Fighting for Survival Alongside Antonia Bogdanovich
Paste talks to the filmmaker about her debut as director, and what it means to both live up to her father's name and be a woman in the industry.
Bogdanovich is a last name many cinephiles know well. With it come two Oscar nominations and well-respected titles like The Last Picture Show, Mask and Targets. Writer-director-actor Peter Bogdanovich could claim all the credit if it weren’t for another filmmaker by the same name making her own way into the industry: Antonia, daughter of the famous filmmaker, has just released her feature debut, Phantom Halo.
After acting in films in her childhood alongside Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine, and then going on to study at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, Antonia worked in journalism for LA Weekly and CBS. All along, she possessed a love for the theatre, directing regional shows in Charleston, South Carolina. But, as she puts it, “I think I always knew I’d go back to film.”
With Phantom Halo, she explores close-knit familial dynamics, namely between brothers Beckett (Luke Kleintank) and Samuel Emerson (Thomas Brodie-Sangster). Struggling to support themselves as their alcoholic father, Warren (Sebastian Roché), continues to gamble, the boys turn to Shakespeare and comic books for comfort, until Beckett gets himself mixed into a dangerous counterfeiting operation. The brothers must step up and make crucial choices for their family
Paste had a chance to talk with Bogdanovich about her winding road to filmmaking, her experience in theatre and her devoted affinity for Lady Macbeth.
Paste: You’ve worked as an actress, a journalist and now a filmmaker. Did you always know you wanted to end up making your own films?
Antonia Bogdanovich: I wanted to be a filmmaker. I didn’t necessarily know I wanted to be a director. I thought about producing, I probably thought about doing something that involved filmmaking. I remember telling my mother when I was fifteen, “I don’t want to go to college. I just want to work.” That’s what I did for about three years and then I decided I didn’t know about life! I went back to school to educate myself, but I think I always knew I’d go back to film.
Paste: You went to Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to study acting—it’s an amazing program. Was there a moment in your training where you had an epiphany that you didn’t want to just pursue acting?
Bogdanovich: My teacher at RADA, who directed a bunch of plays in West London, he was really critical of my work, mostly in that he kept saying, “You’re directing and you need to be an actress and take direction!” I would get quite a bit that my temperament was [that of] a director, but I just completely ignored it because of my dad. I definitely did not have the temperament as an actress because I just couldn’t take the rejection. You just keep getting rejected because you’re not physically right [for the parts]. I was a singer and dancer but I wasn’t an actress.