Vicky Krieps: I was laughed at for rejecting Hollywood
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- Love Me Tender features Krieps as Clémence, a former lawyer who gives away her belongings, explores her sexuality, and then loses custody of her son to her ex-husband, directed by Anna Cazenave Cambet from Constance Debré's autobiographical novel.
- Krieps developed psychosomatic paralysis — inability to move her arms and neck — within two weeks of wrapping the film, attributing it to "assembled psychological pain" from the supervised custody-visit scenes.
- After Phantom Thread, Krieps says industry figures "actually laughed at" her for returning to low-budget French films instead of pursuing Hollywood, which she framed as absurd.
- Krieps has declined to move to Los Angeles, living in Berlin for 15 years and seeking out directors who preside over "feminine sets" — quiet, calm, non-hierarchical — rather than the "military" style of typical productions.
- Her grandfather survived internment at Dachau as a WWII resistance member and later, as a socialist politician in Luxembourg, successfully campaigned to abolish the death penalty.
- Krieps will next appear in Ryan Murphy's Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story as the Borden family maid Bridget Sullivan, and has just wrapped Élise Girard's Emma Doucet.
- Love Me Tender is released in UK and Irish cinemas from 7 August.
Why it matters: Krieps's deliberate rejection of the Hollywood machine — staying in Berlin, refusing red-carpet pantomime, taking low-budget French roles — has produced a hybrid career spanning Shyamalan's Old and Álvarez's Spider's Web alongside arthouse anchors like Corsage, demonstrating a viable model for women who refuse to play by industry rules.
