Alex Wolff, star of modern horror classic Hereditary, has opened up on the “damage” he suffered after shooting the film.
In an interview with Looper, the actor reflected on his role in Ari Aster’s 2018 tour de force, saying “that movie did about as much damage to me as a movie can do.”
When asked whether he lost sleep and suffered psychological effects after having completed filming, he replied that he dealt with “all of it. It really affected me.”
He went on: “It’s very hard because as an actor, you really don’t want to sound pretentious or self-serious or like anything is too serious.”
“Because we have a cushy job in a lot of ways, but this, emotionally, it was one of those tough ones, it was one of those ones that really did some gymnastics on my emotional well-being.”
However, it appears the experience didn’t turn Wolff off the horror genre for life, as he also stars in M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film Old, which was released last week.
On top of that, he also makes an appearance in Pig, an upcoming psychological thriller starring Nicholas Cage.
In a 2020 interview with NME, Wolff described Cage as “one of my best friends in the world”.
“He’s one of the greatest actors who’s ever lived… he’s one of my best friends in the world now, we talk almost every day,” he said.
“We connected on an emotional level and I felt like he was guiding me across the lake during scenes. He always wanted to do a couple of takes for himself and then he would want to spend a lot of time on my coverage.”
He added: “On day one I had to do a scene where I get in a car with him and I have to freak out and start screaming.
“I was imitating him a lot – and I said to him before we did the take, ‘listen, freaking out in front of you is like doing a guitar solo in front of Jimi Hendrix.’”
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Check out a clip of Alex Wolff in Hereditary:
