When things turned sour between Eva Green and the director she called “my God”
If you’re an actor, there’s probably a director who you long to work with, and only a lucky few get the chance to actually fulfil this dream. In some instances, an actor will take literally any chance, even if it’s a far cry from the filmmaker’s glory days. But not Eva Green; she actually turned down the chance to work with the director she once called her “God.”
Sometimes, you have to be practical, and Green knew that she had to think about the trajectory of her career, putting her ultimate desire to work with a controversial auteur to one side. You see, Green had broken into the industry with a role in the erotic drama The Dreamers, which saw her appear fully nude as she played a sheltered twin who gets a little too close to her brother, played by Louis Garrel.
The incest plotline, paired with the explicit sex scenes and nudity, certainly put Green on the map as a controversial new star, but over the next few years, she assimilated into Hollywood with roles in Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven and the James Bond movie Casino Royale. Despite this, her role in The Dreamers was not forgotten – how can you forget a film like that?
So, when it came to being offered a role in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, Green was torn between what she should do. On the one hand, the chance to work with one of her all-time favourite filmmakers was incredibly alluring, but on the other, she worried that it would taint her reputation – she didn’t want to just become known for playing contentious roles filled with explicit erotic content.
Talking to The Edit, Green revealed, “After The Dreamers, I think people would have been very nasty to me,” in reference to potentially starring in Antichrist. “People always talk about the sex. You have a sex scene, and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, there’s sex.’ So I’ve decided not to have a sex scene for a while, because you feel like it’s the only thing people remember. I feel very vulnerable.”
Perhaps Green made the right decision because Von Trier’s film certainly got people talking when it was released in 2009, with Charlotte Gainsbourg in the lead alongside Willem Dafoe. There’s lots of supposedly unstimulated sex, and even themes of genital mutilation, and Green just didn’t think she was up for the challenge.
She tried to make it work, considering her love for the filmmaker, but it was no good. “Lars von Trier was my God. I loved everything that he’d done, it was my dream and fantasy to work with him, but I didn’t want to do certain things. I was asking questions and not being a puppet. There were a lot of sexual things where I was like, ‘Really? I’m not sure; is there another way to make it work?’ and he was like, ‘Nobody questions my authority.’ Brutal,” she added.
Von Trier is one of the industry’s most controversial directors, not only because of his approach to filmmaking – he loves to tap into the most brutal side of humanity and eroticism – but also because of his behaviour, which has seen him accused of sexual harassment.
By the end of negotiating Antichrist with the filmmaker, it seems like Green no longer saw him as the God she once did, and her dream of working with him has remained unfulfilled. “It kind of got tricky,” she told the AV Club, “I don’t think he would want to work with me, honestly.”
