Olivia Cooke has become quite a critically acclaimed actress ever since she starred in House of the Dragon. It was as though playing the role of Alicent Hightower made the world realize just how talented she was. However, years before getting this role, she proved her worth and talent in less saturated projects. Occasionally, she would also star in something that would get her a lot of attention.
In 2018, that happened to be Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One. The film adapted a classic piece of literature by Ernest Cline and became quite iconic in many ways. With a critic rating of 72% on Rotten Tomatoes, it brought about an interesting twist to the sci-fi genre.
During an interview, Cooke revealed what it was like for her to work with a high-profile director like Spielberg when she was still green in the film industry.
Steven Spielberg’s Presence Made Olivia Cooke Up Her Game
Steven Spielberg has gained a reputation as one of the greats of Hollywood. He has had twenty-two Oscar nominations and won three over the years, making him one of the most critically acclaimed directors of all time. It is safe to say that starring in one of his movies as a protagonist as a fresh actor comes with a lot of pressure.
During an interview with Collider, Olivia Cooke revealed what it was like for her to work with the filmmaker, being fairly new to the industry when it comes to her fame. Even though she had starred in several projects by that time, she seemed to still have the need to prove herself when she was starring in Ready Player One, which happened to backfire on her.
On the first day with Steven, we were doing motion capture, so I had my helmet on, which has four cameras and two lights, and I had all the dots above my face and I was in motion-capture gear. Mark Rylance was there, on the first day, as well, and we had a few scenes with him, and I was trying to do this really nuanced performance. I was really trying to impress.
The actress revealed that during the motion-capture aspects of filming, she wanted to be subtle with her acting. She wanted to focus on non-verbal cues that the audience needed to pay attention to in order to understand what her character was feeling.
Olivia Cooke’s Strategy Backfired
Such forms of acting are often praised by the industry, and thinking that to be her key to impressing Steven Spielberg, Olivia Cooke gave it her all, being as calculated as she could about her expressions. However, it would seem that this is not what the film needed from her.
After shooting some takes, with a helmet on, cameras pointing at her face, and dots all over, she was approached by Spielberg, who told her something that she, perhaps, did not want to hear,
He came up to me and was like, “You’re gonna have to be bigger because I can’t see on the footage what you’re doing with your face.” And I was like, “Okay, I’ll be bigger.”
While her approach would have worked under any other circumstances, motion capture seemed to have a weakness to it. It would seem that her expressions were so subtle that the technology that was turning her face into a game character, was not able to capture what she was emoting. Rather than being more impactful, she came off as expressionless.
Noting this, Speilberg approached Cooke and told her that she needed to be grander and bigger with her performance so that it could be better translated into the other medium. Understanding what went wrong, the actress took the new approach and gave an excellent performance.
It is safe to say that when Cooke was playing Art3mis, her character was extremely expressive, and her feelings were written on her face in the best ways possible.
Ready Player One is available for streaming on Max.
