Chloë Sevigny on Her Role in Defining a Male-Dominated Culture

In a recent interview with SSENSE, actress/director Chloë Sevigny discusses her life on screen and behind the camera. Star of iconic films like Kids, Gummo and Boys Don’t Cry, Sevigny explains how she was able to act with such conviction in a male-dominated culture by picking her early film choices that helped define a generation, as well as make her a defining figure. Additionally, Sevigny unveils her latest short she directed for Miu Miu. Titled Carmen, it displays the repetition in a creative life along with the loneliness that accompanies ambition.

Read an excerpt from the interview below and head over to SSENSE to see the piece in full. Also, you can learn more about the secret history of Harmony Korine’s controversial film Kids to get a better understanding of how it helped shape culture.

Sanja Grozdanic: The first films that you were in were such defining films for my generation, and you a defining figure. In a male dominated culture—at such a young age—you seemed to have so much agency. Can you tell me how you made your early film choices?
Chloë Sevigny: Well, mostly they were films that were offered to me, and now there’s a lot of films that I passed on that I regret. I remember reading a Herzog quote saying it’s not about one film, it’s about the house that you’re building with all the films that you’re in. It’s this career that’s going to mean something, as a whole. I felt like I really wanted to take a direction, and have a point of view with the work that I did, to make it bigger than just being an actress. It was easy in that day, because in the 90s there were so many people doing edgy, expressive work. From Gummo to American Psycho, there was just a lot of opportunities for that. Now I feel that people are less prone to do things that are risky, like that kind of work.

Gummo was one of those films that we re-watched, traded…
That was me with the Jim Jarmusch films when I was in high school. We would sit around and watch them, and old David Lynch tapes, over and over.

I read countless profiles of you and so many of them began by citing your style. Does the style icon trope get tiring? I often think of how your work ethic doesn’t get mentioned as much, despite how many films you’ve been in.
I think it’s probably because the circulation of some of those magazines is so much greater than any of the movies that I’ve ever been in. I feel like I’ve never been in any mainstream movies. I feel like maybe people know me more because of my style than have seen my work, even though I feel like I’ve done countless films, and good films. You know, it all gets tiring, from the cool thing to the work thing to the Connecticut thing to the style thing… doing press in general. Especially when you’re doing a slew of it, which is generally when you’re promoting something you find important and you want people to write about so people can discover it. I especially feel that with Carmen and Kitty and my work now as a director. I mean, I do think if I was a man, obviously, it wouldn’t be the style thing. I would be more like “a character actor” and I don’t think anyone has ever really referred to me as that. I feel like I play very varied parts, very often, and I’m more of that. Nobody has ever said that, and I’m curious why. Even recently from American Horror Story to what I was doing on Bloodline couldn’t be any more different.