Finding Forster

Marc Forster understands pain. It’s knowledge he’s had since childhood, when a globetrotting mother and physician father left him in the care of a full-time nanny, and a schizophrenic older brother forced him to ponder life’s deeper questions.

To escape the loneliness, Forster invented imaginary worlds under the snowcapped Alpine peaks near his family home in Davos, Switzerland—kingdoms where heroes performed courageous acts and good always triumphed over evil.

“We’re all storytellers to a certain degree,” says Forster earnestly. “We’re actors in our own stories. Every day we make decisions as to how our movies turn out.”

It’s no wonder that the man who eventually directed Monster’s Ball—which made Halle Berry the first African-American woman to win a Best Actress Oscar—chose to go into filmmaking. After all, films provide not only a blank slate for the imagination, but also the perfect escape from reality.

“Every creative person is inspired by parts of their own life and experiences,” Forster says, sitting on the sofa of his suite in Atlanta’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel. He’s here promoting his latest film, Finding Neverland, which stars Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet. “I grew up trying to escape day-to-day life.”

Forster is a quiet, unassuming man. Wearing jeans and a faded blue T-shirt advertising Paul Frank, he moves softly around the room, shyly smiling and offering me a drink.

He’s living the dream of any filmmaker, surrounded by A-list stars and sought out by successful producers. But despite his achievements, which afford Forster little time to enjoy his beachfront home in Venice, Calif., the 35-year-old director is nervous. He sits on the edge of his chair and rubs his hands together, speaking with quiet intensity.

“The ultimate test is your own death. You have to let go of your body,” he muses. “Life is about being in the moment and letting go.”

He was close to his brother, Wolfgang, he says, who committed suicide several years after Forster graduated from film school.

“Wolfgang was a brilliant intellectual—a genius—but the medicine destroyed his mind. It numbs you,” Forster explains, his blue eyes widening for just a moment. “He loved me especially, because I took him seriously. He trusted me more than anyone else. We had a bond.”

It’s not surprising that Forster’s next film, Stay, now in post-production, tells the story of a psychologist whose suicidal client makes bizarre predictions that come true.

“We’re all slightly schizophrenic as human beings,” says Forster, lifting two slender shoulders. “We just don’t share it.”

His brother’s suicide, he says, was painful, but like everything else in Forster’s life—including his father’s passing in 1998—he moved on from it, choosing to focus on his work.

He cloaks the pain well, keeping it deep within his reserved manner, but it continually hovers, pulling back and then reaching forward again, as if touching his elbow to remind him of its presence. But always Forster ignores it, shrugging off its clutches.

“You can’t live in the past,” he says. “We only have the now. The past forms us, but it’s not relevant to the present.”