Rebecca Ferguson’s single favourite actor of all time: “She just feels very real”
Rebecca Ferguson has come a long way since she first starred in the Swedish soap opera Nya tider in the late 1990s, to now standing as an incredibly familiar face in Hollywood, having appeared in big franchises like Mission: Impossible and Dune.
Bringing a stately grace to her many roles, she was well-suited to her performance as Elizabeth Woodville in the 2013 TV series The White Queen, which really proved her brilliance in English-speaking parts, and proved a real turning point as she soon asserted her place in the industry, often opting for big-budget action or sci-fi movies, and even a big musical like The Greatest Showman.
Yet, her all-time favourite actor is someone who tends to stay away from the tight grasp of Hollywood, instead opting for much more subversive roles, while certainly being unpredictable, which is why Ferguson loves her so much. She could only be referring to Isabelle Huppert.
Making her screen debut in the 1971 TV movie Le Prussien, Huppert had small roles across various French movies throughout the ‘70s, interestingly playing one of various kidnap victims in the 1975 American movie Rosebud, alongside Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall. This wouldn’t be her ticket to Hollywood, though, and she’d soon revert to gritty foreign titles, like the incredible Loulou in 1980.
While Huppert has opted for an American movie every so often, like Heaven’s Gate and I Heart Huckabees, you’re most likely going to find her playing a rather cold character in some French drama, every performance a masterclass in acting. Her part in La Ceremonie is extraordinary, Elle is shockingly powerful, while Things to Come is a studied tale of a woman navigating divorce, each time making sure you simply never forget a Huppert performance.
Her greatest, though, will always be The Piano Teacher, an incredible exploration of sexual repression and the inner machinations of desire that renders this Michael Haneke film a tough one to sit through. Huppert’s performance as Erika is truly magnificent, never over-the-top, wherein you totally believe that this sadistic, lonely woman is a real person, and you’re left unable to decide whether to feel sorry for her or detest her; perhaps both.
The actor operates with such poise, controlling her every move so that nothing seems out of place, yet at the same time, she isn’t rigid, totally at ease with the most demanding of characters, even when they’re committing heinous acts, like when Erika tries to get on top of her mother, or when she mutilates her own genitals over the bath.
Huppert is drawn to the darker side of humanity, it seems, bringing an understanding of what makes people flinch, what makes people feel understood, and what leaves us feeling utterly confused and at odds with our own emotions.
“There’s an interest for me in not knowing what she’s going to do next,” Ferguson told Nylon, “She just feels very real”. Certainly, she has this studied energy that feels like it could snap at any moment, like when Erika pulls out a sharp instrument at the end of the film, but she often keeps it intact, proving herself a true master and one Ferguson will forever be inspired by, even if they make completely different films.
