Interview: Toni Collette on Hereditary

With a strong-featured, hyper-expressive face whose wide-set eyes don't appear to miss a thing and a joie de vivre that she radiates in person as well as on screen, Toni Collette imbues all her characters with a grounded sense of realism as well as layers of emotional nuance. Ever since she captured international attention as the endearingly open-hearted title character in Muriel's Wedding, she's been in constant demand, playing a wide range of parts—from warmly nurturing, realistically harried moms in films like The Sixth Sense and Little Miss Sunshine to The United States of Tara's title character, a woman with dissociative identity disorder who's fighting to keep herself and her family together while coping with an evolving cast of alter egos.

Collette has been exceptionally prolific in the past year or so, appearing in 11 films and two TV series since 2017, with three more films currently in post-production, but her tour-de-force performance in Hereditary stands out even in that tsunami of output. Always intense and increasingly desperate, Collette's Annie is our guide into the bloody heart of darkness that's writer-director Ari Aster's debut feature, a psychological horror film about a mother who keeps losing the people she loves in ever more macabre catastrophes.

I talked with Collette this week at the New York office of A24, Hereditary's U.S. distributor, about the advantages of aging and how she's learned to protect herself from the afflictions her characters endure.

You left school when you were 16, right?
Sometimes I look back and I think, “How the hell did I make that decision?” My parents were mortified.

I was wondering about that. Because your parents weren't show-biz people.
Not at all. And I was really good at school. I was always at the top of the class, and I found school so satisfying. But then I found this thing that made me feel so alive. I loved it so much, and I couldn't deny it. Even at that age, I was like, “Nope, this is it.” So ballsy! [laughs] I wouldn't make that decision now!

It seems as if acting still makes you happy.
I can't imagine not doing it. I always danced—tap, jazz, and ballet. And then when I was 13, I think, I did a musical at school right after my grandmother died, and it was just the most incredible outlet. It felt so cathartic to be able to access feelings and express them. And then, of course, as you get older you look at life differently and look at people differently and it becomes more psychologically interesting. But throughout it has always been fun.

And now you're starting to make films happen in addition to acting in other people's work. You formed a production company last year. Is that to direct or to develop things you can act in that other people will direct?
Both. Producing and directing. You need to keep growing, you know? I've been [acting] since I was a teenager, and I'm about to turn 46. At times, I find it frustrating that I'm not involved in the process much earlier on. I think it would be more satisfying. I want to have a say in the types of films that I'm making and what they have to say. I've got options on books—lots of things that are being adapted. I've got a couple of original ideas.

What types of films are you interested in making?
Probably the types of films that I'm in now. Mostly, I totally go for things that feel reflective of life. I like stories about real people that are both poignant and comedic. But it's hard to say what type of anything you want to do, because I never know until it hits me.

You've said that you're drawn to projects that show there's no such thing as normal, or show people finding their voices, living authentically, or being supported by an extended family. I can see how those themes run through your work, but I'm not sure they apply to Hereditary—except maybe the one about there being no normal. Does this feel like a bit of a departure for you?
Yeah. I've never really made a film like this. I've done films where there was some emotional heavy lifting to be done, but this starts up here [gestures at shoulder height] and keeps on escalating. Also, I'm usually attracted to some kind of growth and change in a story. There's growth and change in this, but it's not positive. There's a lack of warmth to Annie, and a lack of hope, which I'm generally attracted to. The story just fascinated me. It was this honest look at grief, emotionally so raw, and it turns into something so unexpected. I found the material original and surprising, and who doesn't want that? Read the rest in Slant Magazine