Greta Gerwig never meant to be part of a movement. After graduating from New York’s Barnard College with a degree in English and philosophy she began making films with friends: low budget, improvised works such as Hannah Takes the Stairs and Nights and Weekends which were lauded and then lumbered with the term “mumblecore” for their characters’ solipsism and emotional ambivalence.

Having seen these, and then her impossibly charming performance as Florence in Greenberg alongside Ben Stiller, The New York Times’s film critic declared her “the definitive screen actress of her generation”. Now, aged 27, she’s getting cast in huge blockbusters: her latest project is a remake of the 1981 Dudley Moore film Arthur in which she plays Russell Brand’s love interest.

So how does someone with as much integrity and individuality as her negotiate a burgeoning career in Hollywood? The answer, if her entrance is anything to go by (she gets a bit stuck in the cafe door while detangling herself from her headphones) is with all the same endearing awkwardness and lack of affectation

Did you have fun making Arthur?
Oh yeah, God, I gotta talk about Arthur. Gosh. Yes. It was fun. I mean I really like everyone a lot in it. But I’ve never had a big role in a movie this big and that’s kind of scary.

What are you scared of?
That people won’t like it or won’t go to see it. I’m in the middle of the fear. But I saw a cut of it and really liked it. Russell is very, very funny in it – he has this sweetness. What I look for in any movie but especially in romantic comedies is just the sense of two people genuinely talking to each other and falling in love because they’re talking. Russell is so kinetic as a person and to fall in love you have to be still with a person. So it was accessing a different side of him – I think that’s how he is with Katy [Perry]. Also acting with Helen Mirren is … awesome. Her approval means a lot to me.

How did things change for you after Greenberg?
It left me just a mess. A total mess. I came home from LA and I couldn’t get hired for nine months. Casting directors didn’t even know that I’d had a big part in it. So they’d go “Oh you were in Greenberg, did you get to meet Ben Stiller?” And I’d be like “he went down on me, thank you very much!” There’s an idea that if you do a Hollywood movie then you’re swept up and saved and you’ll always have jobs. It’s not true.

But now you’ve got loads of things in the pipeline and your career’s taking off. And I mean it as a compliment when I say you don’t seem like the sort of person who’s meant to be famous.
Yeah, I agree! I think I’ve always sort of stood out. Weirdly that’s one of the reasons that I was so honoured and happy to be cast in Arthur. I think films and television are a lens for the way people look at their lives and positions; they supply different narratives of how to contextualise your own life. I think people look at us, at how we are. It means so much more that we are the girls getting cast right now. I mean I think that there aren’t really roles like Florence that are just out there to be had.

Maybe you need to write them?
I know, I do. It’s true. What was brilliant about Florence is that she’s such a whole person. It wasn’t just the part that was charming – she was depressingly passive too.

How did it feel when AO Scott in The New York Times praised you as much as he did?
Oh. Oh. It was really, it’s really crazy. The fact that you’re only as good as the films that you’re in means it feels scary because not all of them are going to be great. It’s something I could never possibly live up to, but I think that’s OK. I’m just incredibly touched that he even considered it; it made me feel heard and watched.

Did you feel part of a movement when you were making films like Hannah Takes The Stairs and Nights and Weekends?
No, because I think artistic movements are [generally] as political as they are artistic. I think what’s notable about this group of films is that they’re really apolitical in a way. We don’t scream at each other any more – we go off in our rooms, we live politely. And I feel like I don’t want to live politely. Ultimately, I don’t think anyone does.

Photography: Steven Pan
Fashion: Anthony Unwin
Words: Hermonie Hoby

This article first appeared in Wonderland Issue 26, April/May 2011

The post Greta Gerwig appeared first on Wonderland.

Its owner, wearing only a studded leather bra, is standing in front of a full length mirror, gazing at herself and languorously shifting from side to side while a kneeling assistant inches a pair of rhinestone knickers up her ankles.

Knickers now on (some very un-cheap merchandise, naturally), Paz sashays on to the set, shrugs off her bathrobe and is instantly working it like a 50s pin-up, slowly writhing her coltish limbs like she’s moving in honey. There’s an 80s rock soundtrack playing in the background and she frequently shouts: “I love this song!”

There’s a sizeable team of people watching Paz – about a dozen – and they all seem pretty dumbstruck. Stylist Emilie Kareh, gazing at her from the sidelines, purrs that it’s so easy to dress her because, “she knows how to mooooove”, while photographer Danielle Levitt earlier describes her to me as, “a very charismatic and energising creator.” She adds, perhaps just a touch archly, that, “she does ‘fantasy world’ very well.”

At one point though, Paz seems to feel there isn’t sufficient adulation in the room. Her brow suddenly furrows, she juts her lips into a pout and calls plaintively to the camera, “I need you to be in love with me! Aren’t you in love with me?” It’s a little ridiculous, but not without its own strange pathos – hilarious and heartbreaking all at once. Her astrologer has told her that she was “definitely” Marilyn Monroe in a past life.

Paz was born in SoHo in New York in 1984, the child of Iñigo de la Huerta, a Spanish rancher and Duke of Mandas and Villanueva, and Judith Bruce, a policy analyst for women’s issues in developing countries. It was, by all accounts, a fairly unorthodox childhood.

“When I was a little girl I was quite shy, and my mum took me to acting classes aged four so I could open up. It really became my outlet for me to express myself. That and painting; I paint a lot. There was a lot of drama in my household, so I had a lot of anger at times – especially when I was a teenager.”

In fact, she was kicked out of the sixth grade for breaking a chair over a girl’s head, having been bullied for her skinniness. She went on to St Ann’s school in Brooklyn, where she befriended Zac Posen – she still models for him. It was while at school that she landed her first film role, playing Mary Agnes in The Cider House Rules after she was discovered on a SoHo street.

Jim Jarmusch cast Paz in Limits of Control, in 2009, having written the character of “Nude” especially for her. A character who – you guessed it – isn’t a great wearer of clothes, except for a transparent plastic raincoat, that is. Jarmusch has said, “I always joke that it’s harder to get Paz to keep her clothes on than to take them off.”

A less charitable summation of her came from her mother, who supposedly described her as “Genghis Khan meets Marie Antoinette” in an interview for New York Magazine. When I raise this with Paz, the words are barely out of my mouth before she silences me with a waved hand.
“First of all the guy who wrote that article was an ex-boyfriend who was severely heartbroken and had a lot of ulterior motives so it’s not journalism. It’s against the law for an ex-boyfriend to interview you. So I learned from that experience. Always learning.”

And in terms of keeping private life private, there will probably even more learning to do now – after Boardwalk Empire and her captivating performance in Gaspar Noé’s psychedelic Enter the Void, her fame is going to spread a lot further than the Lower East Side.

She thinks the world would also be happier if everyone lightened up about sex: “I don’t really consider the nudity, it’s just like another costume. I approach it from an emotional space. That’s why it shocks me when people are like “`Oh, she’s nude!” – well what about the fact that I’m crying? Or I’m laughing? It’s an emotional scene. A lot of crazy things happen in the bedroom. Not just sex. Lovers quarrels.”

Is sex important to you?
“Love is,” she coos. “Love, baby, love. Love is really the most important thing. I can’t have sex with someone I’m not in love with. I still love every ex boyfriend I’ve ever had and I talk to them all the time.”

How would her ex-boyfriends describe her?
“Complicated? Fun? Umm. Passionate. Definitely passionate. I think they would say I’m passionate above all. I keep it honest. I don’t like games. And in my work, it really makes me feel things very deeply. I can get to places that I need to get.”

Styled moodily in black dress and plum-coloured lipstick, Paz turns away from the camera to “get into the right emotional space”. There are a few suppressed smirks. When she turns back a moment later though tears are running down her face.

She says she wants to “try everything” and be thought of as, “somebody who gets to people, whether good or bad. I mean, if you get to someone, it means you’re making something in them aliven and awaken and make them question themselves. So I’d like to be a provocative actress. I really know I’m capable of everything and I have so much I want to play … a lot I want to do.”

What sort of thing? She thinks for a moment.
“I would love to do some Victorian like …” she searches for the term.

Costume drama?
“Yeah, costume drama.” Paz in bonnet and crinoline – that really would be a shock.

Photography: Danielle Levitt
Fashion: Emilie Kareh
Words: Hermonie Hoby

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland Issue 25, Feb/March 2011

The post Paz De La Huerta appeared first on Wonderland.