Why was Eva Green labelled with the “weird witch” typecast?
Finding international fame with her role as Vesper Lynd in 2006’s Casino Royale, the definitive love of James Bond’s life and one of the ultimate 21st-century femme fatales, since then, Eva Green has delivered several memorable performances.
While she has explored various characters and genres in her time, this hasn’t stopped her from being typecast. To many critics and viewers, Green is an actor closely connected to dark characters. This comes from her work in titles such as Casino Royale, 300: Rise of an Empire, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, Penny Dreadful and Camelot.
Being pigeonholed is something Green has addressed at points throughout her career. She once explained how she is “so not like” the femme fatales she has played on screen. Although she often wants to seek out an intense project, she maintained, “I don’t want to be typecast”.
Asked if she worries about being put in a box, Green told Mindfood in 2016: “I feel like people feel reassured when they put people in a box, put a label on it, and of course, I have this label saying ‘femme fatale, Gothic’. I feel like I’m so not like this, and I’ve done other things as well. When I hear the word ‘dark’, I don’t know what it means.”
Green expanded on this point: “For me, I like dense, complex stuff, I want something intense, so maybe that is dark, but I don’t want to be typecast. That’s quite scary, and actually, the movie that I just did with Alicia Vikander (Euphoria), I don’t look very sexy in it, and there’s no kind of playing the femme fatale. I don’t want to be just a facade.”
Green also discussed the topic in more detail during an interview with The Guardian that year. In light of her role as the mysterious protagonist in Sky’s Penny Dreadful, Vanessa Ives – a powerful medium – the French actor was again asked if she was in danger of being typecast.
“I will have to do more normal roles because I don’t want to be put in a box marked ‘weird witch’. People around me say: You must stop doing dark roles,” she said. Asked which people, she continued: “Oh, you know, friends, boyfriends. But there’s something fascinating in darkness. You learn about yourself as well by going to these extremes as an actor. Perhaps,” adding, “I should see a shrink.”
Green explained that her family also don’t understand why she’s often drawn to the dark side of things. She said: “If I listened to my mother’s advice, I wouldn’t do anything. I tell her the story, and she’s like: ‘Oh God! Why are you doing that?’ Why can’t you play something normal?'”
Her twin sister, Joy, also admitted to finding it strange watching Penny Dreadful. “She watches me speaking in tongues and having fits, and she says: ‘This is my twin sister?'” Green expressed. “She’s married to an Italian count, lives in Italy and is busy raising her two children. Looking after the vineyard. Nice life, huh?”
