Luca Guadagnino discussed his warm rapport with Hollywood movie stars on Monday at the Venice Film Festival, one year after being on the Lido with his Julia Roberts-starrer “After the Hunt.”
During a wide-ranging master class, presented by Cartier, the Italian director, who was born in Palermo, Sicily, to an Algerian mother and a Sicilian father – and whose career trajectory has been a long road full of twists and turns that have taken him to Hollywood – was asked about whether he likes casting top stars, such as Roberts, Daniel Craig, Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes, in films that tend to subvert their conventional image with global audiences, as is the case with “Bond” star Craig in “Queer.”
“The truth, the banal truth, is that I am enamored with actors and definitely in love with my actors,” Guadagnino said. “So it’s a very tender emotion for me to work with them. We are like children playing on the beach, kind of creating these sandcastles. Finding ways to express what we want to express, and trying in a way to be truthful and not banal,” he explained.
“I’ve been lucky because, honestly, I have worked with some of the finest, most committed, bold performers I could have worked with. But I think they know that I love them,” Guadagnino added.
