They Blacklisted Me in Hollywood. Lucky for Me, I'm European, So It Doesn't Matter

The closing ceremony of the 71st Cannes Film Festival will forever be remembered for a dramatic, chilling, and moving moment. At the 2018 event, just before presenting the Best Actress award, Italian actress and director Asia Argento dropped a bombshell: “In 1997, here in Cannes, I was raped by Harvey Weinstein. I was 21 then. This festival was his hunting ground. I want to predict: Harvey Weinstein will never be welcomed here again. He will live in shame, ostracized by the film community, which once embraced him and covered up his crimes.”

“And even tonight, here in this hall, there are people sitting among you who still need to take responsibility for their behavior toward women and pay for the wounds they caused, for behavior that has no place in this workplace, or in any other industry,” Argento continued. “You know who you are. But most importantly, we know who you are. And we are not going to let you get away with it anymore.” Argento ended her rebuke by raising a clenched fist and posing with an expression that conveyed victory and courage.

The audience in the hall was left stunned and shaken, and viewers at home who watched the live broadcast were no less affected. Argento stole the show from the winners. Her speech made headlines around the world and is considered one of the important and significant milestones of the #MeToo revolution. In an interview she gave to The New Yorker, she described how Weinstein raped her in his hotel room after she agreed to massage him. “He lifted my skirt, performed oral sex on me. He scared me, and he was so big, and he would not stop. It was a nightmare.”

In the eight years since that defining speech, the brave woman’s prophecy has come true: Weinstein has indeed lived in shame, in prison, and is no longer welcomed at Cannes, which had been his second home, and of course his hunting ground. Incidentally, a few months after that speech, Argento became embroiled in a troubling case. California authorities examined allegations that Argento had sexually assaulted actor and musician Jimmy Bennett while under the influence of alcohol in a hotel room in 2013, when he was 17, while they were filming a movie together. Bennett also revealed that Argento paid him money to ensure his silence. Argento denied the allegations and claimed that Bennett wanted to extort money from her. In a letter published online in September 2018, Argento’s lawyer admitted there had been a sexual encounter, but claimed that Bennett, then a minor, sexually assaulted Argento. In light of the allegations, Argento was removed from her role as a judge on the Italian version of “X Factor.”

In the nearly decade that has passed since that dramatic year, the prolific Argento, musician, filmmaker, and model, continued working, but did not return to Cannes. At the 79th festival, held last month, Argento arrived with a new film in which she stars, Death Has No Master, a psychological horror thriller about a woman who returns to Venezuela after an absence to sell her father’s cocoa plantations. The film competed in Directors’ Fortnight, the respected and high-quality parallel section.

“I thought I would never be accepted here again,” Argento admitted when we met at a bustling, fashionable restaurant on the beach of the French resort city. Fortunately, Argento’s melodic Italian-accented voice managed to cut through the loud music played by the restaurateurs to entertain diners and sunbathers. “I thought I was persona non grata here.”

Why not? “Google it,” she says, laughing. “I thought they would never invite me back to Cannes after my speech. Since that speech, they never asked me to return. Luckily, that changed. It is very emotional for me to be back. A wonderful feeling. I feel as if I came to Cannes for the first time. Just coming back is a major achievement, and I am grateful to arrive with a great film I believe in. It is a wonderful sense of deep appreciation and satisfaction. I am glad my return after years of absence is taking place under less stressful circumstances than before, in a side section without a red carpet. What was always difficult for me was the red carpet, not the creative part. It was always hard for me with things unrelated to my work, for example, looking good, or the questions, ‘What are you wearing?’ Those are things that do not interest me and have required a lot of effort over the years.”

Eight years have passed since that iconic speech. Do you think the #MeToo revolution succeeded? “I think I made a kamikaze move, but the first to die is always the kamikaze pilot. Did the revolution succeed? I don’t know. Of course, many more films are being made by women. More films are also being made that tell interesting stories about women, with much more interesting characters. Things that did not exist before. The change is huge.”

Last September, Argento celebrated her 50th birthday. “How did I celebrate? I went to hot springs in Italy with my children. That was my birthday party.” And how was it emotional? “Like the day before, exactly the same. But I must say that over the past year I gave up a lot of concepts of control over my image, how a woman is supposed to look, how people are supposed to think about me, and many other ideas that were ingrained in me as a child about what it means to be a woman in this industry. I let go of many of those constructs. I feel much more comfortable in my body, much calmer. In the past I was very aggressive, but today I do not feel I need to protect myself so much. An aggressive person is someone in a fight-or-flight state, someone always afraid of being attacked. Personally, I have improved in that respect.”

Argento looks wonderful, and according to her she has no intention of getting plastic surgery. “I do not want to become one of those faces you cannot recognize. My appearance is natural,” she reveals.

Now that you are 50, has your approach to roles changed? “Now I do not take the physical roles I would have taken in the past, because today I would not feel comfortable with them. But I am glad I did that when I was young. I used to be fearless, today I am more restrained. At the same time, I prefer daring, artistic films over commercial ones. But let’s be clear: I am not running away from money, I like money. Bring me money,” she says, bursting into laughter. “I just always feel more at home in independent cinema, that is my legacy.”

“I was very shy, lonely, and weird, and people hated me”

For years, Argento was one of the wild, outspoken princesses of both American and European independent cinema. She also comes from prominent stock, her father, Dario Argento, is a revered cult director who specializes in horror and suspense and is behind The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Dark Glasses, known as Suspiria, Deep Red, Phenomena, Trauma, The Stendhal Syndrome, and is associated with what are commonly called giallo films, exploitation films that were successful in the 1970s. Her mother was actress Daria Nicolodi, who died in 2020.

“When I was a child, my father did not bring me to set,” Argento reveals. “Who wants a crying child on set? He started taking me when I was about 10.” Argento says she did not have a normal childhood, “so I do not know exactly what I missed.” Later, Argento became a wild, rebellious, and unruly teenager, and even ran away from home at 14. “Films saved my life then, so I am glad I started working at a young age,” she confesses. “I was very shy, lonely, and weird, and people hated me, and if I had not found a place in the film world, I do not know what would have become of me. My father says that without cinema I would probably have become a member of an underground group like the Red Brigades.”

Only at 18 did she begin working under her father’s direction. That was in Trauma (1993), and since then they have made, among others, The Stendhal Syndrome, which caused a scandal because of explicit rape scenes, The Phantom of the Opera, and Mother of Tears, in which Moran Atias also appeared. Even in his 80s, Argento’s father remains active. In 2022 he directed Dark Glasses and cast his daughter in it. The film can now be streamed on yes VOD.

“In private life we do not talk about problems and dark sides, and films allowed me and my parents to deal with those things and express emotions. It is really a kind of psychodrama for us. My father expresses the dark side of his personality and his subconscious in his films.”

Now that you are 50 and have proved yourself, is it still a burden to be Dario Argento’s daughter? “It really sits with me, and I still feel enormous pressure to be worthy of that legacy and the name of that brilliant director. It is not a shadow, it is not a burden, it is simply your DNA.”

Throughout her career, Argento has played sensual, seductive, dark women. “I am not interested in making bourgeois cinema,” she told me in the past. “I prefer to work with unpredictable directors who possess a personal voice, and I want to appear in films that allow me to express my persona, for example my sexual persona.” And indeed, Argento has often expressed her sexual persona. She has starred in many sex scenes, including a masturbation scene in the 2007 film Boarding Gate. “Masturbation was not a problem. I can do it easily, every day,” she said then.

Argento also worked in Hollywood, including XXX, the action film with Vin Diesel, later saying that Rob Cohen, the film’s director, raped her, Land of the Dead by George Romero, and Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola.

What is your relationship with Hollywood now? “I have no connection.”

How did that happen? “I do not know. They simply do not call me. Maybe because of cancel culture. Maybe I was canceled. Luckily I am European, so it does not matter. I really live day to day. I am just not very good in roles in commercial films, comedies and so on, it is not really my style.”

“But you did action films.”

“Yes, and I enjoyed them very much. That does not mean commercial cinema is bad in my view, but some films are just bad and some dialogues are just stupid. When a script comes to me, I check whether it is right for me or not. By the way, I am also not valued enough in Italy, but I understand that I am hard to cast, I never really connected with the Italian milieu. It does not come from snobbery, but from the fact that I am very shy. When I was still young, I created a character to protect myself, a superhero-like character, strong and sexy, that would help me get through life. In Italy I became a very frightening figure. Italian directors do not know what to do with me. But there is no doubt the situation is changing. Maybe I am opening up too and becoming less frightening than I used to be. There are opportunities in Italy for me too now, so I have hope. In general, whatever comes to me and feels right, I go for it. That is why I did Death Has No Master, where I play a challenging role for which I had to learn Spanish, and we filmed it in Venezuela. For me it was always more interesting to play unstable and crazy characters.”

The film was shot just before American forces raided the capital, Caracas, and arrested the dictator Nicolás Maduro. American planes and drones were already in the air.

“Before I went to Venezuela everyone told me to be careful,” Argento reveals. “If you Google Venezuela you will see, ‘The most violent place in the world! Watch out for gangs, for drugs!’ And I have never felt safer than I did in Venezuela. I swear. I would walk alone outside at night and no one said anything to me, no man tried anything with me. I saw no violence and no drugs. I understand that such things may happen, but that was not my personal experience. Venezuela is not a real place, so rich and so poor, chaotic. With a lot of spirituality. It has everything, happiness and sadness, incredible energy. And the people! And the nature! While we were there, there was also a real threat of American forces entering from the sea, and we were filming in the harbor, so there was real chaos on the horizon. A few months after we left, there was an attack.”

And what did you think of it?

“As far as the political aspect is concerned, I think it is complex and delicate. It is not my place to say something or judge. It is the place of the people who live there and know it to say. I may have concepts that come from where I come from and have nothing to do with what that country has gone through. I am not a politician, I am not stupid enough to become a politician. Because I would not be able to lie, and therefore I could not be a good politician.”

“We human beings are just animals”

Argento is a multitalent. In the past she wrote short stories, directed several films, DJed, and directed music videos, such as s(AINT) by Marilyn Manson, which, because of its audacity, was banned from airing on MTV.

“Marilyn never thought the clip would be broadcast. He wanted it to have cult status. I always juggle many things, and in the last two years I decided to devote all my energy to acting. I have been acting since I was nine, and it is the thing I have nurtured most. When I am on set, my body systems calm down and I feel I am in the right place.”

Argento’s love life has also been turbulent. She was once engaged to the wild actor and director Vincent Gallo, but they never married. In 2004 she became engaged to actor Michael Pitt, with whom she made Last Days about Kurt Cobain, and that relationship also did not lead to marriage. Another prominent actor in her romantic history is Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

Argento has two children, Anna Lou from her relationship with musician and actor Marco Castoldi, known as Morgan, who worked with Argento on the film Transylvania. “It was love at first sight,” she once said. Anna Lou is named after Argento’s sister, who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1994. And Ben, now 18, from her marriage to director Michele Civetta, from whom she divorced in 2013.

Argento also had a relationship with the renowned American chef Anthony Bourdain, who strongly supported her after she disclosed the rape case. Bourdain died by suicide in 2018, shortly after Argento broke up with him.

After years of wandering and travel, Argento now lives in the Italian capital. “I live in my apartment with my dog and my plants in the suburbs of Rome, where I feel at home. I am not someone who goes out much and I never go to the city center.”

At 50, Argento is full of insights and thoughts about life and people. “We human beings are just animals,” she declares. “You see it every time someone dies and leaves behind money and property, the heirs behave like animals and are willing to kill each other for the inheritance. I do not know what that is about. Money corrupts everything. Money means power. Look at monkeys: they can live in a tribe, but there will always be someone who wants to be the boss, and people kill for that. That is what we are. I read Freud’s musings, that human society forces people, men and women, into a certain order. Forces them to be orderly, like trees along an avenue. Without social rules, the kind of ‘love thy neighbor’ idea, we would go extinct. We can pretend we live in a society where we stand neatly in rows like trees along an avenue, but in practice we are completely wild, unrestrained, that is our true nature.”

“Fortunately society domesticated us, otherwise we would be killing each other for power and money,” she continues. “When it comes to the home, something very instinctive comes out of us, something that reminds us of the cave era, when you are ready to kill anyone who threatens your territory and family, or your name. It is crazy but also very real. We have to accept that this trait exists in our nature. Through the character I played in Death Has No Master, I also had to accept that there is a wild animal in me.”

Speaking of wild. When I first interviewed you, nearly 20 years ago, you said, “I am not afraid of anything except ants.” My feeling then was that you have a wild heart. Do you still? “No, but I still have a heart. Today it is tamed.”