I went, oh, an elf in New Zealand?

And I said, what's the story?

And they said, oh, it's from the Lord of the Rings.

I went, oh, someone's making the Lord of the Rings.

And I said, who's directing it?

Peter Jackson.

I stopped speaking and they said, yeah, you don't want to do that, do you?

They didn't realize why I wasn't speaking.

It was like the perfect job.

The aviator.

I, uh, read in the magazines that you play golf.

On occasion.

Well, how about nine holes?

Now, Mr. Humes?

If it would be convenient, Miss Hepburn.

I played Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator.

It was about Howard Hughes, and they obviously had a very public, although they tried to keep it clandestine, love affair.

His love of cinema, her love of daring.

I remember I was working on a Western with Ron Howard.

I had just had a baby and my eldest was learning to walk in the snow and it was kind of idyllic and I was riding out with Marlborough men every day and it doesn't get much better than this.

And then I got a call saying that Martin Scorsese was trying to get hold of me.

He had a script he wanted to send me and I nearly buckled at the knees.

I think I was so nervous talking to him because I knew whatever it was he was asking me to do,

I was going to say yes.

And then it was to play Katharine Hepburn.

I went, OK, this is the end of my career.

The film will be amazing because he's, you know, he's the maestro.

But yeah, I was terrified.

I remember the first time I saw Sylvia Scarlet and I was just blown away and then seeing Philadelphia's story and all of those fantastic screwball comedies.

How are you, dear?

Much better now that you're here.

Oh, I guess this must be love.

Your guess is correct, Mr.

Conner. I'm just his faithful old dog, Trey.

She's so extraordinary.

There was no one like her.

What's that on the steering wheel?

Cellophane.

If you had any idea the crap that people carry around on their hands.

What kind of crap?

You don't want to know.

Well, the first thing is you have to attack the most obvious parts of the character, like the way they move, the way they speak, which was so distinctive with Hepburn.

But then the most important thing is you've got to say to the director, what's the world that I'm entering?

Because this is not a film about Katharine Hepburn.

I had to fit into that the story that he was telling.

And he was so fantastic.

The way he said to me, you look great, blonde.

You can just be blonde and you don't have to sound like her.

I mean, gosh, your voice was so annoying, you know, or, you know, he was just trying to make me feel better.

And it was so liberating that he said that to me because it just removed any residual feeling that I would have to get it right.

I then just said to myself,

I'm playing a character in a Martin Scorsese film.

But the wonderful thing that Scorsese does, and I'm sure he does it with all of his films, is that he screened a set of films that had an energy to how he wanted me to play the character.

So he screened about four or five different films that gave us a tone and a texture and a world in which to play.

He wanted the first entry of Hepburn into the story to sort of knock your head back.

Follow through is everything in golf, just like life.

Don't you mind?

In the same way that she must have done that with audiences the first time they'd seen her, the energy that she brought on to screen.

I adore the theater, only alive on stage.

I'll teach you.

We'll see some Ibsen, if the Republicans haven't outlawed him by now.

You're not a Republican, are you?

Couldn't abide that.

How'd you vote in 32?

Well, I didn't.

You must, it's your secret franchise.

But what was, when I saw the film, what I love seeing was obviously when Hepburn and Howard Hughes are broken up and he's locked himself in his screening room.

And obviously when I played that scene with Leo, he was on the other side of the door.

So I never saw his side of it, just what I imagined, because even his voice was so painful to listen to.

I can't, sweetie.

You mean you won't?

And then to see the visual on the other side was really heartbreaking.

["Lord of the Rings"]

Lord of the Rings.

["Lord of the Rings"]

Who could have known?

Except all of us fanboys and gals.

I mean, I was there to work with Peter Jackson.

I was such a huge fan of his work and his reverence and his, you know, his love of kind of the ugly side of things.

You were a fan of his horror works.

I love, I grew up on horror.

And so all of that braindead stuff,

I mean, I just absolutely loved it.

I loved it.

And it was so funny, you know, as well as being so revolting and creepy.

Party's over.

["Lord of the Rings"]

And so imagining his sensibility on those stories, which were sort of like a holy grail of a certain aspect of the, you know, the literary canon.

I thought, this is going to be really, because you have to ask yourself when you're adapting something so beloved and that has such a particular and special place for people, why, what are you going to do with it?

But who could have known that it would have taken off in the way that it did?

First voice, the very first thing we hear.

Yes.

It began with the forging of the great rings.

Three were given to the elves, immortal, wisest, and fairest of all beings.

I think it was in the original scripts, but I don't think I fully computed that it would be the first thing.

Because when you first pick up a script to read it, you're reading the story.

They were all very interested in, which I found really exciting, the fact that in order to become a force for good or positive strength, you have to have confronted the darkness within.

And so they were very interested, even though I don't think the book necessarily leans into that heavily, although they found their Tolkien justifications for it.

They were interested in the small way, you know, the bit that I'm in, teasing apart the idea of the darkness that could have been unleashed in her, that she too has been tempted by the ring.

I remember filming that, not knowing, you know, because Pete was kind of a six-pack, he was kind of just experimenting with it and not knowing that necessarily it was going to be in the final film.

You give so much depth to the character.

Yeah, I think so, yeah.

How's your experience with the Hobbit coming back to the character?

Oh, well, I mean,

I knew there wasn't a snowflake's chance in hell of me reprising my role in that, but I sent kind of a jokey email to Pete saying, you know, if you want to put Galadriel in,

I'm free, I'll come over.

You know, I'll sail my canoe.

But I loved it. I loved it.

It was really special.

I mean, I was there for three weeks on The Lord of the Rings, and I think I might have been, you know, on The Hobbit, might have been there three days.

But it was really special nonetheless, yeah.

Did you sign on when Guillermo del Toro was still attached?

Yeah, yeah.

I think he was originally, yeah.

Yeah.

Still out there in my mind, this alternate universe where he, you know, his version of it.

Yeah, they're both such special directors and really particular, and you can totally see the crossover.

But yet they, you know, they make things and they create worlds in their own unique ways.

I mean, you know, it would have been equally as special, but just different.

Thor Ragnarok.

I don't play Thor.

I wasn't asked to play Thor.

Well, you know, Natalie Portman played Thor.

Well, yes.

They were big muscles.

That's a lot of work.

A lot of work.

That wasn't CGI.

You must be Hela.

I'm Thor, son of Odin.

Really?

You don't look like him.

Perhaps we can come to an arrangement.

You sound like him.

Kneel.

Beg your pardon?

Well, I'd seen Taika's films and loved them.

I'd heard that it was happening, but I didn't think anything of it.

And then I just got a call saying that Taika wanted to meet.

And what I, I was like, yeah, of course.

And I didn't know what he,

I just really wanted to say hello.

And then he asked would I be in it?

You know, Marvel aren't necessarily used to having a whole script, so there wasn't anything.

You know, often they'll, they will board the essential battles and they'll start working backwards, like they make their stories, construct their stories.

You know, it's a whole big, massive jigsaw puzzle that I don't know.

What I didn't realize then was the first time a female villain had been realized on screen, so that was really exciting.

Who are you?

What have you done?

What have you done?

I'm Hela.

But I knew Taika was going to put his own particular spin on it and that Chris was so up for anything, incredibly generous and funny and ready to kind of move this in another direction.

So it felt like there was a really playful, exciting energy.

Fresh winds were moving through.

It was great.

It was really great.

I mean, I learned so much.

I mean, literally, Juster, which I was still doing on Borderlands, not to go pew, pew when you shoot the guns.

Because you have to throw a lot of stuff out of your whatever bits are going to be

CGI'd onto your hand.

You know, hammer throwing lessons from Chris about how it could actually make it like it's a mime.

You had to have energy through your arm.

I mean, I did.

I learned a lot of soft skills.

You want us, God?

It's yours.

Whatever game you're playing, it won't work.

You can't defeat me.

No, I know.

But he can.

It's a really huge action scene that was all shot outdoors.

And Zoe Bell had come out of retirement to be Hela's stunt double.

Oh my God, I learned so much from Zoe.

She's so deeply cool.

So to work with Zoe and to do my bits and to watch her do this incredible stuff was just like, oh!

My jaw hit the floor.

She's amazing.

Tar?

I'm probably the wrong person to ask since I don't read reviews.

Never, really.

No, but it is odd.

I think that anyone ever felt compelled to substitute maestro with maestra.

I mean, we don't call women astronauts, it's definitely a tragedy.

Oftentimes in tragedy, we forget, you know, that we think about the forces that cause the downfall or the tragic unfolding of events as being external to the central characters who we're asked to invest in.

But to watch something where the tragedy occurs from an implosion as much as an explosion was a really interesting thing to play, which is hard.

I found it a very hard film to talk about.

It connected with me so deeply that I didn't want to become too conscious of it.

I didn't want to tell an audience what to make of it because I felt there were so many things brought to bear that we didn't really get a space to talk about.

So for me, the film existed on a metaphorical layer as much as it existed literally.

I think people got really obsessed with the literal kind of circumstances which are quite, not quite, elusive and mysterious.

So it became a little bit of a Rorschach test for how people read the film or read the situation and what they thought was said or what they just interpreted.

Based on their experiences with so many other stories that are like happening.

Yeah, it's interesting.

If we get one or two whiffs of a certain story, we often lean into that side of the narrative rather than allowing the story to unfold.

And I think that happens a lot with all of us conversationally is that we think we understand what someone's saying and we start to formulate judgments and perceptions of what is going to be said rather than allowing that person's narrative to genuinely unfold unfettered by our own sense of judgment.

Great physical performance from you as the conductor, yes.

Yeah.

It was terrifying.

It was terrifying.

I was actually shooting Borderlands in Hungary, like a film made from a video game, preparing for this.

And obviously lockdown was still alive and kicking.

And so none of the opera houses were open.

I couldn't have piano lessons in person.