After Years in Film, Chloe Sevigny Has 'Total Disdain for Directors'
LatestIn a provocative profile from The Guardian, actress and Love & Friendship star Chloe Sevigny reflects on her past work with controversial figures like photographer Terry Richardson—who has been accused of sexual assault—Larry Clark, and Lars von Trier. Cumulatively, her experiences have left her with “total disdain for directors.”
But as The Guardian notes, Sevigny parses her distaste for “auteurs” from accusations that Richardson, Clark, and von Trier have “[exploited] their (invariably youthful, female) subjects”:
“‘I don’t know if I’d call them exploiters,’ Sevigny says carefully. ‘What I would say is that the most damaging thing about working with so-called auteurs is that I now have a total disdain for directors.’ She grimaces. ‘And it’s very strong, very deep. It’s made me not enjoy acting so much any more. Writer-directors, in particular, are really hard to work with. And for so many years, that’s who I worked with.’”
Sevigny has worked with Richardson is especial intimacy; during one modeling session in 2011 she dressed as him and, while in costume, kissed him during the shoot.
Much earlier, in 2003, Sevigny threw herself into another controversial project, the film Brown Bunny. Entered at Cannes that year, it “bowed out at the…film festival to a torrent of catcalls,” and was particularly side-eyed for Sevigny’s un-simulated performance of oral sex on star and writer-director Vincent Gallo (with whom she may have also been involved).