Caleb Landry Jones is Luc Besson’s Dracula

CWhat attracted you to the project? «Luc». You mean Luc Besson, the director of Dracula. Lost love. Caleb Landry Jones doesn’t bring up today’s archetypes or true vampires, he doesn’t mention fear of diversity & inclusiveness, he doesn’t talk about the possibility of exploring the (very thin) line between Good and Evil and that between science and the irrational. No. He was interested in collaborating again with the French author after their success Dogmanof 2023.

Hurray Caleb Landry Jones who has not lost his instinctive sincerity, despite his remarkable career: started in 2007 with It is no country for old men by the Coen brothers, passed by Three posters in Ebbing Muissuri, X Men The beginning, Run away-Get Out, Breaking Bad, the last one Twin Peaks (2017), consecrated in 2021 at Cannes by the award for male performance with Nitram by Justin Kurzel.

He is one who – always be praised – does not force the interviewer to “extract the answers with forceps”. Despite the type of beauty that is not exactly reassuring, face to face he reveals himself to be a cheerful extrovert. «It was a dream of mine to establish a relationship of this kind with a director, a Scorsese-De Niro relationship, that relationship in which someone imagines you in a role and then pushes you further to see what can happen. Me, a vampire? It didn’t make any sense to me, but Luc was so determined! Little by little he convinced me with his romantic vision: not a gothic-horror story, rather a love story.”

For the rest, Dracula. Lost love – at the Rome Film Festival, on October 24th and in theaters on the 29th – is quite faithful to Bram Stoker’s novel: in Transylvania in the 15th century, Prince Vladimir sees his beloved wife die (played by Zoë Bleu, daughter of Rosanna Arquette) and denies God. His condemnation? Becoming a vampire, forced to survive the centuries. However, without losing hope of meeting a reincarnation of his wife. Which – Besson’s “nationalist” license – it happens in 1889 in Paris and not in the London of the book.

What was it like acting with Matilda De Angelis, who plays the wife’s friend?
She’s fantastic! She came straight from an Italian set and was immediately (snaps her fingers) “on the ball”! Luc was in adoration! It could go from madness to tears to seduction… For me, work is all-encompassing and I look for the same in those around me. Like Athina: whatever obstacle arose, she remained true to herself. There are many artists who, unfortunately, conform to what – according to others – “they should be”.

“Athina” is Greek Athina Rachel Tsangari, who directed her in Harvest about a peasant community overwhelmed by modernity (in competition at the Venice Film Festival, soon in cinemas).
She takes you away from whatever pre-packaged vision you have. The only thing I knew was that I would play a city man who turned to farming. The key to accessing the role would have been to absorb the environment: I tried to learn to distinguish trees, to recognize insects and birds, to identify plants by their scents. It was a “sensory” experience, made up of touch, smells, things that get under your fingernails… I was lucky enough to be able to arrive in Scotland a month and a half before filming, so when filming I was at ease, it was “home”.

Do you recognize yourself in the protagonist?
I grew up in a suburb of Dallas, Texas. I could walk to school, to the ice cream shop, but to get to the library I needed a car… I could hear the fire sirens, we lived near a station. When I was 18, my family (father, building contractor, mother, teacher, ed) moved about 45 minutes further north, to the countryside: I found myself sleeping almost constantly, just hoping to get away. Mainly because of my classmates: they wanted to beat me! (tight smile) Well, I would say that my profile is quite different from that of a nature enthusiast.

Was it around that time that you felt the urge to become an actor?
That wasn’t the trigger… I already loved cinema, but as a form of escape, a way to escape from reality. And I saw “safe” films, nothing particularly challenging. The first turning point was at 16 years old with Clockwork Orange (my mother, in doubt whether it was too “strong”, watched it with me): it moved me, it woke me up. I started to think about the world differently. A year or two later I left home and lived with a guy who had just finished screenwriting school and was a writer: he had a large collection of films, many European. I started to become obsessive: I will be eternally grateful to him for “educating” me that way. And there the question arose: how can I enter that world? I had absolutely no idea.

And how did he do it?
I responded to an ad and got a small part. They paid me 5,000 dollars, enough to understand that I could never earn as much so quickly… (smiles). So I went to Los Angeles, with the delirious conviction that I would not fail and that I would find my space.

What made it safe?
I really don’t know! Even today I don’t take anything for granted: the evening I was awarded in Cannes, it was a total shock! I can limit myself to venturing that so much confidence came from those films I saw then. There were Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Marcello Mastroianni, Toshiro Mifune… In those interpretations I felt something that I too could have expressed. Something perhaps unpleasant, difficult, but still linked to human nature: something important, essential.

His characters are often a little obsessive.
I don’t know if they were all obsessive: maybe I made them obsessive, on the page they weren’t at first. But my obsessive-compulsive disorder was quite severe at a certain point. (laughs) I think acting has given me a space to escape perfectionism.

Not the other way around?
Let me explain better. My grandfather was a drummer – an incredible jazz player, one of the best (Tommy Gwin, ed.) and he was an absolute perfectionist: he played eight hours a day. So I had developed that rigorous belief that “you have to know what to do, refine it, and then execute it”. Acting offered me a way to move away from this, because it requires more archaic and chaotic attitudes. And, at the same time, it also requires a certain type of control… I fell in love with this paradox.

She is also a drummer, as well as a singer. As a boy he created the band Robert Jones with his friend Robert Hudson, he recorded various albums… Do you still play?
Yes, but I wouldn’t say I have a fixed band because the musicians are members of various groups. It’s very expensive to get them together, take ten people on tour and the music doesn’t bring in any money. But recently we got together for a while in Austin, Texas. It hadn’t happened since I was 18, and it was beautiful. Would you see yourself as a soundtrack composer in the future? Yes, if they didn’t ask me too many remakes… I don’t think I have either the patience or the predisposition for revisions. I don’t think I’m “wired” for that.

And as a director? He just debuted as a screenwriter with Down the Arm of God by Peter Brunner, about a young pastor who decides to help the homeless in the community.
I played at home there: it’s set in a small Texan town. I won’t deny that moving behind the camera would be wonderful! We will see…

Brunner is Austrian, yet another European director to direct it.
In fact, very few American directors have cast me. They probably don’t know what to do with me, in a way.

Why ever?
Maybe it scares them to face the set in a way that is “necessary” for me: my job is to be the protagonist, to let it live and breathe, not to conform to the standard, to the stereotype. Outside of America they are more open, which to me is more exciting. But be careful, I’m speculating. I just know that the majority of meetings end with: “Thank you very much, we’ll let you know.” (smiles)