After some “bad experiences,” Rooney Mara chooses her projects based on the director, she said at the Berlin Film Festival press conference for her new film “La Cocina.”
“I really go by the director. I learned that pretty early,” Mara said when asked her process for selecting films. “I had some bad experiences as an actor. And then I think it was probably after the first time I worked with David Fincher that I was like, ‘Oh, follow the director.’ So I really make my choices based on the filmmaker and who I want to work with because at the end of the day, it’s all them.”
Mara stars in “La Cocina,” directed and written by Alonso Ruizpalacios, which follows the staff of a New York City restaurant as their kitchen descends into chaos. Ruizpalacios was on hand on Friday for the press conference, in addition to actors Raúl Briones Carmona and Anna Diaz and producer Ramiro Ruiz. Of joining the film, Mara said she had been wanting to work with Ruizpalacios for a while.
“He wrote me this beautiful letter, and I read the script and watched all of his work and I really just wanted to make anything with him,” Mara said. “The way he talked about how he wanted to make this film, it was just an experience I really wanted to have.”
Ruizpalacios had his eye on Mara for even longer — ever since he and his wife went to the movies on Christmas more than a dozen years ago to see “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” That trip to the cinema also ended up inspiring a tense scene in the film where the restaurant’s cherry coke machine breaks, flooding the kitchen.
“As we went to buy some popcorn, I felt when I was reaching the concessions that the floor was really wet. Then I came close and realized there was a Cherry Coke machine, and it was spilling like an endless fountain,” Ruizpalacios said. “And the people who were selling, they didn’t give a shit. I was like, ‘There’s Cherry Coke all over the floor!’ They’re like, ‘Yeah, I know.’ And that to me was a perfect image of fucked up capitalism, you know? Just a fountain of Cherry Coke. And the film we went to see that night was ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.’ And I said to my wife that night, ‘Fuck, I want to work with her one day.'”
“La Cocina” premieres at Berlin Film Festival on Friday night.
