Whether for Prada or Miu Miu, the legendary Miuccia Prada has always picked the most exciting actors to front her campaigns (think Willem Dafoe and Gary Oldman for Prada AW12 or Stacey Martin for Miu Miu last season). It should come as no surprise, then, that the king/queen-maker has picked a stellar bunch of new talent to head up Miu Miu’s SS16 campaign, including Wonderland fave Julia Garner as well as Millie Brady, Matilda Lutz, India Salvor Menuez.

Clad in the campaign in Miu Miu’s SS16 collection to die for, Miuccia’s new dream girls are set to explode this year with the four actresses all featuring in major releases this year. Garner shines onscreen alongside Lily Tomlin in Grandma, Brady appears in the upcoming Knights of the Roundtable by Guy Ritchie, Lutz will be leading the way in the latest instalment of The Ring and Menuez will be the name to know at Sundance in White Girl.

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Taken from 10th Birthday Issue of Wonderland

All clothing by SAINT LAURENT BY HEDI SLIMANE

Julia Garner is excited about life. Having started acting for fun aged 14 (“You know, to overcome my shyness”), it was a year later that Garner turned her hobby into a career. “When I actually realised that acting could be a profession, I wanted to try it,” says Garner in her sweeterthan-syrup American drawl. “I thought, ‘OK, I’ll try it’. My mother was an actress 30 years ago in the 80s, so she was like, ‘Are you sure? It’s a really hard profession, you know! See if you get good feedback on your auditions and if not, don’t do it. Take it one step at a time’. Obviously, she didn’t want me to waste my time.”

Having starred in the likes of 2012 cult drama Electrick Children (where she played a Mormon) and recent release Grandma, along with a lead role in We Are What We Are (that received a ten minute standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival), it’s safe to say Garner’s time has been well spent. A year on from that conversation with her mother, Garner was working with a film student at Columbia Film School who she’d been introduced to by her acting teacher. The student’s girlfriend was interning at a casting office, so thanks to her, Garner caught wind of an open call for the American version of Skins. “There were 1,500 kids in New York and they were looking in LA and Canada too,” recalls Garner. “I got all the way to the end, but didn’t get the part. But that casting director also cast Martha Marcy May Marlene, my first movie at the age of 16.” The indie film directed and produced by Sean Dirkin – that chronicles the paranoia and delusions of a woman who returns to her family from a mountain cult – set the tone for Garner’s roles to follow.

In last August’s road trip comedy-drama Grandma, she stars alongside Tea With Mussolini and I Heart Huckabees star Lily Tomlin. “It was wonderful working with her,” Garner enthuses. “Just watching her work, watching her on the monitor, I learnt how engaged she is with everything. She’s very focussed and she acknowledges everything and everyone around her.”

So does Garner have her sights on a big budget film, or is she keen to continue her path of independence? “Eventually, I would like to work on both but I think, for now, the indie films are the ones with the best scripts. I like anything with a good story. I mean, if you have a studio film with better writing and an indie film with poor writing, I would pick the studio film. But I only do things with stories that interest me. If it’s bad writing, I’m just not going to go for it.”

Photography: Chad Moore

Fashion: Danielle Emerson

Words: Brooke McCord

The post Best of the Next: Julia Garner appeared first on Wonderland.

Where did this idea come from?

I was raised Mormon – the family in the film are meant to be a version of fundamentalist Mormons. My extended family lived in Utah so I would always visit and see these people dressed up funny at the store. That’s where the idea sprung from: that there’s a boy and a girl that left one of the colonies and went to Las Vegas, which is a hop, skip and a jump from southern Utah.

Why did you choose ‘Hanging on the Telephone’ as the song that got Rachel (Julia Garner) pregnant?

I had this list and it was called ‘Songs that could get a girl pregnant’ – it’s a very embarrassing list! I haven’t told anybody the list but there was some like Led Zeppelin on it.
But I needed a song that could bridge the gap between 2011 when the movie took place and the 1950s/60s where I felt the characters were in terms of their ideology. ‘Hanging on the Telephone’ bridged that gap. It just seemed perfect and got stuck in my head for 3 months straight.

What about Julia Garder, how did you cast her?

She came on the week before production started. I’d gone through a mess of casting different actresses for the role and then firing them. I needed to find somebody who was virginal, innocent, naïve but bold. Julia looks like an angel and has an emotional depth. This was her first film as a lead, so she has an emotional depth that she doesn’t have total control over yet, which I felt was very teen-like.

Weren’t you nervous about casting someone who’d never been a lead before?

Yeah, definitely. But Julia took it above and beyond. Without her the film wouldn’t have the sparkle that it has.

The desert landscapes in the movie are amazing. Where did you film?

We were shooting in a little ghost town in Utah, there was no water or electricity. We had to bring everything out there with us. It was quite an adventure. On our second day lightening struck the set, and I thought we weren’t going to be able to do it.

Sounds very biblical – any other messages from God while on set?

Well, this project did take a lot of faith. I wanted to make it a $20,000 micro-budget project, and then all of a sudden $1,000,000 fell in our laps from our angel invester Richard Neustadter. We were just going to have the faith to make it happen and then it happened. I don’t know if that was inspired by God, but at least it was a test of trying and going for it.

You still consider yourself Mormon even though you don’t practise. Do you find that leads people to make certain assumptions about you?

People definitely have preconceptions, like how it must limits you as you can’t be funny or political – you can. My life is much more well-rounded than just this little aspect of it. But in another sense, it gives you this chance to surprise people.

This is your first feature and you’re only 27. What else do you have coming up next?

I want to do this project I just wrote which is tentatively called ‘Miss New York’. It’s a psychological horror thriller about a lonely girl who’s a PhD student who falls in love with the girl contending to be Miss New York. It’s harder for females to make films, so I feel really lucky that I had that opportunity to make Electric Children – it seems like a miracle!

Check out the trailer for Electrick Children here. The film opens in the UK on 13 July.

Words: Zing Tsjeng

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