Hanna Schygulla: The one actor Chloë Sevigny was “so obsessed with”
As well as being an acclaimed model and fashion designer, Chloë Sevigny has also made several notable contributions to the world of independent cinema, beginning with 1995’s Kids and followed by 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry, for which she was nominated for the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ Academy Award.
Several acclaimed supporting roles for Sevigny came next, including American Psycho, Dogville, Zodiac and Mr. Nice. Alongside her acting work, the Massachusetts-born star also continued her work in the fashion industry and is well-admired for her alternative dress sense.
While Sevigny certainly possesses a certain iconic status about her, and her career gleams with excellence, that doesn’t mean that she never looks up to those who came before her for inspiration in developing her style, particularly regarding her personal fashion sense.
During an interview with W Magazine, Sevigny was asked whether any directors or actors had inspired her clothing choices, and she picked out two icons of independent German cinema. “Well, different ones at different times,” she said. “When I was younger, one of my biggest fashion influences were the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the German filmmaker, especially the characters that Hanna Schygulla played.”
Fassbinder was well regarded as one of the first proponents of the New German Cinema movement, and his films, including The Merchant of Four Seasons, Ali: Fear Easts the Soul and The Marriage of Maria Braun, often combined the melodrama of Hollywood with an avant-garde sensibility.
Hanna Schygulla, meanwhile, is well associated with the work of Fassbinder and first worked for him in 1965, later winning the Berlin Silver Bear for ‘Best Actress’ for her effort in The Marriage of Maria Braun, as well as also starring in the likes of The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant and countless other Fassbinder productions.
Schygulla looks to have been so influential to Sevigny, and the American actor noted: “I was so obsessed with her and the way that she looked in the movies that I got a perm in my early 20s in an attempt to look like her. It was really uncouth for a girl to get a perm back then, but I just wanted to look like Hannah Schygulla. I wanted to wear those little hats with veils, pumps, and 40’s dresses.”
Of Fassbinder’s aesthetic beauty, Sevigny added: “I was bowled over by the style and fashion in these movies, and they were these incredible art pictures. You can make a movie as beautiful as that, and it still can be powerful. Sometimes people are just like, ‘Oh, it’s just stylish’. But these films are beyond style.”
