Vicky Krieps is one of the stars featured at this year’s 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF). On the opening night of the Czech festival, she received its President’s Award to a huge ovation. She also introduced a screening of Anna Cazenave Cambet’s Love Me Tender, starring Krieps, in the Czech spa town. 

And she took time to reflect on her acting career, including her upcoming film with Jim Jarmusch, social media, AI, and much more in a wide-ranging discussion during a roundtable interview with reporters.

During her acceptance speech, the actress had told the loving crowd that she was never cool. Asked about that comment, she explained to the press roundtable: “It’s true. Of course, I’m challenging people’s ideas because they think I am cool, because I’m an actor and I do what I want, I say my opinion, and that’s cool. But the truth is, it’s a journey. And when I started my journey, like all of us, and I went to school, I was not cool. In high school, I wasn’t bullied, I wasn’t expelled from school, but I never managed to fit in. Yet, I didn’t try to be different.”

Krieps continued by sharing a story from her time in school. “I would have been happy to fit in, but I didn’t. I wasn’t chasing to be special,” she said. “I remember wearing a tie, because I was thinking: ‘Why is no one doing that?’ To me, it was just a beautiful piece of clothing. I didn’t give it much thought. So I went to school with my tie a few times, and of course, immediately they thought that I’m into girls, and that’s a problem, and I just ignored it. I decided not to think about it. Also, I didn’t finish my studies because I had a child too early. I never wanted to, but I ended up oftentimes doing things that put me on the outside. It’s an illusion what’s cool and what’s not cool. That’s basically what I was trying to say.”

Krieps also shared her thoughts on what drives actors. “I think most actors have a traumatized childhood, and they try to heal themselves,” she said. “That’s why they become actors, and then it’s a matter of how truthful you deal with this. How much do you share honestly with people watching you suffer in becoming a person. Life is about becoming yourself. And in order to become yourself, you have to suffer. It’s like taking off skin after skin. And a good actor is someone who does that in a way that allows you to see them take off their skin again and again. With every movie, you become more and more yourself.”

That led to a debate about social media. “There’s a big misconception, especially nowadays, when you have Instagram or social media and the internet and these things,” Krieps said. “Not that it’s only bad, but a lot of it is bullshit, because it tells some sort of tale of celebrity, which is not true. Celebrities are usually people who are stuck in another role they’ve been given, which is ‘now you are famous’.”

Given the various celebrated roles she has taken on during her career so far, portraying both historical figures and fictional characters, what’s Krieps’ secret to nailing her roles? Her answer may surprise you. “I actually choose to not prepare. And it’s a conscious choice, because what I’m trying to avoid is it becoming the exercise of Vicky Krieps, the actress, and saying, ‘Look at how well I did my homework. I really walk like someone from the 1800s. Or: I really speak like Ingeborg Bachmann.’ Because to me, then I let down the audience, because then I take away this moment where I am truly taking off my skin, and I’m truly trying to find something. You’re watching me truly trying to survive, truly trying to find an answer to something where there is no answer.”

That said, she also suggested that actors may have “two brains” or use two parts of their brains. “One brain is always doing the homework,” she argued. “So the minute I know I am playing [Austrian Empress] Sissi, anything I see around me that is Sissi, I will absorb, and it will calculate.” When she played the Austrian author Ingeborg Bachmann in Margarethe von Trotta’s Ingeborg Bachmann — Journey Into the Desert, Krieps didn’t seek out interviews with her, though. “I didn’t want to even listen to her speak. I think I heard her speak once before preparing for the movie,” she explained. “And the crazy thing, and that has happened to me a few times, the brother who’s still alive came to me and was in shock because he didn’t understand why I spoke like his sister. He was like, ‘How did you know?’ It was not only about the voice, it was also about certain movements and things people wouldn’t know, but he knew. So I think by removing my preparation, I make space for something to come in, which is inspiration, like in music.”

Concluded Krieps: “We all know that with the great musicians, there is something that makes the way they play things different, and it has to do with something that they don’t really control themselves. And I think with actors, it’s the same. You can open yourself to some different kind of knowledge that is not yours.”

In this context, Krieps also shared one thing she dreads in particular. “One fear I always have is [that of] the imposter, that someone will come and say, ‘Oh, look at her just trying to pretend,’ because I am not her,” she said.

Asked about trying to feel her way into roles and avoid information about characters and avoid distractions in the digital and information ages when the internet, mobile phones and other technologies rule people’s attention, Krieps offered that she is trying to take an alternative approach to it all. “I think what I’m doing is my sort of silent resistance. I really don’t give in to any of this,” she explained. “I have to give in to it in a way that it is part of my life, because it’s just being forced on me. We are all slaves of this thing. But what I can do is: I don’t give a fuck. I don’t care. I will always say what I think, and I don’t care if they think I’m important or not. I don’t think it’s interesting if I have ‘likes’ or if I don’t have ‘likes.’ I don’t care if I didn’t see a text. I don’t care if I’m not behaving the way I’m supposed to.”

Continued the star: “Fighting it wouldn’t work. I mean, I did not have a phone for a year, and that was wonderful. I might do it again. But fighting it is very difficult, also, because fighting always only generates fighting. If you fight something, there will be something coming back. So I’ve decided to just not care. I just really don’t care. I don’t care if I am good for them or the internet.”

How does she feel about AI? “I cannot lose my energy on fighting something that is, for so many people, apparently so important. Yes, they can have artificial intelligence, but I will just look at the tree, and they can go and they can do what they do, and they can talk about what they talk about. But I myself will look at the tree and be more interested in the tree.”

Krieps obviously is happy to avoid all the hype and noise. “I like silence,” she told reporters. “There’s so much noise nowadays that I just believe in silence. And whenever I can hold silence in a movie, I’m holding it, and I’m also holding it for everyone else. I’m inviting everyone into the silence.”

Could she imagine stopping work as an actress? “I would love to,” Krieps replied. “I’m kind of stuck in this, also financially. … Having to raise two kids and also being the sole provider, because the father of the kids doesn’t really earn money. I can live off this, which is already very cool, and I’m proud of that. But I couldn’t yet build a [financial] cushion. I would like to take a break and then maybe write a script or something. I have all this in me. I just need the time and the possibility.”

Krieps has had a lot of great acting opportunities, of course. And her latest one is a role in Jim Jarmusch’s upcoming Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, which also stars Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Tom Waits, and Charlotte Rampling.

“What I really, really love about [Jarmusch] is that he is still just making a movie. He’s not trying to make the next Jim Jarmusch. He’s not trying to go to Cannes,” Krieps said. “He’s really trying to figure out how to make the movie on set, like a student would make a movie. And that is very, very beautiful. That’s very loving, so it was a very loving set, very careful set. Working with Cate Blanchett and Charlotte Rampling was a gift, and we just had so much fun. We were laughing.”