Joana Ribeiro

FD – When you leave your comfort zone.

JR – I think the first project where I felt that was Terry Gilliam film’s (The Man who killed Don Quixote). I think it was the first time I thought, ‘OK, this is not me’. I was a blond woman speaking English.

FD – You are my friend. I have difficulty separating the Joana actress from the friend. I always forget why people will look at you in the street. I have difficulty seeing that you are performing in several roles. One of the first times I could actually feel that was in that film. Because you were acting alongside Adam Driver, Olga Kurylenko, Jonathan Pryce, it was a luxury cast, and I forgot you were you. Do you still feel that? That is, these people do not exist? Or, for you, as an actress, there are no actors who are actors, but people who have the actor’s profession?

JR – If you’re an architect, there are architects that if you ever meet them, you will be ‘wow’. I don’t feel that with all actors, but with some. I remember meeting Adam Driver, I had half a sock in my head because I was trying a wig and fake braces on my teeth, and Terry shows up like ‘Joana, you have to meet this person, I think you’ll love each other’, and it was Adam. And I was like, ‘Hiii’ (laughs). It was terrible. I had envisioned that I would meet him blonde, amazing. Terry knew it, and made me that.

FD – Was it your most challenging project to date? It may not have been the most challenging, but because you got so many well-known people around, who have given more than enough proof in acting, did that make it more challenging?

JR – I was 25 years old; I had only done a film before that one, soap operas and the Madre Paula series, which I finished not even one week before Terry’s film started. Therefore, I was exhausted, had just wrapped up a super complicated and demanding period series. There hadn’t been nearly rehearsals because there hadn’t been time. I was in a different country, working for the first time in a different language, with an accent. And the film’s production itself was quite hectic. So, everything concurred to make this the hardest project I have ever done so far. What I did now, maybe, can be harder in some parts, but as a woman, as an actress, I am more mature, so I can adapt and protect myself better in certain situations.

FD – You have been working on more international projects. I have always felt a little that when you think about your dreams, you project them to happen outside Portugal. What is missing – or maybe nothing is – here?

JR – I project them to happen abroad because there are more opportunities. I think that what we do here is amazing, there are great Portuguese films and Portuguese directors, with whom I would love to work, but the offer is little. The demand from the Portuguese public is small and there are many Portuguese actors, who are very good, but might be too many for a country which produces 10 films a year. It is very difficult for all actors to work in cinema. Perhaps, in a year, there are no movies with characters for me. So, if I want to continue doing this, and feel challenged by this job, projecting to the exterior allows me to have more options. We are not lacking talent. We lack investment and interest from the public.

FD – We don’t have film’s culture.

JR – We are very unpatriotic in this regard. I remember being in school and not watch a single Portuguese film.

FD – It is a bit of that chicken neighbour thing being always better. And it has nothing to do with talent. It is that thing that a person must go outside to have more success.

JR – Some great actors did brilliant movies and never went anywhere because they didn’t want it. Going abroad, it’s not necessarily a sign of doing better. There’s a lot of crap out there too (laughs).       If I was given the choice between participating in a great project in Portugal and a less great project abroad, but that would pay me much better, I would rather do it here 1000 times. It would pay less, but artistically would please me much more. Working with Terry opened doors for me in Portugal. Outside, I remember talking to casting directors and directors and saying, ‘I never studied’ and they would answer ‘but you don’t need, you began working, working is studying’.

FD – There is still a bit of this academic thing, isn’t it?

JR – Yes, and I get it. I would have loved to have studied, loved, I think it would have provided baggage, even for those moments of self-doubt, ‘easy, I studied’, it’s here written that I did the course.

FD – It is a job I admire, and I think people must have their feet on the ground. Not only because it is too centred on the image, but also because it may be tough to forge friendships when people are competing for the same roles. And you making great projects also feeds an expectation, and I know you don’t manage that well because you are so hard-working, but have some insecurity in the sense that you always want to prove yourself even more. Do you feel that over time you have been acquiring new tools to handle this?

JR – It will always have some weight, and it scares me to talk with more experienced actors and hear, ‘it will last forever and only gets worse’ (laughs). What costs me the most is not so much my expectation, that one I can manage, but the others’ expectation. I remember, for example, that while I was doing Terry’s film I lived in panic because I did not want people to know I was doing it because it automatically raises expectations over you. That is what frightens me the most, but, as we were speaking the other day, ‘art must be seen’.

FD – It presupposes an audience.

JR – But at the same time, what I enjoy the most in my work is the part where I get to be alone with my character. It is just me and the character, so, it is like meeting a friend, “I am enjoying meeting this friend so much that I just want to be alone with him”.

FD – Your profession consists of playing constantly someone else’s role, you make your life by being other people. Isn’t it easy to lose a bit of your identity, or it is the opposite? Where do you hang on?

JR – It is what gives me the most enjoyment, but it has also to do with this continuous search for what you are. The other day I was interviewing a colleague, and it was a very uncomfortable moment because I am at ease in front of the cameras when there is a character ‘defending me’. But when that stops existing, I must step in. It is scary because there it is, there is also the side of not knowing exactly what I am.

FD – I think we all look for it; no one knows exactly who it is, but I notice that you have a terrific curiosity, even of self-knowledge, ‘why do I respond this way? Who is Joana in this situation?’. It is interesting hearing you say that it comes from your insecurity. It is nice that you have turned that into a weapon that you use to work on your incredible talent.

JR – It is one of the things that fascinates me the most: never knowing everything there is to know about the human being and me. There is always something new to discover, with the characters too. It is possible to get lost in a character, but some things are always yours. The way you see that character, the way you ‘grab’ a character usually comes a lot from what you are as a person.

FD – I would love to see you as a villain, but that kind of crazy villain. Like Bellatrix, can you see it? (laughter). Not the fact of being a villain, also because you are an excellent person, but the crazy part. You have super-expressive eyes. I don’t know, tell me a role you would give anything to do.

JR – There are many characters I would love to embody. Gena Rowlands in Woman Under Influence, Isabelle Huppert in La Pianiste. For the character built, for being women that defy the norm. Maybe because they exhibit behaviours traditionally associated with men. And at the same time their vulnerability, which is the thing I found incredible in women. Sometimes, is a bit underrated, but I think it is one of the most amazing traits to possess, that predisposition to be frail, and show vulnerability is one of the greatest signs of courage there is.
I would also love to do a film like Apocalypse Now, but with women. There is a side to living on the edge there.

FD – Not thinking about the consequences. In the day we don’t feel that we must justify ourselves, we will know what it is like to be a man.

JR – The Joker… I did not like Joker very much. I felt there was this need to over-explain why he was evil. He is just evil. He practices evil randomly; he is an agent of chaos.

FD – You were talking about creative processes, what it is like to make several characters at the same time, and the fun it gives you. But what is it that worries you? I believe that the more comfortable you get, the easier you get out of things. You need to feel constantly challenged.

JR – This profession being a constant challenge is what I love and worry about simultaneously. I would love it to be easier. I would wake and be told ‘you have three scripts from highly regarded directors, and all of them wish to work with you, and you will be able to do them all at the same time’. I dream about this, but then I know I would be like… I am more an agent of chaos myself. I am constantly looking for challenges that make my life harder.

FD – You challenged a lot. 

JR – It is always balancing. Now in the Gloria, I was speaking with Tiago Guedes, the director, and we were discussing the character and the fact that she is Polish, if it made sense to have an accent. He told me, ‘look, none of the actors will have an accent, unless those who are really from the country, and Albano, but if you want and feel that makes sense, we will work on it, but if you don’t, it is still OK’. And I decided it would have an accent. In my view, it added work, but it also added one more layer to the character.

FD – You are speaking about something I found fascinating, the preparation for the role. And there is something else I found interesting, which is the self-tape: how does someone manage to choose an actor in one minute? And that is why I want to ask you what would you do or say if you had to do a self-tape in which you would perform yourself?

JR – For me, the hardest part is the point where you have to say your name, height, where are you from. That is the part I hate. I am capable of making a self-tape in five minutes, but that part I end up repeating 10 times (laughter). The thing I most hate is asking me ‘speak about yourself’.

FD – (laughter) So, then, you were going to do exactly that.

JR – I rather being told to face something. For example, for this session for the Solo, I became the hotel’s diva.

FD – But that is funny because it is you too. You dance that way when you are with me. But it looks like you need the cane of, ‘I’ll put another Joana in here’.

JR – I would probably cry and laugh at the same time.

FD – You would be several people in one self-tape.

JR – It is funny because I feel the self-tape in which I was most myself was Gloria. When we were doing the preparation, Tiago Nunes gave me an overview of the character. End of the 60’, Cold War, Portugal, a character who lives in a village, falls in love, and never went to Lisbon. And I did something I used to do a lot when we were upset at each other, which is, imagining the arguments in front of the mirror. I still do it nowadays. Whenever I need to have an important conversation with someone, I train alone. I remembered I did that when I was doing the self-tape. I put a mirror, positioned the cell phone here, it was a static sequence in which you saw me seeing the mirror. And I arrived, started dancing to a song about freedom and freedom of speech, put on the red lipstick and imagined as if I were talking to him. Halfway through the take, I kiss the mirror and start wiping the lipstick, and as I see my reflection and I think this is not me, it is not happening, it is a disappointment. It happened in such a natural manner because I have always done it, and I thought this girl would do it too.