Chloë Sevigny, once first lady of the East Village, has changed over the decades we’ve known her. When we met, she was the young It-girl from Kids. She later struggled with tabloid backlash from The Brown Bunny (which she does not regret) and eventually found financial stability through Big Love. Now, Chloë has become a director herself. Her first film, the six-minute short Kitty, will debut at Cannes this week.
While every turn has only seen Chloë retain — if not strengthened — her cult status, the ups and downs have clearly left their mark. Today it seems like the choice to step behind the camera was because she was growing sick of most directors she worked with. In a recent profile by the Guardian, Chloë was pressed on her more controversial collaborators — men like Lars von Trier and Terry Richardson. “I don’t know if I’d call them exploiters,” Sevigny told the paper, “What I would say is that the most damaging thing about working with so-called auteurs is that I now have a total disdain for directors, and it’s very strong, very deep. It’s made me not enjoy acting so much any more. Writer-directors, in particular, are really hard to work with. And for so many years, that’s who I worked with.”
As for the identity’s of the writer-director she’s referring to, your guess is as good as ours. She does strike Lars Von Trier from the list of possible enemies, stressing she’d love to work with him again. In fact, she’d hoped to grab Uma Thurman’s role in Nymphomaniac. “I mean, I love Uma, she’s epic and I’m so glad she got that part. But yeah, I would have liked it for myself.”
Revisit our sleepover with Chloë and Lily McMenamy.