Dutch stage and film actress Carice van Houten won the very prestigious Best Actress Award at the Tribeca Film Festival this week. We caught up with her at a subsequent Tribeca event and she told us, "It's my first American prize, I'm very very very excited!" We also had the opportunity to cover the premiere of 'Black Butterflies.' The film tells the tragic story of South African poet Ingrid Jonker. The film is set in Apartheid South Africa in the 1960s and chronicles Jonker's rocky relationship with her father and many lovers. Van Houten gives a brilliant and complex performance with many layers. The cinematography is beautiful. "When I worked with the DOP, to see how we could make this film, how we could make these images, we went back to the poems and all the ingredients of what you see in the film are in the poems," director Paula van der Oest told us on the red carpet.
When asked what attracted her to the role, Carice told us, "Well, first of all it was a very meaty part for me to do, after I did a film called 'Black Book,' it was a very heavy part as well, and after that I didn't want to go do anything smaller than that, I just wanted to have the difficult stuff, especially somebody that actually lived was a challenge because you want to do it with respect and it was an important story I think."
On how she prepared for the role, van Houten told us, "I read a lot about her, I talked to many people, I read her poetry of course and then I was completely filled with information and then afterwards you have to just cut it, you have to just stop it and just do it yourself because I don't really believe that I can sort of become her. It's my interpretation, or it's our interpretation of the core of her character."
Check out the rest of my interview to the left!
Comments