Babette?

The figure itself? I’m not sure if fun is the right word. But I really enjoyed the wig. It felt so real that wearing it made me feel like a different person. That was always the moment when I knew who she was and that I could succeed in truly embodying her.

You last appeared on the screen in 2016, after which you only worked as a director. Now, is returning to acting a favor for your significant other, Noah Baumbach?

First of all, I was simply interested in the material and thus specifically in this role. When Noah was considering adapting Don DeLillo’s novel, White Noise, and read it again, he asked me to read it too. When I first read the book I was quite young, probably 19 years old. So I hadn’t held it in my hands for ages, but funnily enough I still remembered many of the sentences very well. So brilliant, so wild, so full of dark comedy. When re-reading, I kept getting stuck with Babette, simply because I knew immediately what makes this woman special. So I told Noah I’d like to play her. And was very glad that he said yes. Of course I would have accepted it if he hadn’t liked the idea so much.

Did you miss working in front of the camera?

To be honest, I was so busy that I hardly had time to miss anything. But deep down maybe it was, no matter how busy I was. After all, acting was my entry point into this world of storytelling. I love nothing more than working in film and theater and somehow getting my foot in the door is the easiest way through acting. Definitely not as a writer, because what you write as a fifteen-year-old is almost certainly crap. Unless you’re Rilke, which of course I wasn’t. In any case, I realized even as a teenager that I might not be able to write lyrics like Tennessee Williams or Shakespeare, but I could memorize them well. That’s how I felt for the first time that I had found something I really love. And to this day, I still get that feeling when I step into a role.

Has your directing experience changed your work in front of the camera? Or rather the other way around?

Definitely the latter. The role in White Noise was a good reminder of how hard the actresses and actors work and what they are capable of. As a director, you should keep this in mind from time to time. However, I have to say that as an actress I am entirely at the service of the director. I like working at eye level, but I have no problem giving up control.

When working with Noah Baumbach, the exchange is certainly particularly intensive, isn’t it?