Greta Lee wanted to have an "athletic ability" as an actress.
Greta Lee reveals her inspiration
The 40-year-old actress stars as Nora in the romantic drama 'Past Lives' and explained that her inspiration as an actress actually came in the form of Val Kilmer, when he took on the role of a high tech thief and master of disguise in the 1997 thriller 'The Saint'.
She told Collider: "This is gonna be maybe surprising, but [I was inspired by] Val Kilmer in the movie 'The Saint'. Hear me out! There's something about that performance and as a little girl watching, I wanted to be able to, one day, tap into that kind of athletic performance ability. If you remember from the movie, and maybe you don't because not everyone is an extreme Saint head like myself, he plays a multitude of different characters in such an exquisite, fully immersive way with so much commitment and I just felt like, as a girl, if I could do that, there was something that was just electric about that. I remember feeling distinctly like, ‘Oh my god, I want to be like Val Kilmer.’ I still feel this way!"
'The Morning Show' star went on to add that after working on the stage with the likes of 'Absolutely Fabulous' actress Dame Joanna Lumley and then working with comedienne and 'Mean Girls' star Tina Fey, she has been able to play characters whom she loves "so dearly" but her fellow performers have been "instrumental" in her success.
She said: "I started out doing Broadway. I was in a show called 'Spelling Bee', and then I also did this play called La Bête with Mark Rylance and David Hyde Pierce, Joanna Lumley. And at the time, I kind of was just moving towards where the work was. It felt very much like, I'm gonna go where I'm chosen to be, and it wasn't until — I came up around this incredible time of young women, mostly in the comedic world, Lena Dunham, Amy Schumer, Abbi [Jacobson] and Ilana [Glazer] [from] Broad City, obviously Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, who were really creating the space where I was able to work, and I’m so grateful for that and everything I got out of that and playing these ridiculous characters [who] I love so dearly. But that was instrumental to the formation of my little artist self at that time."
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