Lola Kirke says Lena Dunham 'has been a champion of women’s issues and made them hip'

The Gone Girl star talks growig up boho, being inspired by Lena Dunham and those rumours about Tom Cruise
Multi talented: Lola is an actress, musician and also has ambitions to produce a film about Monica Lewinsky
Larry Busacca/Getty Images
Matthew Love14 August 2015
The Weekender

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At the age of 11 actor Lola Kirke had curious ambitions: “I dreamt of normalcy,” she confesses. Perhaps this desire is a pretty natural reaction to growing up the youngest child in an intensely creative family living very public lives.

Kirke’s father is Bad Company and Free drummer Simon Kirke; her mother is interior designer and New York vintage boutique owner Lorraine; her older sisters are musician Domino and painter and Girls star Jemima. Model Alice Dellal is her cousin.

For the young Lola, rebellion meant blending in. “I wished my parents were a doctor and lawyer and that I was a brilliant biologist,” Kirke says, and adds with a smile, “but that would never happen because my brain doesn’t work like that.”

Thirteen years later, with a number of noteworthy film and TV performances on her CV, it’s clear that the 24-year-old’s ambitions have changed. Born in London, after attending Bard College in upstate New York, Kirke was discovered playing in a band. Offers slowly began to roll in. It took time: a short film here, an appearance on Law and Order there. Did she feel jealous when Jemima — who sees herself primarily as a painter — garnered so much attention for her part in the hip HBO series? “Of course,” she says. “But I definitely got over that. I really admire what she does on that show, and though she may not identify as an actress, she should. She’s really great at it.”

Kirke has little time for envy these days. Last year she made waves as the conniving, tawdry Greta in the gory David Fincher mystery Gone Girl. She has just wrapped shooting on new Tom Cruise thriller Mena, and plays a big part in upcoming teen fantasy Fallen. Series two of her Netflix series, Mozart in the Jungle, an over-the-top taunt aimed at the classical music world, premieres early next year.

Mistresses of America: Greta Gerwig and Lola Kirke

Kirke’s latest film, directed by Noah Baumbach and starring Greta Gerwig, is likely to put her on even more directors’ minds and moviegoers’ lips. In Mistress America, Kirke stars as lonely, lost Barnard College first-year, Tracy, who finds companionship with the cultured 30-year-old who is soon to become her step-sister, Brooke (Gerwig). While the loopy, narcissistic chatterbox Brooke is the flashiest part of this farcical comedy, Tracy provides the film’s emotional grounding.

The combination of vulnerability and self-confidence that makes Kirke a distinctive performer is apparent in person. The moment she walks into the Crosby Street Hotel in New York for our interview, she kicks off her heels and folds herself into a chair, despite the flowing flower-print dress she’s wearing. “I think we are not encouraged to be comfortable in our own skin,” she says. “If I have any kind of public presence, I hope that my comfort in my body can be in some way inspirational.”

Her demeanour is indeed open and casual but even when asked breezy questions about pop culture, she pauses and considers her words. Kirke talks freely about feminism, and what inspires her about Girls creator and star Lena Dunham: “I haven’t read the criticism Girls takes online ... I think it’s a real shame people are targeting her. She has been a champion of women’s issues and made them hip. And that’s f***ing awesome because they need to be hip but they need to never go out of style.”

Just as easily, she reveals that giggling fits got her in trouble on the set of Mistress America: “Being told, ‘this isn’t working, and it’s because of you’, is such an awkward position to be in.”

As comfortable as she may feel in her skin, Kirke is still getting used to the attention that comes with film stardom. “I’m going through these moments of being like, ‘Oh my God, how did this happen?’”

She felt the transition most keenly in May, when she won the Chopard Trophy, for up-and-coming talent, at Cannes. “I mean, giving a speech to a room of 12 people that included Julianne Moore and Colin Firth was crazy,” she says. “I’m still not convinced it happened.”

Given her busy schedule, Kirke seems surprisingly grounded. Part of her clear-headedness might be traced to her restraint over spending time on social media. “I go into some kind of K-hole,” Kirke says. “I’m suddenly on the ex-best friend of my ex-best friend’s dog’s page and then I have wasted a good hour and a half.”

Case in point, when asked about the spat between Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift that was all over Twitter and Facebook, she cuts in, saying: “I think they’re both great and successful people but I have no idea what that is. And I have no interest in it taking up any space in my brain whatsoever.”

Kirke gets her news from the BBC app on her phone and New York public radio. Not every bit of gossip escapes her attention, however. When asked about the film Mena, she talks admiringly about Tom Cruise’s work ethic and director Doug Liman’s treatment of actors. When I ask her about the tabloid rumours of a supposed relationship with Cruise off-set, she smiles. “I’m tempted to frame that [US magazine] cover because it’s so hilarious,” she says with a laugh. “If we’re engaged to be married, that’s news to me.”

Though both of her sisters had children in their early twenties, Kirke has no such plans. “I have a lot I want to do, so I don’t know if I’d be a very good mother right now,” she says. “I still feel like I’d be a good mom one day, if I ever get the pleasure of having kids.”

In the meantime she’s diving into the film business headfirst, and nearly every aspect of it intrigues her. She is currently producing an indie film called Lake City, and likes being on set because “it is film school in the most accelerated way.” One of Kirke’s goals is to play former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, who threw the then-president Bill Clinton and the entire US for a loop after her sexual liaisons with the head of state came to light in 1998. “It’s the birth of that kind of media power, and cyber bullying as well. I don’t know if her story was ever told,” she says. Though it’s a big, strange leap, from dreaming of normalcy to dreaming of Lewinsky, the bright, young Lola Kirke is poised to make it.

Mistress America is released today

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