![]() Hollywood hasn't known quite what to do with her, foxed perhaps by her brains or her impeccable British theatrical pedigree-although she says it is a relief most Americans don't know that her father, Sir Peter Hall, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company. Where is she in the man's game?' The whole film just felt driven, not by the way Christine died, but by an overwhelming compassion for her will to live." But when it's a woman, it's like, 'She's making me feel uncomfortable. We're still in a state where we box it up: 'She's wild, she's crazy, she's drunk, she's this, she's that.… ' Robert De Niro has made a career out of playing these characters, and we love them-big, big characters that do terrible things. "There is a deep, deep discomfort with women who are unlikable on screen. "I feel very proud to be in a film that has a woman at its center who is a misfit, but who is not made to look cool, or weird or edgy," Hall says. Hall read up on depression and borderline personality disorder in preparation for the role, but her portrayal resists easy categorization. Maarten de Boer/GettyĬhubbuck's mental health problems went undiagnosed. Rebecca Hall of 'Christine' poses for a portrait at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. ![]() But my hunch is that she was just being a good journalist-because she might not have been successful." I was curious about that too," Hall says. "Do you think it was a sign she didn't want to succeed?" "Why did she describe it as an 'attempted suicide,' I wonder?" I ask. "In keeping with Channel 40's policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts, and in living color," she said, "you are going to see another first: attempted suicide." Then she pulled a revolver from below the desk, placed it behind her right ear and pulled the trigger. But contrary to rumor, there are no extant videos of her broadcast on July 15, 1974, when, a few weeks before her 30th birthday, Chubbuck read from a prepared statement. Chubbuck's death has become a gruesome internet meme-the holy grail of online snuff ghouls. Tall, beautiful, with sad eyes and a Modigliani face, Hall has a manner that combines boldness with introspection-a mixture key to all her performances, particularly the rawness and fragility she displays in Christine. "I want to champion this film more than I've ever wanted to champion anything," she says. Perhaps Hall doesn't want to seem melodramatic, but there's no doubting her commitment to Chubbuck's story. She laughs as we sit eating salad in a cafe in Brooklyn Heights in New York City, not far from where she lives. You sit under the shower for a bit going, 'What the hell is going on?'" Because, if I'm doing my job correctly, I've convinced my brain that it's real. "Being rigged to a machine that pumps blood, and holding a gun and putting it to your head-it's like your body doesn't actually know it's fake. "I just remember really shaking for a long time, as I washed the blood off myself," she says. The movie, a small, independent production financed with money Hall helped raise, couldn't afford trailers, and she was still caked in fake blood she couldn't shower until she got back home. After Rebecca Hall finished shooting the final scene of Christine, her new film about the American newsreader Christine Chubbuck, who, in 1974, blew her brains out on live television, she got in the car that had come to take her off the set.
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