Rebecca Hall became 'very emotional' making Passing

31 October 2021

Rebecca Hall became "very emotional" during the pitch meetings for 'Passing'.

Rebecca Hall

The 39-year-old actress has made her directorial debut with the black-and-white drama film - which explores the practice of black people who "passed" as white in the 1920s - and Rebecca admits that the pitch meetings were particularly emotional.

She shared: "The pitch meetings were particularly poignant.

"I ended up getting very emotional every time I was pitching it to some financier because they would invariably ask me, you know, 'why on earth are you making this?'"

The London-born actress was in her mid-20s when she learned that her maternal grandfather was a light-skinned black man who "passed" for white for most of his life.

And Rebecca thinks that she's a "walking example of what this film's all about".

She told Sky News: "You know, everyone looks at me and has a whole set of assumptions that aren't necessarily true. Or they're true but it's not the end of the story.

"Forever, everyone's looked at me and known that I'm Peter Hall's daughter and I'm part of a British theatrical lineage, and [I'm thought of as] 'English rose', and that's sort of the end of the story. And the fact that within my own story there's ... so many other contradictory and elusive things sort of points out the absurdity of it all."

Meanwhile, Tessa Thompson thinks 'Passing' is "almost Hitchcockian".

The 38-year-old actress stars in the film and she believes that the "suspense thriller" has similarities to Alfred Hitchcock's work.

She said: "It lives in that space where this woman is entirely unravelling and you don’t necessarily know that. I think the audience might know that before she does.

"It felt almost Hitchcockian. She’s inside of a real suspense thriller, but it’s really the landscape of her own mind."