As an actor, Rebecca Hall is forever tuning in to the hard-to-catch frequencies and day-to-day idiosyncrasies that make people, people. In 2024, she starred in Janicza Bravo’s eerie drama The Listeners, playing a teacher whose life unspools as she begins to hear a low, pulsating sound that nobody else can. This year, she starred in Ira Sachs’s Peter Hujar’s Day, an intimate snapshot of 1970s New York that recreates a real-life conversation between writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Hall) and photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) over the course of a day. This tender and magnetic movie—about friendship, memory, and the spectre of a generational creative scene—racked up five nominations at the forthcoming Independent Spirit Awards, promising good things for the awards season ahead.
Over the past year, Hall has remained just as attuned and even more busy; this month she appears in James L. Brooks’s political dramedy Ella McCay with Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Ayo Edebiri. She’s also stepped into Ryan Murphy’s flamboyant and expansive universe with a role in the next season of Monster, about Lizzie Borden, and a part opposite Evan Peters in The Beauty. (The duo play FBI agents who, while investigating a string of gruesome supermodel deaths, discover a sexually transmitted disease that’s making people more beautiful—with horrifying consequences.) Today, Hall is toggling between a stack of new scripts and mulling her next steps, whether that’s picking up her oil paints again or directing another feature. Following her acclaimed directorial debut Passing, Hall has plans to make a mother-daughter drama called Four Days Like Sunday, inspired by her own life; it will focus on a 12-year-old girl navigating her relationship with her mom (Hall), a fading Broadway star. Her recent exhibition at Half Gallery, which features pieces pulled from different eras of Hall’s life, has also nearly sold out.
“I have a broad palette,” says Hall with a shrug, speaking to me from Los Angeles. It’s a sentiment that applies as much to her various artistic mediums as to her recent sartorial swings: She still finds it amusing that the Thom Browne trompe l’oeil gown she wore to the Academy Museum Gala convinced half the room that she’d painted her own torso. “I mean, it was possible! People were looking at me, quite shocked. But, no, actually, I’m more dressed than you are right now,” she recalls with a wicked smile.
Below, Rebecca Hall checks in with Vogue about independent movie-making and “dodo” films, pushing herself with style, and the simple act of listening.
Vogue: What was your first experience of Peter Hujar’s work?
Rebecca Hall: I’m embarrassed to say it was pretty late! He was such an important figure, one who has, essentially, disappeared. For me, for a lot of people, it was always Robert Mapplethorpe who personified that scene. I came across [Hujar’s] self-portraits and felt immediately struck. The way he shoots faces can be brutal and confronting, but also so sensitive. That strange interplay creates something quite intimate, and that interests me.
Like the one of Candy Darling on her deathbed.
Exactly, and I just had to dig deeper when Ira approached me about this film. Reading the manuscript was eye-opening to a whole other era—a hardship, a lack of money and food, the sometimes surreal day-to-day realities of being an artist in Manhattan.
As Linda, how did you seek to honor that real-life person and their relationship, but also work without limitations on your own approach?
I’m so lucky to have had access to this very alive and fascinating person, to have access to the exact words she would have said. Beyond that, I didn’t want to do an impersonation or caricature. It was always about capturing an essence.
I spoke to her on the phone—she’s 91 now and lives in LA, and at the time I was in New York. My intention was to get to know as much about her as possible. I didn’t approach it to create a mirror image of what happened. I always knew we were making something that had a sense of freedom to it: We’re not wearing the same clothes, her apartment doesn’t look anything like her actual apartment. We interpreted, made it poetic. In saying all this, Linda is very difficult to get to talk about herself!
I’m sure she’s probably more used to asking the questions.
She spent her life doing that! So that was a weird journey for her, and interesting for me to witness. Imagine transcribing these intimate conversations, losing the tapes, and the transcript shows up years later. Confronted with a reality she hadn’t experienced in a long, long time. Turned into a movie. It really got me thinking about feelings of nostalgia, and how we choose to hold on to memory. In a way, I didn’t really want to ask her a lot of questions about that time. I just wanted to know her. We ended up talking about baby names a lot—she wrote books about baby names.
Eventually I did say to her, “Okay, Linda, I’m going to have to do your Bronx accent.” And she went, “What are you talking about? I don’t have an accent!” I would ask her for voice notes on how to say hibiscus or something, and she’s changed how she said it a few times. We met for the first time at Sundance and sat together. We held hands. She leaned over at one point and said, “Rebecca, I can’t hear an accent at all”—which, to me, was my greatest compliment.
We’ve been living through the era of the biopic, but this movie’s concept feels quite refreshing. It’s set on a singular day, but it feels so sprawling.
I think this movie is a dodo—I don’t know how it exists! The fact that this movie was made, when it’s experimental in the real sense of that word, astounds me. It’s just two people talking, with no drama or plot. It’s more portraiture than anything. There’s nothing on paper that would suggest this movie would move you to tears, but for me, it frequently does. It’s a moment in history that’s gone. I’m seeing a person who’s going to die soon, a whole era of New York, a whole value system around art and creative expression [that’s] disappeared. We’ve given it space again, and that adds up to something very haunting and weirdly energetic to me.
How did you and Ben Whishaw build up that tenderness?
We didn’t know each other before this—maybe we said hello at a party over the years, but we’d never actually hung out. Ira does quite a brilliant thing—he didn’t want to rehearse anything, ever. No lines run together—it’s scary! What he does want is for you to feel comfortable with each other. He sent Ben and I off to a diner just off the West Side Highway. It doesn’t even exist anymore, but we spent the afternoon just telling each other everything. I came out feeling like I’d made a new extremely close friend. I think that translates in the film.
What’s so beautiful about your acting is those super small gestures, in both Peter Hujar’s Day and Ella McCay. Where moments can be so quick and fleeting, there’s still an emotiveness and feeling of intimacy.
Acting in its purest form is the byproduct of people listening to each other. If you’re in it enough, you shouldn’t be thinking about what you’re doing. I’m just pausing, listening. And these times, I’ve been lucky enough to have someone really extraordinary to listen to. I’m also a director, so I’m interested in watching people. I get to observe on different levels, which in many ways is my comfortable place. Some people find it hard, and I understand. It’s hard to get out of your own way and just listen. But if you do just listen, it’s simple.
Do you see a throughline in the roles you’re choosing?
I’m sure there is one but I don’t really think about it. I have quite a broad palette. I’m more drawn to the director—and James L. Brooks and Ira Sachs have made some of my favorite films. Broadcast News is as good as it gets. I love seeing these people operate.
You’re also now officially in the world of Ryan Murphy, with The Beauty and the next season of Monster.
That is super fun and I am having a totally delightful time. I am loving just getting to explore some wild, fun, crazy characters. My first introduction to his work, properly, was Feud, the Bette and Joan story—because I was so jealous that he got to make it! I really wanted to make it! I’ve been obsessed with Bette Davis forever. It got me into all the other stuff—I love how neat his worlds are, and tremendously fun, flamboyant, and colorful. He shows how many different ways there are to tell the stories, and so many different stories to be told.
Are you keeping up your painting practice?
I have a show on at Half Gallery in New York right now with five of my paintings—I’ve sold everything else. They’re from disparate times in my life. I’ve not had much time in the studio, and I can’t travel with my oil paints everywhere I go. As soon as I’m done here, I’ll get back in the studio and start churning them out again, because that’s therapy for me.
I love your audience paintings.
I only had two of them left from the whole series to show! I collected photographs and images from people, various performers across various disciplines—photos of the audience before they walked on stage, screen grabs—all so I could paint audiences in different ways. I’ve had an entire career doing things that people watch, and I’ve built up this relationship with them, and I wanted to engage more thoughtfully with it. One in the show is just from my brain, of a generic cinema. Another is based on a photo I took of the audience, behind me, on the first night of the play Sarah Paulson was in called Appropriate on Broadway. People are filtering in, someone has a COVID mask on, someone looks stressed. It was such a fun series, I will return to it!
What’s happening with your next proposed directing project, Four Days Like Sunday?
The status is…that independent cinema is really hard to get financed and I’m still trying to raise a large chunk of money. I’ll make that film one day. I might put it on hold for a minute and direct something else.
What are you watching, reading, or listening to right now?
I still check in on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, but otherwise I’m just reading a lot of scripts. I just read Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad. I’m behind on all the recent new movies.
We’ve hit the ground running with awards season. What will you wear? Your Thom Browne look at the Academy Museum Gala was incredible.
It was so fun to wear because everybody in the room assumed that I had just painted my naked torso. I mean…possible? People were looking at me, quite shocked. But no, actually, I thought, I’m more dressed than you are right now! I’m always excited to play around with fashion and push myself. I love Kallmeyer—she’s my go-to for everything. I love Aflalo—the balloon pants, the draped pieces. I’m working up to a big press tour for The Beauty, so there’s lots of opportunity for something fabulous.
Peter Hujar’s Day and Ella McCay are out now. The Beauty will debut in January 2026. “Innerdisciplinary” at Half Gallery is on show through December 13, 2025.
