Having been an actress all her life, Icelandic Anita Briem was becoming desperate. There were no stories out there about her situation. As a woman in her late 30s, she was in a long-term marriage, and she was raising a young daughter. Yet, she found no stories that reflected what she was going through. Was something wrong with her? Did other people have perfect marriages? Did everyone else keep the spark in their relationships? How did they deal with having kids? When she started talking to other women about it, she found that her situation was not unusual. Still, the many and complex conversations women should be having about it were not taking place. So, she decided that there was a need for women to see themselves represented on screen in a variety of ways. The actress who had secured a career in Los Angeles, with films such as Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) and TV series such as The Tudors (2007-2010), decided to write her own TV series, As Long as We Live, and become a showrunner. The series is produced by Glassriver for Iceland’s Channel 2. It’s been picked up for global distribution by Eccho Rights and it will start shooting in Reykjavik in July. Anita Briem spoke to the HFPA via Skype from her home in the Icelandic capital.

Your work can currently be seen in the movie Quake, directed by Tinna Hrafnsdóttir. She’s an actor and, also, a first-time director. What was your experience working with her?

For the first fifteen years of my career I worked with only one female director. In the last two years I have worked with four. It has really opened my eyes to the fact that, for a long time, I was part of telling stories that were written and executed by men. Therefore, all the women in those stories were ones that men had imagined. So, to play a woman that a woman has imagined and that a woman is capturing is completely different. Before filming Tinna sat down with me and asked me, with the same weight as if she was asking me to take all my clothes off on camera if I would be willing to not wear any makeup in the film. I said ‘Of course.’ I couldn’t quite understand why she thought that would frighten me. But, maybe, she had a different perception of me in the beginning because she might have seen me playing someone sexualized or looking a certain way. This role was not at all like that. So, to be able to approach it from a purely female point of view was very liberating. You can sense that in the story. Tinna has written a really sensitive and insightful screenplay. It was also very valuable that she was an actress as it was an emotionally difficult place for me to be in for six weeks. The way she communicated with me was with the sensitivity of someone who knows what that is.

Quake is about Saga, who suffers a devastating epileptic attack and loses her memory. What were the challenges of playing a character like that?

It was an enormous challenge because the film is seen through her eyes. I am, basically, on-screen for almost the entire duration of the film. That is an enormous responsibility. I loved the script and wanted to give Tinna the very best I could, and I knew it would be an enormous undertaking that would require me to be very vulnerable. It would require a lot of work to do it justice. Just on a physical level, I researched what it means to have epilepsy. It’s, like, constantly having an attacker behind you and not knowing when he or she will strike. You could be going downstairs holding your child and, at that moment, you could have a life-threatening attack. This constant vulnerable state is likely going to have a severe psychological effect, both for the person suffering from it and the people around her. The metaphor of the eruptive nature was appropriate and powerful when applied to the story of this family.

 

You have created a drama series called As Long as We Live about mature love, lust, and longing. What made you want to move your career in that direction?

It was actually a need – it started as a kind of act of desperation. When I got to a particular point in my life in terms of love and having been in a long-term relationship, I found a painful absence of stories on that subject. There are so many stories about people falling in love, going through obstacles, figuring it out, and then riding into sunsets. That’s great. But those stories were not helpful when I was trying to sort out complicated feelings and situations in a different stage in life. It was the lack of resources and references that I felt that drove me to do the research. When I began to work through it, I found an overwhelming need to put it into a story. I got obsessed with the concept of the seven-year itch. What is it that happens there? What is going on with us hormonally? Emotionally? Whenever I would talk to anybody about it, the stories spilled out of people and they seemed relieved because, apparently, it’s not something that is widely talked about.

What is the story about?

It is about a couple who are dealing with everything that comes with having a long-term relationship, running a household, having a young child, wanting to do better than your parents – not making the same mistakes. What are the expectations of society and the boxes they place us in? Should we fit into them or not? What is great about the institution of marriage? What should be debated? What is allowed? What is not allowed? What is normal and who decides what that is? I wanted to make a story that puts these large questions on the table so people can, hopefully, have conversations in their homes about it.

You will be playing the leading role as Beta, a former queen of pop now a mom in a fairly uneventful marriage, who misses the spark in life. Can you expand a little on Beta’s situation?

She is a 38-year-old woman, a musician who has put her career on hold to take care of her and her husband’s 18-month-old because they cannot get childcare. That is a big issue here in Iceland – there is a long waiting list for childcare. She is in a relationship where they have not communicated well for a long time. Beta is desperately lonely and creates little stories about people she sees in the streets. There is no bad reason for the couple drifting apart, it has just happened over time. Sometimes you just don’t want to worry your partner, you keep things to yourself. She has backed herself into a corner, trapped in her head and in a very bad place. Her mother gets so worried that she intervenes and brings in an au pair, a 22-year-old boy, to help them. He brings a new element into their lives. Gives them odd little flirting assignments that set into motion an adventure that will either bring them closer or end in total catastrophe.

Is important for you to have a female team working on the show?

Yes, absolutely. I think it’s good to have a well-balanced team. Just like it’s good to have a well-balanced parliament.

Do you think women tell stories differently?

I don’t think there is such a thing as a singular female voice. Women are so different. The four Icelandic directors I worked with were incredibly different and have very different voices. It is just so important to have variety in personalities, people with different backgrounds so everyone can see themselves reflected in the stories and characters. For too long we’ve been surrounded by stories largely by and about white men between the ages of 35-65 years old – leaving a large portion of the human race without stories about them. For instance: women express female sexuality in a very different way than a man would. In my series, there is a lot of sensuality and sexuality. I am very interested in this monolithic force within us that connects us and drives us to breed and need each other. I find it as beautiful as I find it scary. I love it as much as I’m humbled by it. My guess is that I explore this theme in very a different way than a man would.

You have returned to your home country after spending more than 20 years abroad 13 of them in Los Angeles. How did you reconnect with Iceland again and what made you move home?

One thing that I found quite difficult, living in Los Angeles as a woman, was ageism. I remember celebrating my 27^th birthday and some big executive came and said: ‘Don’t worry, I will not tell anybody.’ From that time on, the impression I got constantly from so many people was that, if you are getting one year older as a woman, there is something wrong with you. If someone asked you about your age, you were supposed to laugh it off or say that you don’t ask a lady about her age. Powerful men in the industry were teaching me to avoid answering how old I was. Because, if someone found out that I was actually getting older, God forbid. The same when I got pregnant. I was advised to keep it a secret for as long as possible. At events, I was advised not to talk about my child because it might affect how people would look at me. I assumed they meant that my sex appeal would somehow diminish and that, apparently, made me a less desirable human being.

How did this affect you?

It was a death of a thousand little cuts. If you just constantly get these destructive messages from all directions, you start to feel unworthy and small. The most precious thing in my life – which is being a mother – was somehow made into being something that was not good. That is tragic and awful. Things are, hopefully, changing fast now. While I was in Los Angeles there was a lot of that going on, a lot of abuse of power from powerful men who wanted you to be a sexual object, or who wanted something sexual from you. That pressure was always on. Once, when I was feeling so awful about being repeatedly put into those kinds of scenarios and not knowing yet how to stand up for myself, I asked a friend in the business for advice. He told me I’d just have to learn how to deal with it and play the game. 

What do you mean by ‘playing the game’?

That I would have to learn to “manage” their advances. If you give in to somebody, they will never hire you. And if you turn them down, they will never hire you. I would have to become good at playing it just right so that I was in control of it. This is, of course, such an insane and completely diabolical concept that just hearing it made me ill. I think that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I’m hopeful that things are getting better since #metoo started, but I had been living in that environment for too long. I was, definitely, feeling some deep wounds on my soul from my exposure to this. I did not realize it until I came back here to Iceland, where women and actresses were proud of being mothers and were perceived as being even sexier and wiser and more interesting because they were maturing. Then, I guess, I realized what a skewed world I had been part of for a very long time. I could not even fathom going back.

How has it influenced you that you have gone back to Iceland?

I have re-centered myself in a really big way. I have found my footing again as a human being, found my strength again. I would approach things very differently if I had to go back to work in other parts of the world. That was a very big thing for me. As an actor, you work with yourself – your heart, your mind, your soul, your experiences, your body. The work is always going to be vulnerable and intimate. That is wonderful when you are with the right people, but it can be very dangerous to one’s mental wellbeing in an unhealthy environment. Sometimes telling the difference can be tricky. Especially for a young person. If a lot of powerful people are telling you that you should be ok with a bad situation, that can be hard to defy even if all your instincts are screaming that it is wrong. But that is the beauty of experience and of becoming more mature – the ability to listen carefully and to trust your instincts.

You’ve worked with four female directors from Iceland now. Do you think it has made a difference that you have worked with many female directors now?

Absolutely. The way you develop a female character with a female director is different – the things you talk about, the detail you emphasize and the layers you are stacking underneath are different. Audiences need to be able to see films by female writers and directors as well as films written and directed by men. I find it important to make films with both male and female artists. If you only have stories written by men, a lot of the things that are specific to women and that way of seeing the world are not there. If you can’t identify yourself and your feelings with the stories around you, it can make you feel that you are alone, isolated, that your thoughts and feelings are unjustified or wrong. So, yes, it is important. It made a very big difference for me working with female directors.

What are your career goals?

I want to thrive. I don’t have goals per se. But I want to thrive and be a part of creating stories that have a real impact on people whether it is as an actress, writer and, maybe, director. I have enjoyed the process of writing and bringing my thoughts into a structured form. I love the collaborative part of filmmaking, being in the company of other artists and sharing thoughts and ideas. Being part of something. Maybe it just always comes back to belonging.