Juliette Lewis Plays a Chair in New Sundance Movie (Yes, You Read That Right)

She has been acting since 1987, and over a nearly four-decade career, Juliette Lewis is known for playing a crazed murderer (Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers), a pastor’s daughter on the run from vampires (Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn) and a teen fending off a violent rapist (Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear). She’s also been a rock star in real life as the lead singer of Juliette Lewis and the Licks.

Now the 51-year-old actress is heading back to Park City to support two Sundance Film Festival selections that, even for her, are bold, head-turning roles: In art house auteur Amanda Kramer’s By Design she plays a chair — yes, a chair — and in Mark Anthony Green’s Opus she stars as a spicy journalist who joins a group to meet a pop icon at his compound when he mysteriously reappears after a three-decade absence.

The films mark a return to form for Lewis (her words) after working at a rapid clip since her heyday coming up during the 1990s. Most recently, she spent two seasons on Showtime’s Emmy-nominated survival series Yellowjackets, but Lewis has longed for “a return to my heart-and-soul cinema.” Eager to break from the “coddled, elitist” actor thing, Lewis once again is chasing the types of projects that embody “the most wild, genre-bending creativity” of her early roles. Offscreen, and after some high-profile relationships (she once dated Brad Pitt), Lewis has settled into a new career niche and well-earned perspective of peace: “I just see the humanity in everybody.”

Are you ready for Park City?

I am so ready for Park City. I have a ski day planned with my sister, but that aside, I’m there to promote two movies I’m really tickled about. I think I haven’t been there in 20 years. I don’t know the math. I don’t know if you know this little history, but I was there with Gena Rowlands and director Mira Nair for this movie we did called Hysterical Blindness that Uma Thurman produced and also starred in. She was pregnant at the time with her first kid, so she was not there with us. The movie was the last time I was there.

I will fact check you on that.

Please do.

On my deep dive into your Sundance history, I see you’ve been back many times since 2002. You’ve performed in Park City several times during the festival with Juliette Lewis and the Licks at Harry O’s, another time with Donovan Leitch at Cisero’s. You participated in a pandemic premiere in 2021 for Mayday from director Karen Cinorre, attended in support of Hellion from Kat Candler in 2014, and with Sympathy for Delicious for filmmaker and star Mark Ruffalo in 2010 …

Ah, yes, with Orlando Bloom for the last film. We were all there in the cold with our scarves and a weird hat, I’m getting a picture of it in my mind. Always with scarves and weird hats.

So many scarves! But let’s go back to Gena Rowlands, who passed away last fall. What do you remember about spending time with such a legend?

A lot of us younger actress people know her from A Woman Under the Influence and there’s such savagery, emotionality in that performance, but she had such gentleness and grace. I remember that big smile. She was just very kind. The majority of her scenes were with Uma but we sat together and enjoyed watching Hysterical Blindness. You’ll see from our photos together that she is such a beauty. She’s different from other icons who might have a complex, prickly personality brewing. That’s not Gena Rowlands.

It’s interesting that you mentioned that because I looked at all the photos of you together from that time and there’s such a warmth and vibrancy that exudes from her. The camera just loved her, even standing in a snowbank.

That does make sense with her as an artist. No matter how difficult the personality she was portraying on screen, the warmth that exudes is her humanity I will forever cherish that I was in a movie with her.

I want to get to other Sundance memories, but we have to focus on these two movies you have in the festival this year. By Design has one of the most unique loglines in the lineup. How long did it take you to say yes after reading the script?

This is all Amanda Kramer, the brilliant, one-of-a-kind filmmaker. Cole Escola posted the trailer [on Instagram] for the movie they did with Amanda [2022’s Please Baby Please], and I commented, “Why am I not in this movie?” Unbeknownst to me, she’s with my management, so we had a general meeting. I just wanted to do and be a part of anything she creates. She’s one of those filmmakers who, when you get involved, you enter her world in the universe. She paints, and you know it will be strange and so unique. It was such a pleasure shooting this movie. I had no idea what it would come out as but I knew I was taking a big leap. It’s a big risk, for me and for her, and I giggled about it. It’s one of the more subversive things I could do in that I don’t talk for 80 percent of the movie.

What was that like?

It became a question: How can I contribute and help tell a story by doing nothing? It’s a creative question but, of course, Amanda builds this world around you. It’s a fun story. It became my subversive pleasure of doing even less than nothing. Don’t give anything, don’t respond. I’m playing an inanimate object but I also wanted to have pathos within it. It was an incredible challenge. I have no idea if I pulled off what I intended. I’ve learned I’m not the greatest judge of that, I usually listen to people who’ve received it. It’s bookmarked with two very important scenes that give you an insight of the character. I’m excited. Such an incredible cast.

You definitely pulled it off. But I have to say this story is such an endorsement for an Instagram comment leading to a job …

Can you believe it? A lot of us actors take general meetings with nothing attached per se. Amanda’s so prolific, always has little things brewing and stewing, like scripts and ideas. I can’t say enough this enough: I love her so much. A few weeks later, she said, “I have something for you.” Then eight months later, I think they secured the funds. I want to say something about our time, and we plan on doing other projects together. She’s managed to build a sort of radical, small scale but big fresh idea way of filmmaking. I feel like this is where the treasure lies in this new climate of the industry. The fresher the idea, the more exciting and unique the projects can become.

I feel like Sundance is always such a great home for these kinds of big swings …

I feel like right now we’re having a renaissance of the most wild, genre-bending creativity. Whereas a few years ago, it was a renaissance of TV and streaming with amazing TV shows and some movies. I came up in the ‘90s and I feel that what I’m really grasping for and trying to carve out is, for me, a return to my heart-and-soul cinema. Even though they’re known as the auteurs of American cinema — Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Robert Rodriguez, Kathryn Bigelow — the way we made movies together was not the coddled, elitist actor approach. We were in it together, the filmmaker and actors collaborating hand-in-hand. I was sort of losing a bit of that connectivity and collaboration when I did a few TV shows, which were all very special, but it’s a different way. This is a return to form for me — with more micro budgets.

Maybe you’re sacrificing a nicer trailer and some of the comforts of bigger budget productions?

The last TV stuff I’ve done, you’re rarely in the trailer — everything’s so fast. You’re doing scenes in one to three takes unless it’s a bit more complicated scenes. In Opus, we have an ending that has many moving parts and some special effects so that was a lengthier shoot. But you’re still on set with everybody, we sit together and show up together. It’s long hours. But that’s the work I know how to do. I think back to From Dusk Till Dawn, which was one of my fondest memories of running from a sandstorm with George Clooney in historical heat. We didn’t have cushy trailers that had air conditioning that worked. We were dusty and dirty like cowboys.

Opus is another film with an intriguing plot: A young writer, played by Ayo Edebiri, is invited to a remote compound of a legendary pop star who mysteriously disappeared 30 years ago. Who do you play?

I play one of the journalists. She’s a pop art journalist and not the most respectable kind. I get to work with Murray Bartlett again, we worked together in Chippendale’s and I hope to carry on this trend because we have this crazy chemistry. I love working with him. He plays the senior editor to Ayo’s character. We’re all journalists who come together to this compound. Gosh, it was so fun. I love my character, she’s very sassy. That’s such a silly word. She’s a blend of Wendy Williams and Megyn Kelly. If Megan Kelly did more tabloid stuff.

That was certainly not a name I was expecting you to mention.

It’s just a visual comparison. It’s a really fun movie, and talk about a project where you’re like, wow, this is such a crazy fun idea. It mixes genres and goes into the area it goes in. John Malkovich is a revelation. I’m not even kidding. He’s playing sort of a Liberace meets The Weeknd character.

You’re nailing these descriptions!

Hey, thanks. We filmed it in New Mexico, and I loved working there. They’ve been shooting a lot of stuff over there. I hope we do more.

The industry has migrated there for the state’s tax credit. What do you like about New Mexico?

Oh, man. I’m an energy queen. I’m very sensitive to energy and the environment. I just feel like there’s so much beauty there. We worked in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. It was also very cold. But there’s a magic there. I live in the mountains now, so it was sort of a kinship to where I moved. There’s a vortex in New Mexico. I’m one of these people who knows a little bit about all this stuff, but these vortexes, there’s something to it energetically that feeds the soul.

Wait, so you moved out of Los Angeles?

I left several years ago. I bought a property on the East Coast after Yellowjackets. Then now this other place. I’m still on the West Coast. Why did I leave? It had a lot of sorrow for me due to the pandemic. I thought to myself, I can actually live anywhere so why don’t I try that?

And you’re happy?

Oh yeah. It was the right choice. And I’m close enough. In my heart and soul, I’m still a California girl. That is where I grew up. I grew up in the Valley, which is different than the city of L.A.

As somebody who has been famous for so long and has worked seamlessly across all these different genres, did the themes of Opus resonate with you in terms of the cult fame or stardom?

Mark Anthony, the writer and director who is also an editor at GQ, he wrote a brilliant script in that it’s not that nice to the artist either, who gets to orbit in that rarefied air. That’s the thing I rebelled against. I call it the pedestal culture because it permanently others you. For me, when I was very young, that had a not-positive effect on me. When I did my rock and roll band, that was a reclaiming for me that grounded me. In rock and roll, you’re all in a room together. It’s church, it’s communal. The world of pop stardom is massive and people have to be protected but that’s another thing. I don’t know it per se, but I know little bits of that of people trying to put that on me early on. That was difficult.

But this other side, the journalist side, and the whole relationship of feeding some of your personal life to sell something? I know it from going on talk shows and doing pre-interviews, trying to figure out which anecdotes from your life you’re willing to share or make funny sort of entertainment fodder. There are other things you keep more closely guarded, but it’s an interesting dynamic and dance. You see the extreme toll it takes on John Malkovich’s artist who seeks the ultimate revenge for ways that he felt he was mistreated.

I’m getting a hint of the genre of Opus now …

Exactly. It turns because he goes into this Messiah complex. It was really great to see John Malkovich in this role, but also to see him being seductive and charming and stuff like that. No one is innocent in the movie. That’s what good writing does; everybody is a bit complicated.

What is your relationship to journalists?

I can only speak from my point of view now, and being in midlife, I just see the humanity in everybody. When we do these junkets, I see that someone’s coming to the table having gotten a babysitter or having a breakup. I see that they’re just doing a job. Even if I get asked about Brad Pitt when I was 18 — that’s when we dated — I don’t hold grudges. I know they had a list of questions that maybe their boss gave them. When I was a kid and very introverted, I didn’t understand that. I just didn’t see myself in the writing. Sometimes I would cry reading an article. The weird thing is it wasn’t mean. It was making me something other than what I was, and that would make me feel sad.

Now that you’ve had some time to simmer, any favorite memories of Sundance?

I’m just excited to see what it is today. It’s always had this sparkle with the white snow all around, and running from place to place to see movies. It’s this wonderland of discovery and new talent. I want to say that By Design is my heart and soul. It’s the first time I do dance in a film, and I got to do it with our wonderful choreographer. I can’t wait to see it. That’s the first film I’m promoting, and the second half of my trip is with my Opus team. I’m in it to win it. 

Interview edited for length and clarity.

This story appeared in the Jan. 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.