Charlotte Gainsbourg interview: When an arthouse queen comes to Hollywood

We spoke with the renowned French actress about her first blockbuster film, Independence Day: Resurgence

(AFP/Getty)

We’ve long been obsessed with the battle lines of cinema. The gorge drawn in the sand between the contemplative intellectualism of the arthouse, and the escapist marvels of Hollywood; treated like bickering deific brothers, like Zeus and Poseidon, eternally embattled.

To some, Charlotte Gainsbourg’s dalliance away from her arthouse comforts – and into the mainstream grandeurs of Independence Day: Resurgence – would feel like an act of disloyalty. Gainsbourg is monarch to European cinema; likely best known as the frontwoman of Lars von Trier’s boundary-pushing cinematic antics, star of Antichrist, Melancholia, and the Nymphomaniac films.

Yet, to believe Gainsbourg’s submergence into the gleeful, joyous bombast of the blockbuster sequel to 1996’s Independence Day changes anything of her arthouse DNA feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of acting’s nature. A notion I come increasingly to agree with the more I speak to Gainsbourg about her role in the film.

“I see it as just experiencing different things, and the experiences have to be different,” she muses on her very first major Hollywood production. “But on a big scale, for me, they have to be sort of extreme if possible. It’s not that easy to find those extreme choices but Independence Day for me is very extreme. It’s something that I haven’t done before, that film is very unusual for me.”

Yet, even when venturing into the unknown, Gainsbourg must remain true to herself; nothing here could change her approach to the role of psychiatrist Dr. Catherine Marceaux, whose study of those who have come into contact with the aliens proves integral in Earth’s defence against a second attack.

“I couldn’t do it differently,” she stated. “I work exactly the same way, I prepare the same way – I had to have the character grounded in a way that I could understand it.” To her, Catherine is, “sort of a stubborn character. She really believes that she knows something and nobody really listens to her, so I could really trust my own instincts and be myself. It was fun for me to have all that backstory with Jeff [Goldblum – his David Levinson is an ex-lover of Catherine’s], and be quite pissed of with him, it was all fun stuff to play.”

Indeed, there’s still something quintessentially Gainsbourg-ish about Catherine; the globetrotting French intellectual who, in one scene, reveals she has a mother settled in London. Gainsbourg is, of course, well known as the daughter of Gallic music sensation Serge Gainsbourg and English actress/singer Jane Birkin.

And for all the fist-pumping, unadulterated Americana of the Independence Day movies, it’s easy to forget this is a ship with a European vision at its helm. Director Roland Emmerich was originally born in Stuttgart, West Germany; directing natively before arriving in the US to launch his Hollywood career with 1992’s Universal Soldiers. You’d think his years directing the likes of The Patriot or White House Down would have somewhat diluted his creative identity as a European, but Gainsbourg sees the matter quite differently.

“I needed his spirit. I needed his European touch,” she says. “His culture. That was important for me, because I could relate to his background. Even though he’s very American now; he’s been living in America, and this film was obviously so American and talking to an American audience. The European spirit, though? I think he does have it, personally; though it’s not what he was aiming for as a director.”

I ask her whether, perhaps, there’s anything she may have learnt in her time in Hollywood. She’s quick to reassert that she remains just as instinctual in her approach as ever; though she muses, “I’m having fun with films though, and maybe that’s something that’s a little more American. I’m having fun with characters.”

“I’m not sure it’s being in America,” she then continues. “I think it’s being my age, and just not caring as much. I mean, caring about the work a lot but not caring as much about myself and being a little freer. It’s something that I would have struggled to do a few years earlier, now I’m experiencing different things.”

Naturally, talk turns to the future; I ask her whether she’d ever consider a change as dramatic as a directorial debut. Unlikely, it appears; though she’s considering a more hands-on approach in her music career, ahead of releasing her fourth studio album.

“For the first time I wrote lyrics,” she enthuses. “And I’m doing a lot of the artwork that goes with it and I’ll probably do a little bit of the filming that will go with it, too. Maybe not in the first videos, but I want to try anyways. It’s not to say that I’ll do a film, because I’m not sure I’d feel capable of that, but I want to have different experiences and try different things."

“Twenty years ago, I would have thought – no, no- my place is being an actress and I can’t do anything else. I was singing at that time, but very uncomfortably, now I do think that I can try different things."

There’s an intrepid spirit abound in Gainsbourg’s words. She may be an arthouse queen, but she's firmly crossed the battle lines with wide eyes, and adventure coursing through her veins.

Independence Day: Resurgence is out now.