How do you reign in the character’s eccentricity ? Well, I had to be prepared to let people dislike her at times because she’s a bit of a bitch, but at the same time, she’s gorgeous and she’s funny and she’s silly and you sort of feel for her. You kind of sense her confusion about who she is and her life. She’s very, very vulnerable, I think, underneath all of that stuff. I just had to work very, very hard. Sometimes I would say to Michel, “Let me know if I’m not going enough. Let me know if I’m going too far.” And more often than not, he would be pushing me further. I was so terrified of being over the top and he would just say, “No, no, no. More, more, more.” And I’d be like, “Really ?” He’d go, “Yeah, it doesn’t matter. Just do it, just try it.” That was fantastically liberating. When you do classical period films, you don’t get the opportunity to do that. It’s a more subtle approach.

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