The year was 1986, and I had just graduated from high school—both in real life and in the films of John Hughes. Onscreen, the high schools I attended were big and Midwestern, mostly situated in the suburbs of Chicago. In reality, if I wasn’t filming or ditching class, I went to a small French school on the west side of Los Angeles called the Lycée Français, an institution I had so rarely attended in person that when I flew back from New York for one day to accept my diploma my mother referred to it as my “honorary degree.” At the time, I was arguably one of the most recognizable high schoolers in America, but it had been a while since I had felt my age. When I left school a few weeks early to star in “The Pick-up Artist” with Robert Downey, Jr., in New York, I was already incorporated—and yet I still couldn’t legally order a drink in a restaurant.
During that film shoot, I got a call from my agent telling me that the Franco-Swiss film director Jean-Luc Godard—who died this past September, at the age of ninety-one—wanted to meet with me to discuss the possibility of my playing the role of Cordelia in an adaptation of “King Lear.” My only association with Godard at that point was a poster in the French clothing store agnès b. It was a collage of images from some of his most iconic movies—“Contempt,” “Alphaville,” “Pierrot le Fou.” I was drawn to the style, especially Jean Seberg’s fetching pixie cut in “Breathless.” I bought the poster but had yet to watch any of the films.
Denne historien er fra December 19, 2022-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra December 19, 2022-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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NO WAY BACK
The resurgence, in the past decade, of Paul Schrader as one of the most accomplished and acclaimed contemporary movie directors is part of a bigger trend: the self-reinvention of Hollywood auteurs as independent filmmakers.
PRIMORDIAL SORROW
\"All Life Long,\" the title of the most recent album by the composer and organist Kali Malone, is taken from a poem by the British Symbolist author Arthur Symons: \"The heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,/ All life long crying without avail,/As the water all night long is crying to me.\"
CHOPPED AND STEWED
The other day, at a Nigerian restaurant called Safari, in Houston, Texas, I peeled back the plastic wrap on a ball of fufu, a staple across West Africa.
TOUCH WOOD
What do people do all day? My daughter loves to read Richard Scarry's book of that title, though she generally skips ahead to the hospital pages.
HELLO, HEARTBREAK
Heartbreak cures are as old as time, or at least as old as the Common Era.
ENEMY OF THE STATE
Javier Milei's plan to remake Argentina begins with waging war on the government.
THE CHOOSING ONES
The saga of my Jewish conversion began twenty-five years ago, when I got engaged to my first husband.
OBSCURE FAMILIAL RELATIONS, EXPLAINED FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Children who share only one parent are half siblings. Children who have been bisected via a tragic logging accident are also half siblings, but in a different way.
NOTE TO SELVES
The Sonoran Desert, which covers much of the southwestern United States, is a vast expanse of arid earth where cartoonish entities-roadrunners, tumbleweeds, telephone-pole-tall succulents make occasional appearances.
BADDIE ISSUES
\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"
