THEThe face is round and smiling, slightly pink lips, an upturned nose, a light half-fringe: Cailee Spaeny looks like a good little girl.
If you then add a white silk collegiate blouse to the picture, you’re done.
It’s easy to imagine why Sofia Coppola chose her for the central role of Elvis Presley’s young and naive wife (Jacob Elordi) in Priscilla (which we will see in Italy on March 27), for which the actress won the Coppa Volpi at the Venice Film Festival.
Priscilla was only fourteen when she met (in Germany) the “King of Rock ‘n Roll”. He was ten years older than her and already the most successful star in the world.
They remained together for fifteen years: in the film, based on the Presley’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, we follow her from her first courtship (in 1959) to her wedding in Las Vegas (in 1967), from the birth of her daughter Lisa-Marie until her divorce in 1973.
Cailee, 25, calls her experience with Sofia “simply magical.”: the director of Lost in Translation And Marie Antoinette she had always been his idol.
“I was shaking with emotion when I met her for the first time,” he recalls. At the same time, she was determined not to disappoint the director: she, the actress, has worked tirelessly since she was a child to get to where she is today, and she knows well what she wants.
“I wasn’t cut out for a traditional education, but acting came naturally to me.”
Cailee Spaeny: «I have never accepted provincial life»
She dropped out of school early and convinced her family to leave Springfield, Missouri, to take a trip to Los Angeles, where they rented an apartment across from the Warner Brothers studios, hoping that, between one audition and another, she would finally snatch a part.
However, it took her a few years before she landed a significant role in Pacific Rim: Uprising.
Cailee Spaeny, who had never taken an acting class, once imposed a strict rule in Los Angeles: see at least one film a day to study other actors.
It was there that she happened to see The Virgin Suicides and she was thunderstruck.
When she first saw the film she was a teenager. Did you then identify with the dreamy, confused and melancholic Lisbon sisters? Yes, it is.
Cailee Spaeny: «Priscilla was subjugated by Elvis Presley»
Cailee, let’s start right with The Virgin Suicides.
That age is really complicated for us, you have to face a new and thorny reality: becoming a woman is alarming, disorientating, especially for those who grew up in certain parts of America, as happened to me, born in the “Bible Belt” (a area of the United States which includes the Southern and Confederate states, predominantly Protestant/Evangelical, ed.).
You grow up, you become a woman and a series of precise goals are expected of you: going to school, graduating, meeting someone and getting married, having a child and living your life like this; your future is already planned.
That reality was too tight for me, I couldn’t make it mine, I couldn’t recognize myself in that image.
The stories that Sofia told with realism, however, made me feel free. You can be a young and pretty girl, but have a dark and anguished background and aspire to a different love, a different life.
So how did you approach the character of Priscilla?
It seemed easy to understand her, to empathize with her. If I had found myself in her position at fourteen, in that world as it had been presented to her, unreal and fantastic, I undoubtedly would not have backed out.
For years Priscilla was defined as an “old soul”, a mature and wise soul.
I believe that she was a profoundly lonely girl, forced to move from one state to another as a child, from house to house (her father worked in the military air force) without ever being able to make friends with other children of her age because in a short time she would have had to move once again.
It was inevitable for her to feel isolated and, even, a bit like the black sheep of the situation.
Indeed, it is difficult for me to imagine a teenager capable of behaving differently: the decisions that Priscilla makes are completely understandable.
Priscilla is shaped, created and subjugated by Elvis: he taught her how to dress, how to walk, how to do her hair and make up.
“I was Elvis’ living doll,” Presley wrote in her autobiography. Don’t you think that that attitude is equivalent to losing your identity?
Without a doubt, but it happens to those who fall in love for the first time, completely. Especially if you are young, when you don’t yet know who you are, you have no sense of what you want, or what you really like.
Someone appears in your life and you would do anything for him, you commit yourself, you dedicate all of yourself to make him happy.
When you think about it, first love is a kind of sanctuary, and I understand what that means.
I was eighteen when I fell in love for the first time: it’s the most extraordinary feeling in the world, it can be addictive and you are there doing everything to keep it alive and prolong it.
Cailee Spaeny: «I always knew I wanted to act»
From an early age she knew she wanted to act. How did this passion of yours arise?
I really liked acting and never considered it a hobby. I believe that the initial spark, the one that unleashed the “sacred” fire, was born from the awareness of being terrible at school.
It didn’t make any sense for me to go to class, I didn’t know how to communicate with others and, at 13, I abandoned studying completely.
Instead, my sense of identity came from acting, whether it was in a small theater or in a band, at a theme park, or when I was recording my own music.
I had a lot of time on my hands, I did everything I could do, and I quickly realized that this was my life, and that I wanted to be able to make it.
I’m a Southern girl, and there were no entertainment opportunities in that part of America, so I put together a little video of all the things I had done and my mother and I left for Los Angeles: twenty-five hours of car, and as soon as it arrived I immediately started showing up for every audition.
There were four years of auditions, many “no, no, no”, one no after another, and at eighteen I finally had my first role.
Let’s talk about her happy Italian experience: she worked for Miu Miu and Miuccia Prada, for Bulgari, and then won the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival.
I have to go and live in Italy! (laughs). Your country welcomed me.
Walking the red carpet in Venice and feeling the warmth of the crowd, the excitement for our film and then winning the best actress award made me feel like Cinderella.
For someone who comes from a remote town in Missouri and lives the experience of a 1950s movie star…
To me it seemed like a Hollywood dream transferred to Italy, every step was authentic and incredible.
Cailee Spaeny: «Who would I like to work with? Obviously: with Luca Guadagnino»
Cailee Spaeny with Priscilla Presley (Photo by Daniele Venturelli/WireImage)
What does Cailee Spaeny have planned next?
I have no idea, I spend whole days thinking about what I’d like to do. I have two more films coming out in the next few months (Alien: Romulus where she reprises her role as Sigourney Weaver and Civil War with Kirsten Dunst), but I want to continue challenging myself with projects that challenge and challenge me.
I would like to do theater because the idea of the stage terrifies me, just as I would like to continue working with filmmakers and actors who can inspire me, authors with different, strange visions, who make you think and spark discussions.
The name of an Italian director you would like to work with?
Luca (Guadagnino), it’s obvious!
Tell me something we don’t already know about Sofia Coppola.
She is mysterious, she is a true artist and, at the same time, the perfect “cool girl”, but she is also a mother, and this adds a further element to her profile. I didn’t know Sofia, I had never met her before, and working on Priscilla I felt protected, she had a special attention and tenderness for me: she always kept an eye on me, and she had my back . We would shoot scenes that were sad, sometimes devastating, and after a couple of takes she would exclaim, “Okay, that’s enough, we’ve filmed enough.” In other words, she looked after me: she is a professional, an author, a woman who also has her own mystical imprint.
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