![]() ![]() "I grew up never thinking about acting as a profession because that was what my mum did and often you don't want to be like your parents." But with that class she knew her fate had been sealed. And besides, she just had taken her first improvised-acting class, against all her childhood inclinations. "It made me feel silly, to be honest," she says. Only five months later, Qualley concluded that modelling wasn't for her. "She was understanding about all of it, why I'd moved to New York aged 16, why I now needed to do something different." She remembers, "She'd always discouraged me from being a dancer because she knew how hard that life is." It was her mother, who had herself left college to become the face of Calvin Klein and L'Oreal, whom she needed to convince of her new life plan. It took Qualley only a week to find an apartment, a modelling agent (which happened to be the internationally prestigious IMG) and "a rinky-dink catalogue job" with a reasonable paycheck. Her mother was working, her siblings were away at college, and her father, who divorced from MacDowell when Qualley was five, had just moved to Panama to build a house on the beach and "live like a caveman with no phone and no computer". Her voice is warm, flowing with the singsong cadences of a Southern accent that moves easily into laughter.įollowing her epiphany, Qualley did not go home to North Carolina because, she says matter-of-factly, "there wasn't really anybody there". Without the fervour of performance lighting her eyes, she appears much more like a regular 22-year-old girl. The shoot over, Qualley is now sitting in a garden, one Gucci trainer tucked beneath the other, smoking an American Spirit cigarette. It was my big dream, and I threw it all away." I'm tired, my knees constantly hurt, I walk with a limp because my hips don't turn out perfectly, which means I'll never be the dancer that I want to be. I'm only here because I want to be better at school on Monday. "She was there because she loved ballet and the music. One Sunday, theoretically her day off, she was taking another dance class when she noticed a woman in a wheelchair. "Margaret has a darkness that belies her age - an effortless ferocity which plays in her eyes" There is something complex and endearing and beautiful about her, but also powerful. If you're a casting agent or a director, that's exciting. "She looks like a pretty girl, but it's fun to discover what a weirdo she really is. ![]() Jonze has high hopes for Qualley: "I hope that Margaret takes over the world," he enthuses. ![]() The last dancer Jonze directed was, famously, the actor Christopher Walken for the 2001 video of Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice". To date, the film has been watched 6 million times on Youtube. In the debrief with her agent afterwards, Qualley decided, "He either thinks I'm a psychopath or it's going to work out." The subsequent film, created by Jonze to promote a new perfume, Kenzo World (the biggest fragrance launch from Kenzo Parfums in 16 years), sees Qualley dancing, again to "Mutant Brain", as a woman possessed of multiple personalities with a skill that is matched by her verve. As auditions go, it was unorthodox - although, as a former ballet dancer, the actress had the experience to walk it. ![]()
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