Julia Garner is interested in beauty. In love. In bringing a sense of care—of heart and soul—to her roles and to all of the films she's involved in. This sounds like it should be a given, considering the demands of being an actor in today's world, fully submitting yourself to a character and filming in far-flung locations over weeks at a time. It requires a love of the craft, but also a sacrifice: "I'm going to be pausing my life..." she says over the phone from her home in Los Angeles, between bouts of filming The Altruists. "So I'm not saying 'yes' to everything. The people involved are really important to me because it's not just energy, it's time."

When Garner read the script for Weapons, the buzzy mystery horror directed by Zach Cregger, she knew instantly that she wanted to work on the project. Quite literally moving mountains by shifting her production schedule for Wolfman, to star as the divisive lead Justine Gandy. These are not the only films starring Julia Garner this year, she also plays the shimmering Silver Surfer in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, but somehow finds balance between it all. Just as long as she has had her morning coffee.

NICOLE DEMARCO: Hi Julia! How are you doing? How's your day so far?

JULIA GARNER: It's good. My coffee machine is just not working because I'm never home, so I had to go downstairs quickly and get a coffee. I'm not a real person without coffee, even a sip, so apologies for being 10 minutes late. I've been in Vancouver since June. We have until December to film this show, [The Altruists]. It's been really great, but tough. There's a lot of physical obstacles, believe it or not. I'm wearing a prosthetic nose, fake teeth, and I'm acting in colored contacts, which are drier than normal lenses. And it has to cover my whole eye, because I have brown eyes in this, so it's like I'm acting with sunglasses on all day. So it's been an interesting experience. I don't want to give too much away, but you think it's just about tech, but it's not. It's a love story. That's initially what interested me.

ND: You've had a big summer promoting both Fantastic Four and Weapons. How is it feeling to see these films finally in theaters?

JG: I mean, it's crazy. I am in disbelief. For me, at least, you make these films, and you're in your own world and bubble with these people. I'm putting care and attention [into it] knowing that people are going to see it, but I always forget that a mass amount of people are going to see it. That feeling is super important. I've been on shows before where it was a hot project, the award project. And it didn't do anything, didn't move the needle. But Ozark, for example, season one got the perfect amount of attention. People were excited enough to invest in it, but also, nobody knew. I don't think anybody knew that that was gonna be the outcome of that show during that time of television. That was the peak of TV; the TV shows were incredible then.

ND: I'm sure that intimacy on set, that closeness, contributes in some way too.

JG: Yeah, well you have this sense of passion and care for one another. Everybody's pushing each other in a positive way, and even if someone's pushing someone in a hard way—I think it's so corny, but love is the most important thing with everything, real love for what you're doing and who you're with.

ND: It's amazing that one of these films is a big Marvel project, and Weapons—there's been so much buzz around that project, that's been really exciting.

JG: I read Weapons and I knew it was special. I was in the middle of doing Wolfman, I got the script and they were about to shoot soon. I was in production and there was a chance that the scheduling wasn't going to work. I was like, I'm going to call Zach [Cregger] and tell him that I'm doing this because I'm doing this. So, bless my agent and Miri Yoon, who's the producer, they made it work out.

ND: What was it about the role of Justine that you were most interested in?

JG: It was her arc. I found it very interesting that people were judging her initially. They thought she was the bad person. She is a person that's lying to herself constantly, so people can pick up on that energy and they think that she is lying about the situation, but really, she's lying about who she is. She is very messy. I had a whole backstory: she probably was a certain way when she was younger and she's trying to reinvent herself to be this perfect a-type personality. But she's not at all. She's impulsive. She's a functioning alcoholic.

ND: In another interview, you said that when you prepare for a role, you prep to the point where you can feel it in your bones. How did you go about becoming Justine?

JG: It was a crazy process. I had such short prep time with it because I was on Wolfman. Once I was done with my big, intense scenes, I started prepping for Weapons. The first thing for me is, I journal. I journal a lot about different relationships, just different things that are coming up. Then I do a meditation. Weird things can inspire me, like for some reason I was so keen on her wearing glasses. Another thing that really inspires me is people watching. lf you just go on the street, you see how somebody is talking on the phone—they might hold the phone weird. You see somebody's walk, or the walks of people you know. I'm always just interested in real people. Unless I'm playing Patrick Bateman or something, I don't need perfect posture. I think that perfection is going to be a result of imperfection.

ND: Looking back, is there a specific role that had a profound impact on you or changed the way that you see the world?

JG: There's definitely movies that changed my brain. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a movie that I remember watching for the first time when I was young, and I could not believe that somebody could tell a story like that. It was so heady, but so emotional at the same time. I was in awe of that. For roles, A Woman Under the Influence. I've spoken about All About Eve before. Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher. I love that performance. You sometimes watch things and you're like, 'Wow, they've captured a moment.' Like, for that actor, it was real. They got it on film, they captured it. The editor and the director were smart enough to take that cut and put it in the film for people to feel less alone. That's what I love about movies. It's a room, and it's art, and it's storytelling. It's just a reminder, especially in this day and age, that art brings people together. Politics separate people.

ND: The ability of art to create a closeness is just so important.

JG: I think people need to be reassured that there's love there. It's not just algorithms and clicks—this has destroyed everything. It's destroyed businesses. It's destroyed people's attention spans. It's brain rot. I want to get a brick phone. Let's bring boredom back! It must be so hard because of what you do, you really have to go on your phone and emails, all the time.

ND: I try to really be away from screens in the evening when I can, but it's so hard. It feels like Instagram, social media, is the hub of everything these days.

JG: The problem is it used to just be photos. Photos of coffee and leaves on Hipstamatic. It was weird to post a photo of yourself—you looked like a psychopath. But now, you look like a psychopath if you don't. And there's online shopping on Instagram. It's gotten out of control.

ND: It's crazy. We're about the same age and when I was younger, I had this dream of working at a magazine. Instagram didn't exist. Social media didn't exist. None of this was part of the job, now that's a huge part of the job—the self-promotion.

JG: I haven't posted in two weeks, and there's a part of me that's like 'Are people still seeing my movies?' It feels like an unnecessary, work rat race, and your currency isn't what you're making. That's not the currency anymore. It's about how famous you are; how much attention you're getting—even if it's negative. If you start with negative fame and change your narrative, then you're beloved. People are obsessed with cringe culture now. I cannot imagine people doing that at the Academy Awards in 1985, with all those cool ass motherfuckers. Can you imagine, just like, all the TikTok dances, and sitting next to Jack Nicholson? Or Carol Kane?

ND: As you're looking at new scripts, is there anything you're looking out for? Maybe a dream role, or anything like that?

JG: For me, it changes. Now, I'm focusing on people—who do I want to work with that's going to make me grow as an artist? Who's going to challenge me in the best way? I want to meet them. And when I meet them, I want to feel like it wasn't the first time I met them because that means we have a real connection. I'm going to be pausing my life and spending time with this person, so I'm not saying 'yes' to everything. The people involved are really important to me because it's not just energy, it's time. And in terms of characters, I look at them like, do I find you interesting enough? Is this relationship going to be interesting enough where I want to keep calling and hanging out with this person? Do I want to get to know them more? How intriguing are they? I want to get to fall in love with them, and then I end up becoming them, in a way.

ND: After spending so much time with a character like that, do you have any rituals for when it's over? How do you say goodbye to this moment or person?

JG: It sounds mean but I just need, at minimum, three solid days of not doing anything. Not even lifting up a spoon. Like staring at the ceiling, in my bed, kind of not doing anything...then I'll start to talk to people and become myself. [Ozark], that wasn't three days, that was a process. It was a death, so I was grieving a character. But it's much easier to let go for me than having a new character enter and come in. I'll do all this work, but then I can feel them coming in. It sounds creepy, [but] I can feel them.

ND: It seems really visual as well, what they're wearing, how they're presenting...

JG: Costumes are so important for me because that's that person's choice—how they want to present to the world. You're getting a sense of who that person is.

ND: Were you always interested in fashion? Where did that come from?

JG: My mom has great taste, but I think it came from my grandmother. She was so chic, my grandma. I've always appreciated more editorial stuff, things that looked like they were from another planet. I'm just weird, so I liked things that made me feel less weird. I remember being a little kid, looking at Vogue, and I remember those Tom Ford ads—how it was so shocking, but beautiful too. It was sad. It was weird, but it also wasn't weird. I loved it.

ND: I mean, there's fantasy there, and romance...

JG: And beauty! If you think of beauty, again, everything comes from love. If you look at The Birth of Venus by Botticelli, you can feel the love that he has for the people in the painting. Especially Venus, how he paints her. He loves them, and that is the result. It's so beautiful. I think what needs to happen, especially in film now, is they need to make things more beautiful. We need more beauty.