Eva Green: “My mother tells me often that I should stop acting crazy”

Meeting with the star of Miss Peregrine and Peculiar Children, by Tim Burton.

Updated October 27, 2023: M6 is taking advantage of the school holidays and the approach of Halloween to rebroadcast a classic from Tim Burton And Eva Green, Miss Peregrine and the Peculiar Children. When the film was released in 2016, we met the actress to discuss her relationship with the director who had already directed her in Dark Shadows (2012).

Eva Green: “Tim Burton and me”

Interview from October 4, 2016: Brunette, dark, crazy: the aura of Eva Green, starring in Miss Peregrine, is naturally Burtonian. Maybe even too much?

First: Eva, we’re not surprised that Tim Burton chose you to play his first female alter ego…
Eva Green: His alter ego?

Miss Peregrine is a sort of godmother of weirdness. Which seems to suit you naturally and makes you an eminently Burtonian actress.
I have no idea what a Burtonian actress looks like. Finally Yes. From there to finding that I correspond to this image… The eyes, perhaps. Tim often worked with actresses with big eyes who resembled his youthful drawings. But for the rest, it doesn’t really correspond to the target audience of the films in which I act. I even forbade him to watch the series Penny Dreadful. (She plays a medium in 19th century Londone century, populated by a best of the most famous gothic creatures.)

For what ?
But because he would die of fear! (Laugh.) It’s far too disturbing, too violent for him. Tim is very crazy, his films also have a macabre dimension, but he has more… fanciful, more colorful fantasies. When I turns Dark Shadows under his direction, I feel like I’m starring in a comedy.

Miss Peregrine: from book to film

The nuance is perhaps there: you both have crazy worlds, but you arrive in his at the moment when he has calmed down. In other words, you’re a Burtonian, but… …
too Burtonian for Tim Burton himself? (Laugh.) Possible. I can’t help but gravitate toward dense, disturbing characters, almost caricatures of femme fatales, as in Sin City 2 by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez or White Bird by Gregg Araki. It must be said that people come to me for that too!

Why, in your opinion? Your beginnings in France did not predict such an evolution.
I don’t know, perhaps it’s linked to the European exoticism that the Anglo-Saxons need to emphasize the strangeness of the characters. This took me towards sulfurous roles, in worlds disconnected from reality. While I would be open to playing equally sultry girls in more ordinary universes.

Do you mean more naturalistic?
There you go, rougher. The dream would be to return to France to work with Audiard, for example. But no one thinks of me. It’s as if I had become too sophisticated in the eyes of French cinema. Too sophisticated or too weird, if you will…

By playing the title role of Miss Peregrine… you’re giving yourself a career like that of Helena Bonham Carter.
Ah! Explain me…

Before touring with Burton, she was the Marla Singer of Fight Club. At home, she very quickly became a sort of kind, maternal witch.
So I risk losing the “femme fatale” label by shooting with Tim? (Laugh.) Helena Bonham Carter still managed to maintain her strangeness, so it doesn’t worry me that much. And then, if I calm down a little, why not? My mother tells me often that I should stop systematically acting crazy.

Trailer :

Eva Green as femme fatale: “It’s a lot of fun to play”