Hollywood stars Julia Roberts and Sean Penn are delivering power-packed performances as complicated, volatile characters amid intense political environments.
In Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, Julia Roberts portrays Alma Imhoff, a Yale professor of philosophy who is compelled to confront her own flaws and biases when a student accuses her colleague of assault, according to Variety.
Meanwhile, in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, Sean Penn’s Col. Steven J. Lockjaw throws the lives of a father and daughter into chaos as he embarks on a mission of revenge against political dissidents.
The actors, who are longtime friends and neighbors, shared insights about their work and careers before heading to dinner. When Julia quipped, “How many years do you think we’ve known each other? I think I know the answer,” her co-star responded, “I’m thinking back to New York, the Mayflower Hotel during the shooting of The Pope of Greenwich Village.”
During their conversation, Julia spoke about her co-stars in After the Hunt, including Luca Guadagnino, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, and Chloe Sevigny. She remarked, “Luca and Andrew (Garfield), Ayo (Edebiri) and Chloe (Sevigny) came to our house and sat for days and days at our kitchen table, and we had all these conversations. Really bright people do not jockey for their position. They share their ideas and their feelings and then they listen intently. It’s the listening that I feel we’ve gotten the farthest from in culture, because conversations get so intense so quickly, and you’re just waiting for that break so that you can say, ‘OK, but this is why I’m right. This is why what I believe is better’. It was so nice to have the time and to be with truly bright people, and hearing what everybody had to say. We didn’t necessarily tell all our characters’ secrets. But it was just a great playground of thought.”
Sean Penn expressed his views on shame, stating, “‘Not everything is supposed to make you comfortable’, I just wanted to go, ‘Thank God somebody’s saying this.’”
He continued, “We’re in this time of a lot of talk therapy, a lot of what I’d call the trauma industry. I think shame is underrated these days. It’s got a bad name this decade. Why shouldn’t people be ashamed of things? Hold on to it for a while and reenter with some more humility.”