The first time Stacy Martin stepped on a film set, it was for Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac. Alongside Mia Goth, she debuted in the controversially graphic tale of a woman with the titular sexual affliction. “Looking back I’m like, Oh wow, that was pretty ballsy,” she laughs, when we sit down to discuss her latest role in the markedly different but no less incisive investigation of women’s sexuality, Sense and Sensibility.
The project comes after roles in experimental indies like High Rise and nearly every project put out by powerhouse couple Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold: The Childhood of a Leader, Vox Lux, The Brutalist, The Testament of Ann Lee. Over the course of a decade, the French actor, who now lives between Los Angeles and London, has become a low-key muse and reliable face for modern day auteurs. Her sharp but sweet features are alternatively leveraged for biting or wide-eyed characters—sometimes a compelling blend of the two.
When we speak, Martin is lounging in her LA home before an enviable dark wood built-in packed with books and monographs from the likes of Steidl. Is she a Jane Austen fan, I wonder? Yes, and no. Sense and Sensibility came by way of Martin’s indie bona fides rather than her bookish fervor (though she eagerly reread the novel in preparation for the film), as British director Georgia Oakley prepared to take on the high-profile adaptation for her sophomore feature. (Her debut, Blue Jean, won the People’s Choice award at Venice in 2022.) Oakley’s outsider influence is apparent in her rendition of the 10-time adapted novel, here played as a serene but arresting immersion in countryside life.
Confessions between romantic leads are spliced with windswept hills and twisting brooks. Much like Austen’s original source material, Oakley is interested not in the grand mechanisms of romance, but what women really want from their everyday relationships, and what they’ll do to get it. Martin, in the midst of it all, arrives on the Dashwoods’ doorstep as Fanny Ferrars—a wicked sister-in-law that the actor embodies with an appropriate amount of humor and venom.
While in production, Martin spent her time off formalizing her own directorial debut, a short titled Amaretti that premiered at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival and centers on an older woman who discovers she’s been the victim of her son’s elder abuse. The project, filled with all the camera tricks and rich coloring of an ardent young filmmaker, was inspired by real life events in the life of Martin’s own grandmother.
As the actor moves both further into the spotlight with Sense and Sensibility, and further out of it, with her first turn behind the camera, we met to talk about the one-of-a-kind beginnings of her career, her trip to 18th-century England, and what it’s been like helping her favorite directors’ careers take flight.
Are you a Jane Austen fan? Is that how you became involved in Sense and Sensibility?
I was a Georgia Oakley fan; I loved her first film, Blue Jean. It was quite astounding in terms of the filmmaking and the storytelling. The way she captured the character’s emotions was so delicate, but at the same time so poignant without being indulgent, which is quite a tough thing to do. We spoke a little bit back when that film came out, then I heard she was doing Sense and Sensibility. I was really surprised that Georgia was going into that world. Those are always the meetings I’m quite curious about.
Then I reread Sense and Sensibility and I was so pleased that I’d reread it now that I’m older, because anything you read at school is tainted by school and by the fact that you have to read it. Reading it back now and seeing just how modern it was and how funny and witty Austen is as a writer was just really exciting. Even though obviously a lot has changed, a lot of the things we look for in life, a lot of our struggles, especially for women, are very relatable in the book. It was quite fun to explore that from that angle, rather than going, “Oh, this is a stuffy adaptation of an English classic.” I was like, “No, actually, it’s a really cool interpretation of where we are today and how we view women today, through the lens of a Jane Austen world.”
It was not really what I went in expecting. It had a lot of restraint. What was it like being on set with everyone? Was the character what you expected?
It’s the sort of danger of adapting something that has been done before, and that is loved so much as well. Georgia was very clever in the way that she cast it. They’re not only actors that she loves and is excited about. They’re also actors who fit each character in a way that maybe was a bit more unexpected—but also was just very accurate. I’d find myself on set looking around and going, “This is great casting.”
I’ve known a lot of those actors for a really long time and they’re friends. A lot of the time you arrive on a new production and you meet new people, which is wonderful. But there’s something really comforting [about working with friends], especially because I played a character that was so far away from me. I really wanted to make sure I was able to just not worry. I’m a big worrier and I’m a big people pleaser. So playing a character that is the opposite of that, I knew that me, Stacy, would then worry that they think I was as livid as Fanny, which I’m sure I can be sometimes. There’s a bit of Fanny in all of us.
When was your short film, Amaretti, coming together in the midst of all of this?
I was in pre-production on my short during Sense, which was quite mad, but sometimes that’s just how life is. It was a really interesting transition because I went from being an actor and really having such a great time on this, then suddenly being a director and being the one responsible for making sure that the actors had a similar experience to what I had. I loved it. It really shone a light on how much I love to collaborate with incredible artists, whether it’s a set designer or sound or costume or the actors.
Was there something, when you were on set as an actor, that you were itching to do that led to the short film project?
I had my shooting dates already, so I knew I was about to shoot, but I think [Sense] really instilled Georgia’s tenacity of how she wanted her film to be: the fact that she shot on film, the fact that she really fought for it. Sometimes there are issues with film and sometimes there aren’t, and that fight is so worth it. That was something I really took with me. On my short film, I lost my camera 10 days before filming. It was really terrifying at the time, but I then ended up using a Super 16 instead of a 35 mm because that’s all the rental company had available.
Shockingly, there were no 35 cameras available in the whole of the U.K. for those shoot days, which made me excited because I thought, Wow, there’s so much more being shot on film now. This is incredible, but also I’m completely fucked because I don’t have a camera. Then I got a Super 16, and I thought, Something is telling me that I should just shoot in this format. I think Georgia’s first film was on Super 16. A lot of my references were. For example, Carol, that was Super 16. Sometimes life just steers you the right way even though you might be having a panic attack at the same time.
When I was watching the short, it just seemed like you were having so much fun setting up these shots. You see her walk by in the reflection of the mirror, the visual is stretching out across the frame. Was this your opportunity to experiment with those sorts of aspects of filmmaking?
It’s a short film; you should be more experimental. You have the freedom. You have people’s attention for 15 minutes, and that attention span is a lot more forgiving than if you’re asking someone to watch an hour or two hours or three hours. The short films that I’ve loved the most are the ones that don’t try and cram a full feature story. They’re the ones that actually give me a feeling. That are trying something. I was very inspired by Agnès Varda’s films where she does these kinds of essays almost, and they’re little moments of life.
I read that this also is loosely based on an experience you had with your grandmother. Elder abuse, or just even the lives of older adults who are navigating these systems, is not something we turn our attention to a lot. Were there references that you were watching, or was it really just coming from your own experience?
There was a point where I knew I wanted to direct something, but I didn’t quite know what it was until a few years ago. When something happens in your family, it just stays with you. Also, looking at the media today and looking at how the narrative around trauma or accidents is so based around the attackers or the perpetrators, it’s a very worrying thing for me because you’ll see it on all levels. You’ll see it if it’s a terrible terrorist attack or just someone suing someone [else]. It’s never really about the victim. That narrative for me is really scary because it also makes these people who do bad things superstars. You forget half the story.
I really wanted for my short to kind of switch that. Something really bad happened to someone, and I have the emotional connection because it’s someone that I know and it’s something that I’ve been connected to, specifically. Her story was never really told. It was always about what this one person had done to her, and I just really disagreed with that. I just thought, Well, where is she in this story? Where is this woman and this human being and her feelings? Especially when it’s elderly people, we forget that they’re people. They’re older but they’re still themselves and they still have jokes and wants and needs. It’s a weird sort of thing in society that we ostracize the elderly.
You have a storied lineup of directors that you’ve worked with. Did you look to any of them for advice? I know you’ve worked with Brady and Mona many times over at this point.
I asked them for advice more during the editing because anything in post-production was a part of filmmaking that I was less familiar with. Production and pre-production I had a lot more experience in. It felt that I needed to just explore [those phases] as my own adventure and my own creative outlet, so I was quite protective of that. When you’re doing something for the first time, it’s very easy to be swayed or to be inspired by the people who have inspired you. I sort of purposefully didn’t, and I think I was quite shy about it as well.
Post-production and editing, because that’s a process where you’re actually bringing a lot more together, you’re bringing sound, you’re bringing grading, you’re bringing all these things, it’s a lot more collaborative. At that point, I definitely asked a few people about what they thought. I asked Brady, I asked Mona Fastvold, I asked Lukas Dhont. Just people I thought would understand me also as an artist. You have to ask the people who understand you.
With Brady and Mona, I’m wondering, having been in a number of their projects, what it’s been like to see their work evolve and gain more attention, particularly during this last awards season. I imagine every time you come back to one of their sets, you’ve also evolved as an actor and are in a different place in your career.
You’re right. I’ve seen them grow and they’ve seen me grow. You don’t get to work with the same people very often, so it is nice. I’ve always been really inspired by Cassavetes or Bergman or Fassbinder, even though he was insane, because they worked as a community. They always worked with the same people. When you get to do that it’s a real joy.
I don’t think [Mona and Brady] have changed in the sense that they’re the same filmmakers and they’re the same artists. It’s exciting to see that they are being recognized. When I first spoke to Brady, I really saw something quite unique. You spend time talking to people and collaborating with people because you believe in them and because you want other people to see how wonderful they are. So the fact that they’re being recognized on a larger scale for me is just really exciting, and it’s validating that independent film is just as important as any other.
You made your acting debut in Nymphomaniac. I imagine that was an interesting first film experience, being thrown into the deep end a little bit on an experimental project.
I didn’t really know if I wanted to act at that point. I knew I loved acting, but whether or not it could be my job, I didn’t know. I knew that I loved Lars’s work. I loved the script that he wrote, even though it’s 300 pages. Sometimes things come your way. It helped me really, one, decide if I really wanted to be an actor, and two, decide what type of actor I wanted to be and what kind of films I wanted to be in. The beauty of starting out on such a big scale with Lars is that it immediately planted me in the types of films that I like watching and that I wanted to make. I got to work with incredible people. I got to work with Uma Thurman, I got to work with Stellan Skarsgård, at a point in my life where I never even thought I’d be in the same room as them.
Looking back now, ’cause it was maybe 12 years or maybe longer now, I don’t think I quite realized at the time how big it was. I was just busy doing it. Whereas now looking back I’m like, Oh wow, that was pretty ballsy to kind of just be like, I’m doing this and I’m gonna do this film and this is how I feel about it and people aren’t gonna like it and it might cause a bit of uproar. I also think now it’s definitely impacted many filmmakers and how they make films. We had an intimacy coordinator before even the word intimacy coordinator existed, and I think people are looking back at it now quite differently.
Is there someone whose career you would like to follow, or that you’d say, “I’d like to work on the kind of projects they seem to find themselves in”?
It’s hard when you look at other people, because they’re so different from you. If I look at Gena Rowlands, for example, who I’m very inspired by, she was an incredible actress. Actually, I don’t know if you knew this. This is a total sidebar, but Hitchcock used to do this, like, one-hour little telly mystery dramas and she was in one of them. I think it was one of her first acting jobs. We all know her from the Cassavetes stuff and it’s a very specific style, but here she’s completely in the Hitchcock style. It completely blew my mind and I thought, Wow, what an amazing time to be an actor. You start off with Hitchcock, build your career with Cassavetes. But I can’t compare myself to that or I can’t hope for that because filmmaking is so different today.
There’s a lot of people that I love that inspire me in terms of their ambition and just how hardworking they are. There’s Andrea Riseborough, who I think is a real force of nature. She works so hard and she’s such a chameleon. We’re very different types of actors, but I really admire her relentlessness.
Last question: is there a rumor you’d like to start about yourself as you move forward in your career?
Recently someone came up to me and said, “Oh, I heard you have an obsession with socks.” I don’t have an obsession with socks, but I found it so interesting. It must have been such a strong rumor for someone to confidently come up to someone and say, “Oh I hear you’re obsessed with socks and you’re very specific with your socks.” I thought, I‘m not, but I should be ’cause what a fucking great thing to be obsessed with.
More of our favorite stories from CULTURED
Here’s Where Media Insiders Actually Get Their News
Is LA Still a Painter’s Town? Juliana Halpert on the City’s Fall Gallery Openings
Art-Market Guru David Schrader on What Young Collectors Really Want
Want to Dress Like An Architect? 16 Design Industry Insiders Share Their Wardrobe Workhorses
You Can Tell Lindsey Vonn to Slow Down. You Just Can’t Expect Her to Listen.
Sign up for our newsletter here to get these stories direct to your inbox.
in your life?
