Sylvia Hoeks tells the truth about her love of villainous roles
ART DIRECTOR ELLA MCNANEY PHOTOGRAPHER BEN DUGGAN HAIR STYLIST ADAM CAMPBELL MAKE-UP ARTIST LISA STOREY FASHION STYLIST JULES WOOD PHOTOGRAPHER ASSISTANT GEOFF GLENISTER HAIR STYLIST ASSISTANT WILLIAM CLARK PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS NORIO CHALICO FASHION STYLIST ASSISTANT NIKITA DESAI LOCATION THE FORGE LA INTERVIEW ROGER PARIS
Fresh off of her big budget Hollywood debut in Blade Runner 2014, Dutch actress Sylvia will soon be wowing audiences in The Girl In The Spider Web. VENI sat down to talk about what drives this exciting new quadrilingual talent, and the special relish she takes in villainous roles.
VM: According to your own definition, do you feel like you’ve made it in Hollywood?
SH: I think you never really make it in the sense that you are always as good as your last film. And the funny thing is, because we are human beings, we always search for more, so it’s never enough. You taste the forbidden fruit in a sense and you want more of it because it feels good working with creative people, growing as an artist, and it’s contagious and it feels like you are entering sort of a secret world and you can grow and be free and you can create and it inspires you. And I think to have seen and felt that world, you want more.
VM: How about that magic moment when you got your first break.
SH: I have been so lucky and so grateful and I have had a couple of really good breaks; the film Duska was a Russian-Dutch production and it was right after theater school and I was still very young — I think 24 or 25. I won the Dutch Oscar for that role, and it brought a lot of recognition and it was really an art house film. Holland is a very small country and we are not a country of creatives: we are brought up through teachers and doctors and lawyers. It’s a very practical country, and acting in my twenties allowed me to broaden my horizons across Europe and the US.
VM: What is the most important thing to you?
SH: I think what we are all looking for, which is love, love and recognition.
VM: What are your habits for success?
SH: I always dig for more. I love the creative process before you go onto a film. I love to go and dig into documentaries, just go online and click on YouTube videos and you are in a totally different world. I love to go after a character and really feel that transformation and feed that transformation and find my answer to the questions that I have. And I think the root of why I am an actor is all the questions I had as a child. It’s a drive to get answers to those questions; it’s not about money at all. I am not going to do a part for the money.
VM: What else from childhood helps drive your career?
SH: When I meet a person, I look at their body language and how they present themselves instead of the words they say. Once a neighbor dropped by and began chatting away like a crazy person, pretending to be very happy. A week later we got the news that somebody in her family had died. I think I felt that there was this really deep sadness in her eyes and she tried to mask that and lighten her mood, and I think that is the one thing that is the root of everything I do: what really drives us and touches us. In the end what I am an actress for is to make people feel something, and feel in their heart what they should work at to make themselves happy, and what do they need to reflect on as a human being.
VM: What are you working on now?
SH: I am going to play in the new Girl With the Dragon Tattoo film, The Girl in the Spider’s Web. It’s another evil character, which is so much fun. I don’t want to only play evil characters, but I think now that I have kind of tasted the forbidden fruit, I kind of want to go on with that thing.
VM: There’s that metaphor again.
SH: Yes, what I mean with forbidden fruit is that people are so well adjusted to society that we become robots and too well adjusted and never tend to be vulnerable, and we only look at each other’s social media and we post only our most positive outlook on the world and ourselves. So it’s not very interesting, and what I mean by the forbidden fruit is that I am looking for the vulnerability and ugliness inside of a person that creates an interesting character.
VM: Is there something you’d like to share about yourself that people don’t know?
SH: I am happy about the path that we are now walking on as women supporting
each other more, being less afraid of standing in another person’s shadow.
Because I think there is a misperception that if your friend is really
beautiful, funny or intelligent that you can’t be. I don’t know if it’s been
since the beginning of time, but I think women are so protective and maybe tend
to be look at other women as potential danger or competition or something. But
we are in a different time in which women have careers, and I think as with
Greta Gerwig, who made the film Ladybird, and the women that made Big Little
Lies, there’s a movement that is starting now where women get the opportunity
to connect and join forces and create something together.
