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September 2019/Fairlady 31Cover story
Freundlich. They met on Bart’s 1997 film The Myth
of Fingerprints, and got married in 2003, after having
had their kids. ‘The only reason I got married was for
my children,’ she admits. (Bart and Julianne have two
children: Caleb, who is 21, and Liv, who is 17.) ‘I had
a therapist who said marriage is really a container for
a family and that made sense to me.’
Julianne is also the author of the children’s book
series Freckleface Strawberry, inspired by her own feelings
of otherness while growing up. She remembers her
son, who was seven at the time, telling her that he
didn’t like his ears or his teeth. Even though she
thought he was perfect, she recalled how she had felt
about her own freckles when she was his age.
‘When you have something that makes you
stand out when you’re young it makes you feel
uncomfortable; that’s what I wanted to write the book
about,’ she explains. ‘I wanted to show that we all feel
that way when we’re young.’his year Julianne is appearing in
a string of female-led films: Gloria
Bell, After the Wedding and the crime
mystery The Woman in the Window.
Her performance in Gloria Bell,
miered in South Africa on 17 May, garnered
rave reviews. Julianne plays the title role of Gloria,
a divorcee with two grown children who’s trying to
live her best life.
‘Gloria Bell was so interesting to me because it’s
about a woman reimagining her whole life, and she
happens to be in her fifties,’ she says. ‘I want to see
a person of this gender, in this age group, as a central
character in her own story, as we all are.’ In Gloria the
actress found someone real who she could really relate
to. ‘I’m very good at kind of separating my work
from my life. But there are characters that I care more
about than others. There are some characters I’m really
happy to say goodbye to.’ Not Gloria. ‘I have so much
affection for her,’ she says. ‘I think she’s a role model.’
What spoke to her most was Gloria’s quiet resilience.
‘People think that to be brave, you have to be
tough,’ Julianne says. ‘Tough means that you can kind
of shield yourself from things that are happening;
resilience is about allowing things to penetrate your
being – to experience them, to be hurt by them,
to react to them, but then moving on anyway and
moving on with real positivity.’After a stunning worldwide premiere at the
Sundance Film Festival at the start of the year,
After the Wedding is heading to cinemas in August.
Julianne stars alongside Michelle Williams, who plays
the manager of a Calcutta orphanage who comes to
New York to meet her benefactor. Then, releasing in
October and based on The New York Times bestseller,
The Woman in the Window is about an agoraphobic
woman who begins spying on her neighbours, only to
witness a disturbing act of violence.
And 2020 won’t see Julianne taking a break either;
she has two big projects on the horizon. She’ll star
as Gloria Steinem in the upcoming biographic film
based on the journalist’s memoir, A Life on the Road.
Directed by Julie Taymor, The Glorias: A Life on the
Road sees Julianne joined by young actress Lulu Wilson
(of The Haunting of Hill House and Sharp Objects fame)
and Alicia Vikander to play the feminist icon through
the years.‘Bette Midler plays Bella Abzug, Janelle Monáe plays
Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Lorraine Toussaint plays
Flo Kennedy,’ Julianne gushes. ‘It’s an amazing group
of people and everyone is there because we want to tell
the story of Gloria and the women’s movement.’
Like so many other A-listers, Julianne also has her
sights set on a high-profile TV role; she will return
to the small screen in Apple’s upcoming limited
series Lisey’s Story, based on Stephen King’s horror-
romance novel of the same name. Lisey’s Story will
be produced by JJ Abrams and all eight episodes are
written by King himself. The story follows the widow
of a famous novelist two years after the death of her
husband. As she starts clearing out his study, she has
to face certain realities about him that she’d repressed.
Although Julianne thinks it’s important to advocate
for female-led films, she finds it frustrating. ‘Why
do we have to be so f**king gendered all the time?
I don’t think there’s a female filmmaker who wants to
be called a “female filmmaker”. You just want to be
a filmmaker. Why do we have to keep commenting on
it and how unusual it is? I’m like, “Let’s just do it!”’
Julianne’s mantra is a quote from French novelist
Gustave Flaubert: ‘Be regular and orderly in your life,
so that you may be violent and original in your work’.
‘“Violent and original”means “free” to me – how free
you can be in your work. In my work, I want it to
seem like life is happening to me on camera.’ ✤‘I don’t think there’s a female filmmaker who wants
to be called a “female filmmaker”.’