We Sat Down With Rebecca Hall to Talk About Her Role in Christine
Every so often there’s a role that comes along that changes the trajectory of an actor’s career. Thirty-four-year-old British actor Rebecca Hall has been fortunate enough to have this happen twice. First, she wowed audiences and earned a Golden Globe nod playing the beautiful but practical Vicky opposite Scarlett Johansson’s free-spirited Cristina in 2008’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. And now she plays smart-as-a-whip but psychologically tormented reporter Christine Chubbuck in the drama Christine, based on the real-life story of an American journalist who committed suicide during an on-air newscast. The film—which took the Toronto International Film Festival by storm last month—is in theatres now and critics are already talking about the possibility of Hall being nominated for an Oscar.
“When you set out to do something, you nearly always fall short of it,” said Hall of her turn as Chubbuck. “This is just one of those rare examples where I set out to do a thing and I look at it and I’m like ‘I did it.’ As an actor, I got into this because I wanted to play difficult people whom I can make sympathetic. We all know what it’s like to have highs and lows and to feel like those lows are insurmountable. There is certainly a lot of taboo around suicide, and there is that sense that when someone does that, his or her life is kind of wiped out—like they didn’t do anything good because they did that thing, which I think is unfair.” This film sets out to humanize the person behind this gory, very public final act.
