Julianne Moore on Becoming a Mother at Her Rope’s End in ‘Echo Valley’

They say love makes you do unthinkable things. It lulls you into a false sense of security, embraces you with a shiv hidden in its sheath, and pushes you to the edge of morality. Julianne Moore explores this murky corner of the human psyche in her latest role. Putting the notion of unconditional love to the ultimate test, Echo Valley sees the actress ensnared in the web of lies and deception woven by her on-screen daughter.

What begins as a domestic drama in which a mother hangs on by a thread following life’s endless curveballs—the death of her partner, derelict farm caught in a debt spiral, and drug-addicted daughter—quickly turns into an intense thriller when her troubled child comes home blood-soaked. Driven by that primal maternal instinct, she rushes to the rescue, diving headfirst into something she soon learns that she might be ill-equipped for.

Moore soars as the leading force of the Michael Pearce-directed feature. She shrouds her Kate Garretson in an enigma, expertly concealing her guile under the impression of soft parenting, which in turn keeps the audience on their toes as the threads start to unravel. BURO Malaysia sat down with the Oscar winner ahead of the Echo Valley premiere and talked about motherhood, the art of acting, and the next chapter of her illustrious career.

What drew you to this movie?

I’m always attracted to relationship stories. I think that’s the dynamic that drives our lives—our relationships with our partners, our children, our friends, and our community. Echo Valley is very much about that. It’s about a bond between a mother and a child, with a thriller element on top. It reminds me of those old movies from the forties—they used to call them “old-fashioned women’s pictures”—where ordinary women were thrust into extraordinary situations.

Was there a thriller that you used as a touchstone to find your character?

I did not have one that I used for this movie. Brad Ingelsby wrote this wonderful, very precise script and I felt like the tone of the movie was intact. So that’s where I got my information from. But in terms of my favourite thriller, it has to be Don’t Look Now, which interestingly enough is also about a domestic situation and a tragedy. It’s so wonderfully human and complicated, and maybe the scariest thing I have ever seen in my entire life.

What is the most challenging part of becoming Kate?

Everything is a challenge because your job as an actor is to try to figure out how to make this person seem like a real person. You want to bring them to life in the most realistic way. So, the challenge is always to make the audience feel like they know them, they understand them, or they seem like one of us, in a sense. I think you have that responsibility as an actor, as well as to bring some insight to the movie.

What role does physical movement play in developing a believable character?

One of the directions I like a lot is, “What is the playable action?” You can talk about how someone is feeling, but you also have to maybe get up out of your chair and walk across the room. So sometimes it’s like, “How do I get this character to walk across the room?” You know, expressing the physical aspect of it all because that’s how we live. We’re always like, “I have to get on the subway”, “I have to go to work”, “I have to make dinner”. All of these actions become a part of creating a character, too. It’s about feelings and actions.

When working on films with different tones, how do you adjust your creative process to suit each project?

Everything in a film is determined by the screenplay and by the director. In this case, the genre is a factor too. There’s a different kind of engine to the story. There may be different stakes. The Room Next Door, for example, was very emotional and with high stakes as well, but it didn’t have the same kind of volatility to it. We’re dealing with two very different films, tonally. Echo Valley is a thriller, so you always want to make the audience feel like they are on the edge of their seats and that anything could happen at any time.

Do characters like Kate haunt you?

Do my characters haunt me? I don’t know if they haunt me. I think one of the great things about what we do is that it’s an act of imagination. You have a writer bringing their imagination to the table, a director bringing their point of view, and all these other actors who are bringing their own interpretations to it. So, we are aware that it is something that we create. It occurs on the spot, and it’s alive at that moment for us. But then we walk away from it. It then exists as an entity in and of itself, so other people can experience it.

Beyond what’s on the page, are there any particular things you do to make those moments believable for the audience?

You have to believe it yourself. That’s the trick, and most actors can kind of sense it. They’d be like, “Oh, that was terrible” or “That did not feel real”. Some of the stuff that Kate does that’s so incredibly extreme is done in the heat of the moment or is done without thinking of consequences. It is often what you do in life, too, like running across the street and not looking around, hoping that you won’t get hit by a car.

There’s something about what Kate does that’s like… she’s not looking. She’s just going and she’s going really fast. That was one of the things that I tried to keep in mind when I was playing her. A lot of what she does is not necessarily rational, but that’s because we’re not always rational in our lives.

How does Kate offer a fresh perspective on motherhood and societal expectations?

What I like about Kate is that, like most of us, she is not someone that you know at first glance. You have a lot of assumptions about who she is, and what she’s capable of. Michael Pearce and I talked about that quite a bit. We wanted her to seem like somebody ordinary. She’s somebody who’s in a tremendously difficult circumstance. You don’t know if she’s capable of handling it all, but she ends up being really surprising.

There’s a line you said in the movie where your character said to another mother: “Every day is a gift”. Do you think women conceal the real experience of motherhood from each other?

I haven’t found that women protect one another from the reality of motherhood. I think that women are pretty anxious to share their experiences, particularly with their close friends or their family members. There’s a lot in life that we don’t know about until we experience it, so it’s difficult to explain it to people. Even now, as a parent of adult children, I’ll have people asking me what that’s like.

I personally have enjoyed every stage of motherhood. Every stage has its own developmental challenges for your children and for yourself. I think we’re tremendously interested and eager to share those things because life is a huge mystery. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know how to navigate it. We learn that by sharing our experiences we feel less alone.

Substance abuse continues to be a global crisis. How did it feel to step into the role of a mother facing her daughter’s addiction?

I mean, it’s such a tragedy. There are so many people all over the world who struggle with addiction. That is why this is a very pertinent story. It’s something that affects many people very deeply. I was struck by how much Kate loves her daughter. She wants to help her, save her, and cure her. I mean, a lot of the things that she does in the film are morally complicated, but they’re all done out of a great love for her child.

You’ve built an incredible body of work. How do you reflect on your journey so far, and what continues to drive you creatively?

I feel so lucky that this is the work that I derive so much pleasure from. It actually surprised me. There was a point in my life when I thought that maybe I’d eventually get tired of this. I thought I wouldn’t want to do it anymore. But I find that it’s endlessly fascinating. I like the collective experience of making films. I like working with directors, writers, other actors, and everybody in the crew. You have all these people who have expertise in different places coming together to make a film. I always say that our experience is narrow but deep. It just continues to compel me. So, I hope I continue to be employed!

You star opposite Sydney Sweeney, who, like you, is an accomplished actress—though at a different stage in her career. Looking at her path, do you see parallels or contrasts with your own journey?

One of the wonderful things that I experienced as a young actor, and now again, as an older actor, is that you have these extraordinary peer relationships with the people that you work with, regardless of their age.

I remember when I was first starting out, I would suddenly find myself in a scene with someone who was twice my age. In these instances, you quickly realise that you’re expected to meet them. When you do, you notice that you’re having this interesting relationship with someone who has had much more experience than you do.

As I got older, I found that I was meeting younger people the same way. I feel like there aren’t a lot of professions where you get that experience. It’s been quite wonderful because it dissolves a lot of barriers between people. You can have an authentic experience of who they are as a person. It’s been gratifying.

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