Robin Wright on ageing, confidence and the myth of being ‘too late’

0:00I didn't think I had that confidence. So I turned those roles down. What is your worst experience of another director? And you don't have to name names or anything. Boy, have I got stories. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This is the podcast where I ask every guest about three times they failed and what they learnt along the way. at sierra discover top workout gear at incredible prices which might lead to another discovery your headphones haven't been connected this whole time awkward discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices sierra let's get moving does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void but with linkedin ads you can know you're reaching the right decision makers, a network of 130 million of them.

0:54In fact, you can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills, and did I say job title? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. My guest today was a dancer at 10, a model at 14 and a soap opera actor at 18. At 21, she took on her breakthrough role as Princess Buttercup in the Rob Reiner directed classic The Princess Bride. Further iconic performances have followed as Jenny in 1994's Forrest Gump.

1:36and then, for five years from 2013, as Claire Underwood, the venal first lady in Netflix's hit remake of House of Cards. She was the first actress to win a Golden Globe for a streamer-only series and also racked up five consecutive Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress. She is, of course, Robin Wright. Born in Dallas, Texas, her parents divorced when she was a toddler and her mother relocated to San Diego, California. Wright herself prioritised family over film roles for many years when she gave birth to her two children, Dylan and Hopper. By her late 40s, Wright was busy staging a comeback, her words, and her career both in front of and behind the camera has gone from strength to strength.

2:27She now returns to our screens in The Girlfriend, a psychologically gripping TV series for Amazon Prime in which Wright directs, exec produces and stars as Laura, a billionaire art gallerist who has a suspiciously possessive relationship with her son. By any accounts then, it's a successful life. But the greatest gift is failing, Wright has said in the past. Failing in a scene in front of the camera and then tightening up your boot laces, putting your head up and going in and trying again. Robin Wright, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you for having me. You are so welcome here with that kind of attitude to failing.

3:12Uh-oh. And that quote was actually, it was an interview that you gave where you were asked about the Princess Bride, which I mentioned in the introduction. and you were talking about being a young actor surrounded by these legends of screen. And now, if it's not presumptuous of me, I would say you're the legend. How does that feel? How does it feel being the legend in The Girlfriend that the other actors probably look up to and have seen so much of your work? I mean, it's an incredible feeling to be trusted, that you have a body of work under you for years and years. And we all learned through that experience of making mistakes, failing, looking bad, and then rectifying it on your own.

4:03How do you correct? You learn from your mistakes. And to be instilling that and imbuing that to other young actors, that's what makes me feel great as a director is I am older I've had more experience I was where they were when I was their age we all were and I don't feel like it's a legend thing it's just time under the belt yes it's that famous thing that Malcolm Gladwell talks about isn't it the 10 ,000 hours that even if you feel nervous still doing what you do at least you know you've got that experience under your belt. Oh yeah and I feel like if it becomes too comfortable, too lax, you're not really driven by an energy.

4:52There's not an impetus in the same way to want to make something very clear, perfect as you're performing or delivering a speech. Yes, I completely agree. Just be a little bit on edge, a little bit walking up because you do want everyone to feel and accept and absorb in the same way. You just want to be able to feel that you're not alone in a rowboat. Yes. And no one's getting what you're saying and you're getting Scooby looks. What? Right. Well, I think you do a terrific job of that in The Girlfriend, which I binged over the weekend. I'm obsessed with it. And part of the reason it's so good is obviously your skill as a director and an actor, but also because you have that ability to make something that might on paper seem a bit unbelievable.

5:41So this mother who's very protective of her now only son and a girlfriend comes on the scene and she's rightly suspicious of this girlfriend, played by Olivia Cooke, and it's what unravels after that and it gets very dramatic and very dark, but it is so brilliantly acted that I believed every single second of it. Oh, I love that. Will you be the only reviewer? Yes, I'll absolutely arrange for that to be the case. And that was the intention, is to not fall prey to falling into melodrama. Yes. Because every incident, the drive of Cherry. Who's the girlfriend? The will of the mother to not lose the love.

6:28So it's tug of war between two women who love the same young man. Don't fall into melodrama, just make the chaos reality. Because it does become chaotic in each of these women internally. Yes. And then they implode. The other thing that struck me about your performance in particular was the physicality of it. You are very in your body. And it's very rare that I see dancing scenes on TV shows that aren't cringe. and they really weren't but how physical do you feel acting is specifically and then we'll get on to directing a bit later it's pretty much my foundation and I think it comes from being a dancer at a very young age and that to me is what makes me feel it basically it invokes something that brings something else to a scene, let's say.

7:28So being tactile. If you want to be in a sex scene, but you can't use hands, you can only use eyes of seduction. You know, there's all those games you can play, but all of that to me is a dance. Wow. So will you think about how a character moves before you perform them? It's a big question. And it's interesting to work with actors, being an actor myself, because I know what they need to get to that emotion, to deliver that beat that the scene needs. And every actor's different. Every actor does a different dance with you. So you're going to have to read the room and go, ah, okay. Some actors go, give me the line reading.

8:16Just do it for me. and I'll mimic it. And others are like, no, I need you to create a story that will help me bring this emotion to the surface and have it feel real to the viewer, authentic. So you're not acting at the audience. You're actually embodying the character and that's what makes the audience members sit on the edge of their seat, cry, laugh, get angry. And we're storytellers. Now obviously we've touched on the fact that Some of the Girlfriend is about motherhood, parenthood. What do you think it taught you or made you think about mothering playing this very specific role? I mean, I could relate to it because of where this ride takes you on this show is, you know, basically it's the love of one man between two women that turns into jealousy and then the jealousy turns into to the death.

9:21so I understand that as a mama cub you take care of your babies and if something you see is perilous for your offspring you will lie under a an 18-wheeler truck before the baby's gonna you know I mean yes um so I think we as mothers can all relate to that but this goes a little bit too far. And I remember saying to my son, he's like, oh, I can't wait to see it, mom. The trailer looks so good. But it's a little incestuous. And I said, you think? And I said, just do me a favor, when you finally get to binge it, will you please let me know that I am not that overly protective of you? So we're going to have to wait and see.

10:08Okay, great. Yes, that will be an interesting viewing experience for him in particular. The other thing that I thought the girlfriend did very well was its approach and analysis of class in a very subtle way. And I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about class, because I think you have a very interesting perspective, raised in America, but you have a British stepfather. Yes. And you spend a lot of time here in the UK. And how much did you want to play with how we feel about class? It's very delineated here, I find. Yes. And I've been here pretty much most of three years. working in this country, and I've been educated.

10:51And you speak to individuals that are older than me, born and raised here, and they're like, oh no, it's a thing in England. It makes a huge difference what university did you go to. Now, you could say the same about America. If you go to an Ivy League school, you're suddenly elevated because you went to Princeton versus SoCal college. But here, I feel like it's part of the national fabric, the class system compartmentalization. And you better know the classes and what that requires, how you have to behave if you're not part of that class. And that's what Cherry's doing is she's trying to fit in.

11:38But she's basically saying, this isn't who I am. I love you, Daniel. And I'll never be this. I never came from money. But when you're trying to fit into a class system that you will never be accepted into, really, that's a difficult relationship to have with a mother-in-law. But your first failure is the fear of failing itself. So the fact that, as you put it to me, you didn't take chances in your earlier career. Which chances didn't you take? Turning down certain roles that I was offered in my 20s, let's say, because I just didn't think I was qualified to play that character fully, immerse myself, fail in front of the camera, do another take.

12:32I didn't think I had that confidence. So I turned those roles down. And the ladies that did those roles were amazing. I wasn't ready. And so I feel that it just takes time, experience, so that now that's history. I learned from that by finally failing, having the confidence to fail. Yes. I'm so interested by this lack of confidence at that stage because you cut your teeth on Santa Barbara. R.I.P. I used to watch it. Oh, my goodness. Which is a really fantastic, long running soap opera. And you have to learn so many lines and be so quick. What do you think soap opera acting taught you about acting?

13:23you have to become um stealth in the technicalities because you've got three cameras going at the same time so you have to feel out of your periphery the red lights come on so that camera and then your head turns this way to get the actor to move over here so i was trained at a very young age of how to multitask while in a scene. And it was a great schooling, I have to say. But you still didn't feel confident enough, even with that on your CV, to take some of these roles. Why do you think that was? Because I hadn't done enough. You know, when you're young, you're basically playing yourself. You're speaking as yourself.

14:11You're moving as you would move through the world. You're given lines, but you don't own those lines as a grown woman or a grown man, right? Yet. And I think that's just life. We were babies when we started. We didn't know who we were. we didn't know how to do the in-depth homework one has to do to immerse themselves into a completely different character that's nothing like you if you're playing a murderer a sociopath right yeah when people ask you know which parts of you are like so and so that you played and you're like nothing really yes and that takes time and experience and doing your homework and getting jobs that allow you to play and explore and discover.

15:10That's how I get there. It's experience. What is the most difficult emotion to convey on screen? Oh, my God, that's a tough one. I don't really know anymore, Elizabeth, because I feel like I've kind of, I've tapped them all, you know, I've clicked all the boxes. it's almost like a light switch now truthfully yeah and it wasn't before I couldn't get to an emotion without putting my iPod you know and playing melancholic music by you know London Grammar um to get the tears going but I I do have to say what is still really difficult to do is to go from being like this and then somebody walks in the door, camera's rolling, and they're like, your husband just died.

16:08And to be able to go from us laughing about failure and then having to go to that with tears and shock and dismay in a second. And in life, we do that naturally when something traumatic happens. That's still tough to do because you have to map it out. Yeah. as an actor ahead of time okay when elizabeth is saying that line i know it's going to be in two seconds i'm going to have to start sobbing crying or screaming at the top of my lungs like so while you're still speaking i'm allowing that london grammar music to reach my heart and you hold it and you're like yeah we're doing it now and then you go You know, it's that flip of a switch that's so quick, but you have to give the preamble a little bit of time to rise.

17:06But that's my personal experience. I don't know how others work. That was phenomenal. That was utterly amazing witnessing that. And again, we go back to the physicality. Yeah. The feeling in your body first, that being where it springs from. Yeah. So in this context, I wonder what it was like for you. So Forrest Gump, allow me to be the first person to say it's one of my favourite movies of all time. I remember going to see it in the cinema and I remember asking my parents to buy me the soundtrack for Christmas. That's how much I loved it. It's the first ever movie soundtrack. Such a good soundtrack.

17:37The best. And you reunited with Tobin Hanks and Bob Zemeckis for Here. And of course, in the interim, there's been decades of your experience as an actor. What was it like for you as a sort of sign maybe of how far you've come or how much your confidence has grown? What was that reunion like? A, it was like no time had passed for the three of us, four of us. You know, Eric Roth, who wrote Forrest Gump, adapted Forrest Gump, also wrote here with Bob Zemeckis. So we were a band getting back together. And it was literally like no time had passed. Love each other just the same. It was just as easy as if we had had dinner every Sunday night for 10 straight years, you know.

18:25We just had a respect for one another going, right? I learned that too. When did you learn that? When you were 40, 45? It was great. It was a good therapy session for us. Yeah. Is Tom Hanks really as nice as he seems? Yes. Okay, just checking. Thank goodness. The sweetest, the greatest, the funniest. Yeah. This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher. Last year's critically acclaimed series returns to follow Evan, Gwen, and Marky as they vie for their students' divided attention. See why Cosmopolitan called its premiere season a master class of comedy. While glamour raved, it's the year's funniest and most heartwarming new comedy series.

19:08FX's English Teacher. All new Thursdays on FX. All episodes now streaming on Hulu.

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19:58We may need to change that jingle. Prices and participation may vary. I mentioned in the intro, and now I'm wondering whether it was quite right, but that you were raising children and you made that decision and you made the decision not to take on as many roles. but was that the case or was it more this that you were fearful of taking on the roles? No it was that I wanted to be a mom and I found that as the kids were getting past the toddler years and starting to really make you know solid relationships friends best friends when they're six, seven, eight, nine, taking them away from their routine and their community was really traumatic.

20:44And what a nightmare. You got to come to another city and sit in a trailer and wait for mom to have a 30 minute lunch where all she wants to do is take a nap because she's so tired. And then I see them for dinner and then give them a bath and put them to bed. Then I'm exhausted because I've worked a 15 hour day. So it's kind of pointless, But the flip side of that of being a mom was, or do I leave and leave them with a nanny and their dad? Which one's worse? They both have their benefits and hindrances, you know? So I just decided, take a cameo. If you can get a cameo during the school year and you're only gone for five days to Toronto, no problem.

21:28But going away and doing a movie for three months in Istanbul and FaceTime wasn't available yet, I didn't think that was fair to them, to not be there to raise it. So I just worked in the summers when they were off school and they'd come for a little bit and then they'd go to camp and they wouldn't even miss me. So it was great. Times have changed a little since that period you're describing, but I wonder if you feel things have got any easier for working parents, particularly in your industry. I think so. I've heard from a few people in the last, you know, 10 years, new mothers, let's say. And it's amazing the convenience they're given, the accommodation, the support, you know, the we're going to call you in later because you're breastfeeding, you're six week old.

22:22We're going to let you come in later to hair and makeup. Things like that. And that's working with the talent. And it's a talent to be a mom. It's, you know, it's a skill. Yeah. So to have that kind of support is amazing. Are you angry in any way that times weren't like that then? They were like that then. so much that way, you know, 20 years before I got into this industry. But I was very much taken care of. Would they, you know, pay for the nanny? No. So you could take your child, but it was kind of, it was on you. And you could always bring your kid to set, trailer, have a break, go back, feed the baby.

23:14I've had it pretty great I have to say Going back to this idea that there was a fear of failure for a period of time Where do you think that stemmed from originally? Can you remember experiencing that fear as a child before you started acting? Oh god yeah Oh yeah Big time School And it started with academia because I just struggled with English and math. And that feeling of just sweating and you could feel it brewing going, oh my God, I'm going to fail. I'm not going to be able to write this essay. I don't know how to do it properly. And that's when you start looking over the shoulder of your colleague in the class, right?

24:04You're like, can I see how you did the thing and the thing and the conclusion? And then I would start asking questions to my friends who were smarter than me, who were natural writers, great at arithmetic. And I would say, can you teach me how your methodology works for you? And you start doing that throughout your life as an actor, observing directors, what not to do, what you could think, okay, I know I'll never do that because that doesn't work for an actor. And I think you could generalize certain things in that context, right? And then what you do is you just stockpile all this education that you acquire over the years, whether it's in the workplace, relationships, family, being a mother to your kids as they grow up and start talking back.

24:59And you start seeing these human beings that are their own people. And you're like, where did you come from? Then you have to navigate through different waters. And I love having that big old bag because then it's almost like the bag turned into a Givenchy sack. Yes. Of just good quality wisdom. Let's call them clickbaits. Let's call them cliches. Whatever. It worked. Gaining them and using them to your advantage. advantage. And I think what strikes me about that is that you asked the questions. You were curious rather than what so many people experience, which is this kind of defensive, judgmental fear that they're not enough.

25:49So they don't want to reveal that they're not enough by asking the question. They don't want to reveal that they don't know. And I just think that's such an important thing to remember that actually it's often more powerful to say, I don't know, and ask the question. You couldn't have said it better. That is the power. And once you own the freedom and the want to say, I don't know what that means. Tell me what that means. Will you write that down? I want to study it. Tell me where I can get online and read more about that. What a liberating thing. Yes. Because it's truth. Yes. The other thing's a lie.

26:32Yes. When you're holding it in or being like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that. It's a lie. Yeah. And I just think truth is, you know, you can love everyone. I was listening to, you know, Ram Dass. Yes. He has this piece on this beautiful piece of music that I was listening to. And he's telling a story about when he first met Maharaji. And Maharaji says, just love everyone, Ram Dass. And he says, I can't. He said, why? He said, because I have too much judgment in me for other people. It's impossible. And he said, yes, you can. Love everyone and tell the truth. And it changed his life. And then he became a guru for other people.

27:26And those two things are genius. They're so simple. You can love. They might get angry when you tell the truth, but you're still loving them. I couldn't agree more. And sometimes the hardest person to love is yourself. And so sometimes you're being judgmental. I'm talking about myself here, actually. But we all do that, right? Yes. Sometimes you're being most judgmental of you, and that's why you're projecting judgment of other people. And that's where it's like living in the question, living in the love. And I think that's the biggest poison that we do to ourselves. We get stuck when we're self-loathing.

28:03I don't want to be a cod psychologist about this at all, but I do speak to a lot of people who were raised with divorced parents and they felt that they had to be perfect in order to be lovable to sort of fix a problem that wasn't theirs, that they're making. Do you relate to that in any way? Absolutely. And I became, you know, the caretaker from a very young age. I was the person in the room where I wanted to keep everything calm. Didn't like confrontation. Hated confrontation. Hated people that blew up. and I remember thinking I really need to get into a therapy to release myself from this conduit that's holding me into the panic that I feel when somebody snaps loses it because you get crew members directors actors that you've experienced over the years that just lose it on set at a crew member and it just horrifies me.

29:04And I don't mind that because I think we can all be kind and stern. But it really used to rock my world. Yes. And at a certain point, I just decided to go with diplomacy and calm in those instances because then it brings everybody off that ledge. And people go, well, then you're all chaotic inside because you're suppressing it. I said, no, what I'm doing is I'm helping with a tactic. It's almost like a fun game we're going to play. Let's see if my energy, which is quantum physics, right? If you put that energy out in the room, people are going to get off the rage horse. So I like spreading that energy, which is easy for me to do.

29:58I'm not a good confrontation person where I'm going to be like, no, you listen, you sit down. You can't talk to people. I've never been that way. So did you learn to do that through experience? probably experience through you know yeah child of divorce and i mean what's the percentage of children of divorce it's it's it's a lot so i think we've all been most of us have been through that and as a child you do just fall into it's almost feels like an obligation like you were saying it's like you have to be perfect and make sure everything in the room is perfect and everyone's happy make sure everyone's happy and that's my responsibility because if things start to blow it's my responsibility because I didn't keep it calm I totally relate and you want to kids up from saying it's not your responsibility and if that freaks you out understandably so if somebody's yelling in a room and it makes you really uncomfortable leave the room walk away from the drama don't engage and take it on right so that's through life experience too and also romantic relationships you have to be careful not to take that into romantic relationships she said she said i know yeah and that's a learning process it is and you know that's cognitive therapy which you learn later in life after you do other therapies and well you do this and there's two rules that i think are really important in a relationship that come from that style of therapy which is you're not allowed to use the words never or always and always come from a place of I.

31:58I felt this when you said that. Not you said you did it in this. And it really does work. Yes. And trying to teach your children to operate that way, you hope that they just take that baton and run with it and they'll have a healthy relationship. My final question on this particular failure is, as someone who was historically the peacekeeper, conflict avoidant, disliked confrontation. Was it then extremely liberating playing Claire Underwood? Yeah, in a sense. It allowed me to feel what it would be like to have that kind of strength and power where you're not concerned with what anybody else thinks because that's your truth.

32:48You know, and that's a funny character to compare it to. But when playing a part, you need to invest in being that person. Otherwise, it won't be felt by the audience. You have to like that character as venal as they are. You got to love that character you're playing. Otherwise, it doesn't really translate. And that's so interesting because then you realize that you have the capacity within you when you're embodying it. So it's like, actually, I can tap into that in my real life. I choose not to. Yes. Your second failure is your fear of not being good as a director. Good enough. Good enough. Okay.