Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER
Actor Diego Calva tells Hollywood Authentic about the place of art in trauma, being an immigrant in movies and the silence in acting.
Although Mexican actor Diego Calva made an impression in his debut I Promise You Anarchy and TV hit Narcos: Mexico, his big break came as the lead in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, playing an immigrant to 1920s Hollywood, trying to make his mark on the industry. It’s a feeling he’s familiar with. Since then, he’s built a body of work including On Swift Horses and season two of The Night Manager, but he likes to maintain an outlier status with his work. ‘I do belong to movies. Movies are my life,’ he nods over an espresso martini in the bar of the Martinez Hotel on the Cannes Croisette. ‘But I don’t want to belong too much to an industry; to feel like, “I’m part of this. I control it.” I like the idea of the immigrant, the foreigner who’s visiting this. Nobody owns a movie. The directors, the actors, the producers – we all do the movie. But then the movie is out, and it belongs to everyone. And everyone should be invited to this party called cinema.’
Calva arrived in Cannes this year with two movies that could certainly be defined as cinematic parties; Jordan Firstman’s hedonistic bittersweet feature, Club Kid, and Nicholas Winding Refn’s divisive, glitter-gorgeous mood piece, Her Private Hell. The ‘her’ of the title is nominally Sophie Thatcher’s Elle, a movie actor with daddy issues who is trapped making a sci-fi movie she loathes. Calva is Nico, a partying drug dealer and hook-up who provides respite. It’s a small but pivotal role in a movie that explores the private collective hell of women as a gender via neon-drenched, willfully artificial production design, a propulsive neo-noir score and primary-coloured key lights. Calva describes Winding Refn’s unique approach to finding the truth of performance. ‘He likes to play one song during the whole day. One song every day. We were listening to Suicide and Alan Vega, Iggy Pop. He asked me to just look at the lens, and listen to the song one, two, three, four times. And then he’ll say, “You did something with your eye. I like it. We have it.” And what I did… I don’t know. It’s like a mantra. And that’s amazing. Actors are horrible and sensitive, blah blah. But we want to deliver. We want to please. When someone is like, “Just be you” – whoa, we are in fucking trouble. But then he captures you.’
The 34 year-old is captured perhaps more closely to himself in Club Kid, which was given a rousing seven-minute standing ovation at its Cannes premiere. It follows Peter, a NY party promoter (played by writer/director Firstman) whose drugs/sex/dancing existence is challenged when he discovers he’s father to a young boy. Calva plays a child therapist who epitomises love and tenderness, his warmth extending to a fizzing chemistry with Peter. Calva saw the film for the first time in the same way the Cannes audience did. ‘I was in Los Angeles two weeks ago, and the producer called me, and said, “We want to do a screening for you, so you can see it before Cannes.” I said no. I wanted to see it here. It was my first time watching it, and it just felt really special. Because it’s very specific to this universe of New York, drugs, parties. But it’s also really universal. I love when I do a project that I can show my grandmother, my mum, my junkie friends… and they’re all going to like it!’
This was also his first time attending Cannes, which as a single-parent kid from Mexico City who found solace in cinema, feels like a personal and professional achievement. ‘Being in Cannes for me is really emotional. I was at the party last night, and I called my mom. It was 4am in the morning, but it was 3pm in Mexico. I cried, and I said, “Mom, I’m here.” I decided to dedicate my life to movies. Movies saved my life so many times. Now I’m here.’
He [Nicholas Winding Refn] likes to play one song during the whole day. One song every day. We were listening to Suicide and Alan Vega, Iggy Pop. He asked me to just look at the lens, and listen to the song one, two, three, four times. And then he’ll say, ‘You did something with your eye. I like it. We have it’
His Club Kid writer/director/co-star Jordan Firstman has been equally moved by his experience. He went viral at the premiere by kissing Calva post-credits in a euphoric moment. Calva laughs at the notion that it was wish fulfillment for audience members who’d been so taken with their onscreen relationship, which crackles with want and love. It’s the sort of chemistry that is hard to find. ‘The relationship of a director and an actor is a first date, your first impression,’ he shrugs. ‘Jordan got so open with me. He really told me stories about his life, and why he wanted to do this movie. He told me something really cool: “I’m still learning how to be alive.” I love the idea that this movie is a coming of age for a 30-year-old adolescent. When someone is open, and so excited, and has something to say… that’s what all actors want. We really want to be part of someone’s dream – not someone’s job.’ So what did the duo discuss on their first ‘date’? Calva smiles. ‘I told him stories about my childhood, living in Mexico City, getting into some situations – I used to be a skateboarder, and I had a record label. And how movies saved my life. You talk about all these things in the first two hours of meeting someone on Zoom, then when I met Jordan in person, he kind of had already built the relationship. When you’re working with someone who has so much love; you want to be part of it. And the chemistry… What is chemistry? First of all, how do you define that?’
When he’s asked to define it, he sips his drink and thinks. ‘Acting is more about silence than talking. Now, I’m talking. This is easy. But being silent… It’s all about the passion of the untold. It’s all about the silence. With Jordan, the silence was so easy. Sometimes, when you act, when you have to cry in a scene, and you’re able to just remember your character’s life, not your own… That’s what I was thinking about in this movie – not acting.’ The movie has the same effect on viewers; though it’s gloriously snarky and funny, the heart is real. At the premiere, tears were flowing amid the fisting gags and vomit scenes. ‘We all have trauma, right?’ Calva says. ‘And trauma is like a hole. We are always trying to fill that hole. What if we realise that that hole makes us more… light. You know? It takes a weight out of us. And also, we can have a party there. That’s Club Kid. It’s a party in the hole of trauma.’
Despite rumours that he is playing Che Guevara in an upcoming project, he’s not – though he looks just like him. ‘I would love to play Che Guevara – but in a vampire movie. America is the humans. Cuba is the vampires. And we’re conquering the world.’ He is appearing in Danny Ramirez’s football film, Baton, alongside recent Hollywood Authentic subject, Lewis Pullman. ‘I admire Danny so much because as a Latino in Hollywood, he is building a career, and now he is directing and acting and producing. And he invited me to play his best friend in the movie. I play a completely weird character. I’ve never played something like that. I’ve been the lead in a movie, right? But I love supporting characters. I love to be part of the universe, and make other people shine in a way that you have more room. For me, the lesson is: Alfred Molina in Boogie Nights – one scene, and you will remember that scene forever. I want to do things like that.’
Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER
Her Private Hell is in cinemas 25 Sept
Club Kid will release TBA
