CHARACTER STUDIES: JULIA GARNER

Julia Garner is a disciple of the dramatic arts. She speaks with Josh Brolin, one of her favorite actors, on what it takes to stand apart from the rest.

By Hannah Ongley

As an actor, Julia Garner is as much a detective as she is a storyteller, working to uncover details from the pasts of the people she plays to reveal why they do the things they do. There’s a scene in Ozark, the Netflix crime drama for which she won three Emmy Awards, where her character Ruth Langmore freaks out when she sees her cousin Wyatt burning his dad’s old shirts: “There’s gonna come a day when you’re staring at a picture of your dad wearing some fuckin’ stupid motorcycle t-shirt, and you’re gonna wish to fucking god that someone said to you, 'You know what? Keep that jacket. Keep that dress.’” We don’t find out what happened to Ruth’s mother until three seasons later, but with three would-be-forgettable words, Julia enlightens her audience to Ruth’s childhood trauma and the tensions between her fierceness, fragility, and femininity.

Julia grew up in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, her dad a painter and art teacher and her mother an actress-turned-therapist. Julia often describes characters to her mom, who will then recommend a suitable psychology book for her to read to better understand their intentions. Perhaps it’s not surprising that, if she weren’t an actor, Julia would be a therapist herself: “It’s not really that different. It’s the study of people.” She famously keeps a journal for every character she takes on (and doesn’t like calling them characters). When she played Anna Delvey in the series Inventing Anna, she wasn’t concerned about whether audiences liked the scammer-socialite—she just wanted them to understand her.

Julia takes her craft seriously. A painfully shy kid, she had a learning disability that prevented her from reading until the age of 10. Through acting, Julia discovered she could use other people’s words to express her own emotions, and overcoming adversity has given her an appreciation for the pliability of the human brain, as well as a belief that an actor should be wary of getting too comfortable. During the recent SAG-AFTRA strike, for instance, Julia went to clown school in France—a little change of scenery after filming the psychological thriller The Royal Hotel in the Australian Outback.

Julia is taking on leading roles in the upcoming films Wolf Man, Fantastic Four, and Weapons, the last of which she just finished shooting with co-star Josh Brolin. Like Julia, Josh is unafraid to play unlikeable people, whether fictional murderous outlaws or the man who shot Harvey Milk. In November, Josh will release a memoir, From Under the Truck, an account of his own unconventional childhood and personal struggles. In the following conversation, Josh and Julia formalize the conversations they’ve had as friends, touching on emotionality, mortality, and their mutual love of fashion.

JULIA GARNER: Hey, Josh.

JOSH BROLIN: You look super nice.

JG: Really? I just got back from work. I’m doing the motion cap thing. So I puffed out my hair just for you.

JB: You look like you’re in a really high-end lounge.

JG: You’re saying I look like a high-end hooker.

JB: [Laughs] Maybe that was my indirect way [of saying that.] I couldn’t be happier to talk to you. I can actually ask you questions I’ve been wanting to ask. You have this immediate access to your emotions. Are you just a walking collection of nerves in life?

JG: I think I am raw. It’s sometimes great for what I do. For my personal life, it’s not so great. But I don’t go straight to depressing things. I think about people that I really love or I’ll make myself laugh in my head at different stories, and then I’ll just think, like, [snaps] They’re gone. I’m never gonna see them again.

JB: So you throw yourself into the most open, joyful moment.

JG: I always look at a person’s shoes. If somebody’s gone and you’re left with their shoes, that’s so personal. That’s the shape of their foot, that’s the shape of when they were alive.

JB: That makes me want to cry. You know, I was with Cormac McCarthy the night before he died. I came over to his house the next day, and I walked into his closet, and the first thing that I saw were his cowboy boots.

JG: It’s the shoes, the cowboy boots! Not the coat, not a pen—because he was walking, he was living in those.

JB: This is the thing that was with him most. You came out of Ozark, and I was like, Who the fuck is that? You were so feral. The feeling was: They pulled this girl out of a trailer park and they were like, Hey, do you think you can act? You were so emotionally primitive—which, I’ve learned, is not you.

JG: I hide it a little better. I can switch it on and off.

JB: You talked about studying in France at the clown school. Especially after Ozark—where you feel like there’s an arrival and you’re winning Emmys—what [makes you] feel like you want to go one step further?

JG: I don’t think an actor should ever be too comfortable. Ever. When you work for a long time, and then you start to get noticed, you feel this pressure that you’re always being watched and judged. So I wanted to see what would happen if I failed in school—not on set—because that’s actually a place where you’re supposed to fail.

JB: So what did that teacher do for you? [My lit agent], she’s tough and she tells me the truth. And when I wrote something that was a little people-pleasing, she said, “So what the fuck did you do with this part?”

JG: I think when you have that kind of pressure that society creates towards you, there comes this shame about yourself. I didn’t really realize that until I went to clown school. I kept looking at the ground because I was afraid to, I think, connect. He was like, “What are you hiding?” He had this giant drum and he would bang on it every time I would look at the ground. I didn’t realize how much I felt judged, and that was slowly closing me up.

JB: So you felt like everything he did was serving a better you?

JG: Yes. It was beyond acting. By the way, I have a clown certificate, but I did not find my clown. I did find out more about myself, which I actually think is more important, because you can’t act if you don’t know yourself.

JB: Talk about your family and the artists in your family and how that fed you wanting to do what you do.

JG: Well, it was bound to happen. I grew up in New York. My dad was an art teacher and painter, he just retired, and my mom is a therapist. I literally grew up in a Noah Baumbach film. Of course I’m gonna end up being an actor. It’s so predictable.

My dad studied art history and philosophy. He is such a natural teacher. He can’t help but teach all the time, and he was amazing at it, too. My mother can’t help but talk about people’s intentions, why they do certain things. A lot of actors become therapists because it’s not really that different. It’s the study of people. That’s what I would do if I wasn’t an actor.

JB: I had a parent who was an actor, and I had no interest in going through the fluctuations that I saw him go through. Then I did an improv class in high school where I was told to create a character. It became not about acting, but about psychology and about character and about people.

JG: And creating things. My parents—their parents were academics, but they were artists. I grew up watching old movies. I didn’t really know why I liked movies so much. I didn’t even know it was a real job. I just thought people were movie stars. It seemed so far away.

JB: What does a movie star represent? To me, you’re an amazing, beautiful character actor. It’s very rare. You have this depth as a leading woman, and yet, you turn around and you see a Gucci ad of you looking stunning on some billboard. How is that for you?

JG: It’s weird. There was a period of time where I wasn’t booking jobs left and right because I was too weird-looking. I wasn’t gonna get those roles, which, at the time, I was really upset about. But now I’m very happy about it. It sounds so cliché—I’ve always loved fashion—but it is true. If you are open to doing fashion stuff as an actor, there’s something very mysterious about it. You don’t have to talk, but you still can be in front of people’s faces. You’re not going to be completely forgotten about, especially in this day and age.

JB: The truth of the matter is I’m a fashion aficionado, right? I’m obsessed with fashion.

JG: I didn’t know that about you! Why don’t we talk about that?

JB: I’ve seen all the documentaries. When I’m on a plane, I’m watching fashion documentaries. But what am I gonna do? Am I gonna put on a dress?

JG: I think you’re a fashion icon. Like, motorcycle chic. It’s cowboy. The fashion people always want to redo cowboys, but it’s not the same. Clothes are so personal. Whenever I do a part, I like to go shopping for the character before I get into the fitting. I want to pick out what they would pick out, because it says a lot about them as a person.

JB: Do you feel yourself changing with the different things that you put on?

JG: Everybody talks about that Ruth walk, but the reason why there was that Ruth walk was because, at a fitting a week before filming, there were these boots that were a little bit too big. I didn’t end up taking them, but I ended up keeping the walk. I told props that, even though she was so feral, it was really important to me that she was like a kid. I was like, Do you have a Hello Kitty watch? Every season, I had this little cat watch.

JB: You’re a rarity, especially for your age, in that you are constantly looking for ways to mix it up. I have massive respect for that. When I got to know you, I got to know you on a very pure level. And as I got to know about you, your professional life and your personal life, I go, God, man, you don’t find this often. This is what I wish for my kids. This is what I wish for people who I love—that they challenge themselves in a way that pushes their experience further in this life.

JG: Thank you so much. I was very sick as a child. I only knew that I was going to have a successful day if I didn’t get a seizure because I had really bad epilepsy. There were so many things that I was never able to do. I don’t remember eating certain foods as a kid, because I was always on these weird diets. I couldn’t go to a birthday party and eat cake. Life is really precious. It’s really good, but it can also be really bad. So enjoy it when it’s good.

JB: I have a really good friend, Anthony Zerbe, who I’ve known since I was 20 years old, and Anthony has been an amazing influence on my life. One day—I think I was around 23—I was giving him some sob story about my past, and he sat there, and he let me go through the whole thing, and his response was, “I’m glad that happened to you.” And I was so pissed. I was like, “What the fuck? Why would you say that?” And he said, “Because I love who you are now, and without that, you wouldn’t be who you are now.” So, I love who you are now. All those things are tough, but if it made you who you are, I approve.

JG: And I’m happy that you had your struggles because that’s made you who you are. And also you’re gonna write a phenomenal book. I’ve heard those stories. I’m excited for everybody to hear about your life, the lives that you’ve lived.

JB: And that I’m a dirty biker.

JG: And that you’re a dirty, fashion boy biker. Get him a Gucci campaign.