Ástrid Bergés-Frisbey Interview: THE VAULT

The Vault has landed on demand and in select theaters. The heist film follows a crew of master thieves who plan to steal a legendary lost treasure buried in a vault underneath the Bank of Spain while the whole country watches the World Cup.

Ástrid Bergés-Frisbey (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, I Origins) co-stars in the film as Lorraine, one of the crew members on the heist. I got the opportunity to speak with her about the film and her career. Here is our interview:

What made you want to join this movie?

I like Jaume Balagueró’s work. I have seen it in the past by and I thought it was a very kind of smart movie that would be entertaining. I like the fact that it was all public-oriented as well and it was a very different movie from the previous movies I did in the past regarding like the movies were very different and I thought it was very important too. And I really like Lorraine as a character and I really liked the challenge of trying to make her very special. I tried to make her special a little bit.

That’s awesome. That leads me to my next question, which is what was your sort of process and your favorite part about bringing the character of Lorraine to life?

It was quite tough. I had a lot of accent work on Lorraine. I tried to give her a specific voice, a very specific way of talking. She‘s almost like a secret weapon to Walter and she’s sort of that, and she’s always like this unexpected person during the film and it’s a little bit how I developed the character into just make her where you don’t expect her a little bit.

But it was quite tough because at first, when I agreed to do the film, I thought the movie was…filmed in England in a English speaking country and it ended up being filmed fully in Madrid and it was quite challenging for me to be working on an English-speaking character in my birth country with everyone around me speaking Spanish all day long because obviously all the cast is for the most part English-speaking, like Axel [Stein] and Luis Tosar too and José Coronado who are Spanish but my main co-stars are all English but the entire crew was Spanish and would obviously address to me in Spanish which was something very hard for me and like I remember one of the first things I did was when I met Jaume is I said, “I’m sorry, you’re going to hate me but I can only speak to you in English because there’s no way I will be able to deliver you Lorraine the way she is if I speak to you all day in Spanish.”

Like, the fact that she disguised herself into this Italian woman in the beginning is something that we found later. It was not originally there when I agreed to do the film and it’s something we added later and it’s something that I had to develop which was really hard for me. If it wasn’t for like some of my previous work I did in Italian, it would have been really hard because something is creating accents in your main language and something is to create a different accent than the one you have.

Like obviously, me, I can work on my accent to just go more towards a British or more towards an American accent but obviously doing like something that it’s a foreign accent but not my own is very very hard to do and so it was quite a challenging part for me.

Well, I mean, I think that you did a great job in just playing this character and like especially with your accent, like, I wasn’t even able to tell that you were playing that character and so I want to compliment you for that, and I also want to ask what was it like working on this set with Jaume Balagueró and all these actors?

Each of them is very different. I gotta say, it was not so easy sometimes. You know, I was the only woman for the most part. Famke [Janssen] is there, but when the group is acting together, it was only these men characters and myself, and like my Lorraine character. And it was really interesting to just have her like integrate the group as another character and not only the woman of the group and that was really interesting and so that I was only able to just do together integrating myself to like how the group and what everyone had put together for the characters for the respective characters.

Jaume is a very sweet intelligent director who is very, I would say very patient and very respectful. He tried to just always satisfy everyone as a coherent group talking about actors as well as [the] crew. And about the rest of the cast, Freddie’s a very pleasant person to work with. He’s really sharp as an actor. He knew exactly what he wanted to give and to put together for the part and he was really precise and it’s always been really pleasant to work with somebody else besides. Same with Walter.

I have a special admiration for Luis Tosar. Besides the actor, I thought you know, to me, he’s like this character you get really attached to. He’s the sensitive one and I really enjoyed seeing him work, I’ve got to say. And Sam [Riley] was really helpful for me. He really helped me out sometimes; it was really difficult and he was really helping everyone and really pleasant to work with. Yeah, in general, it was a very peaceful, respectful, focused set.

Well, that’s awesome. I think that you know, a lot of your camaraderie really shows. This whole movie is about this team of people who are trying to break into this vault and I mean since this is a heist movie, I got to ask: have you ever stolen anything in real life?

No.

Never?

Not that I want to tell you.

That’s okay. Don’t say anything that will get you in jail. Now, what is your favorite role that you played your entire career?

That’s a weird question. The first lead character I had to play was this really intense really determined and really active and really creative and with a strong personality character and it was like a movie for TV. It was a historical piece and I had the pleasure to co-star [with] Ariadna Gil, who is an amazing Spanish actress, and a lot of incredible actors all around us, and French, for the most part.

And it’s a character that I learned a lot because I had to work something with my accent. Like something that, for instance, I worked on with Lorraine, and years later, I used it again…this is something I learned working on that job and the fact that this character — her name was Isabel — she grows up a lot during the film, like 10 years pretty much pass between the first scene and the last scene with me on camera and I learned a lot with her so I have a special feeling towards her obviously.

I mean I’m definitely interested in exploring a little bit more about your career and I do want to ask: is there anything that you’re currently working on or would like to do next?

Until things are not properly, like right now, I find the period of time very bizarre regarding this. For instance, The Vault…was supposed to be released six months ago. I don’t feel comfortable about talking [about] what’s next into the future until like it’s already here. Because who knows what’s up in one month and who knows what’s up in six months?

I would hold onto this and we'll see each other again, perhaps, for it.

Yeah, hopefully, because The Vault is coming out and I would like a lot of people to watch this movie because it’s very very exciting and I think you did a great job in it. I had a great time interviewing you today and to everyone watching, The Vault comes out on demand and in select theaters on March 26th. Thank you so much and have a great day.

Thank you.