Portrait She has won the most prestigious awards and acted under the direction of great directors. The 64-year-old American actress has a new holy grail: Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature film, “The Room Next Door,” which hits theaters on January 8th.
When actress Elsa Lepoivre received an offer to dub Julianne Moore in Pedro Almodóvar’s new film, “The Room Next Door” (opens January 8th), the 516th member of the Comédie-Française did not hesitate. “Every time I see her name in the credits of a film, I run out and go see it,” says the one of the leading actresses of the troupe Française. She records the French voices of her English-speaking colleagues very occasionally.
In the fall, she spent several days in the studio immersed in Julianne Moore’s acting and silence. “Sometimes she doesn’t say anything, but you can feel every emotion coursing through her. It’s this unique way of interpreting the character,” she says, that persuaded Pedro Almodóvar to give her one of the leading roles in his first English-language feature film. The idea of abandoning the Spanish language had been talked about since the 1980s, when the name of this film director appeared on the international stage. By the time it became a red herring.
The Madrilenian is famous for his romantic and expressive heroines, and many of the great English-speaking actresses are projected into his world. Those who dreamed of it ranged from Madonna to Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Victoria Abril, and even more so those who would have done everything to become Chica Almodóvar (“Almodóvar’s girl”), a term sanctified in Spain to describe his favorite actress, such as Rossy de Palma or even the late Marisa Paredes….
