Matt Dillon – In the French Film Being Maria, Veteran Actor Brings the Legendary Marlon Brando Alive

Matt Dillon

In the French Film Being Maria, Veteran Actor Brings the Legendary Marlon Brando Alive

by Brad Balfour

Of all the features in Film at Lincoln Center's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema (held March 6 – 16, 2025), Being Maria was the one that really piqued my interest. Freely adapted from Vanessa Schneider's 2018 memoir My Cousin Maria Schneider, this 2024 French biographical drama is based on the much-conflicted life of the late actress who died of cancer (1952–2011). It particularly dramatizes Schneider's experience working on the late Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci's controversial 1972 feature, Last Tango in Paris.

That film, an NC-17 rated erotic drama (it was initially X-rated), starred Marlon Brando, Schneider and Jean-Pierre Léaud. It portrays a recently widowed American who begins an anonymous sexual affair with a young Parisian woman. The film is quite explicit with nudity and a scene where Schneider is anally penetrated with butter by Brando. Though it was in the script Schneider had read, the novice actress was caught off guard by the fierceness of the scene and felt she wasn't treated with respect. She felt violated and it forever affected her and her career. Throughout her career, she passionately fought to elevate the role of women in the world of cinema.

Being Maria stars Romanian French actress Anamaria Vartolomei in the title role, with Céleste Brunnquell, Giuseppe Maggio, Yvan Attal, Marie Gillain, and Jonathan Couzinié in supporting roles. Directed by Jessica Palud from a screenplay by Palud and Laurette Polmanss, veteran Irish American actor Matt Dillon was cast as Brando. The 61-year-old has received various accolades, including two Independent Spirit Awards and one from the Screen Actors Guild alongside nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and a Grammy (for Best Spoken Word Album for narrating Jack Kerouac's "On the Road").

Recently, Dillon spoke before an audience at the Quad after Being Maria was screened shortly after the film opened in New York.

How did you get involved in this film?

I was living in Italy at the time. My Italian agent told me about the movie. Then Marielle and Jessica, the director, came to meet me. We had a long meeting. I read the script beforehand, and I liked it very much. I thought it was a very good translation. I have to be honest with you. Sometimes you read scripts that are translated into English and it's not always the best result. This was not the case. I liked the nuances. I was a little bit concerned that it might be a little too focused... that it might have too much of an axe to grind or something like that – but that wasn't the case.

It was just very truthful and very human. I liked it. I thought the writing was good. I liked the way in which Brando [is portrayed]. It's a very subjective story from Maria's point of view. We only see Brando in relation to her and in relation to the making of Last Tango in Paris.

I had a very good meeting with producer Marielle Duigou and Jessica. To be honest, I couldn't resist playing Marlon. [audience chuckling] It was too much of a temptation for me. I had to do that. I didn't even question whether I'd do it. Maybe that's stupid because when I got on the set, and we were shooting the infamous scene, I just went, "Oh, no. Why did you agree to do this?" But then I was happy to be a part of it.

Producer Marielle Duigou and Matt Dillon at the New York screening of Being Maria

How does one prepare to play Marlon Brando? That's sort of an insane undertaking.

Well, he is one of the most interesting people of the 20th century. And he's Brando. There's no way to really ... It's Marlon Brando! However, the good thing about playing somebody like Brando, or somebody that really exists, is that there's material. You have a lot to work with. Brando was a gift as an actor, especially in this film because of what they were doing. Even if they made this huge, disastrous mistake in what they did, what they were going for was deeply personal. That's where they went too far. Brando himself was also affected. Maria was really traumatized, and he himself regretted a lot of it. I think he revealed so much of himself.

However, that was good for me as an actor – to have that as source material. And the way he worked. Brando was very much from the inside out, which is the way I was trained. In preparation, there was a lot to work with. I liked the challenge. It did have its own challenges, of course.

What kind of conversations did you and Jessica have about the characterization of Brando? Obviously, the film primarily comes from Maria's viewpoint, but it was also quite a traumatizing experience for him, as well.

I think their intention was to provoke. Even though we say “yes, they were working that way, it was a different time.” It was a very controversial film at the time. It changed many things about films back then. There were things in that film that had never been done. I think there was a warrant for the arrest of Bertolucci, Maria and Brando in Italy, at one point. Italy destroyed all the prints there. It's ironic that it's controversial for an entirely different reason now.

It's been very polarizing. I think for me, if I may say, when I watched the film, I didn't see Maria as a young woman, because I was such a kid myself. I started acting young. And of course, early on, I watched Brando's works. Eventually it came to me when I was in high school. The movie affected me in a deep way because I was studying about the acting and the aesthetics and the performances. She was great.

Brando changed the game. I watched the film many times. It had such an impact on me. The one scene I didn't like in the film, and not for any moral reason, was the scene with the butter. It just seemed out of place to me. It's funny, because it was out of left field, in a way. That's how I felt about it. Oddly, I will say if I may, I feel like it's much more of a powerful scene in this film than it was in that film, because of what happened.

By the way, I am a big fan of Last Tango in Paris. I really believe that. Yet I'm very proud to have been part of this film because I think it gives voice to Maria for what she went through. I'm empathetic to that, because I was a young actor, very young, younger than her when I started. I didn't go through what she went through, but I understand that.

I'm empathetic to her objectification. I think she was marginalized. She was made to feel like... I don't think they even considered her side of things. I don't think that they were trying to do something diabolical. I think they were just inconsiderate and insensitive to what [she was feeling.] They pushed it too far. In that way, that's where I feel empathy for her, because I think that had to be very painful. I mean, obviously it was. We know that from seeing this film.

Matt Dillon and Anamaria Vartolomei in Being Maria

As a fan of Last Tango, was it kind of a surreal experience, recreating so many parts of it?

It was a big surprise for me. Not to recreate, because once you get to the set, we already know we're going to be doing that. But when it came to me, it was not something I ever expected that I would be involved in, anything related to that film. Yet that film had a big impact on me. So it was really a lot of things coming together at once.

On one side, there was Brando, and there was a young actor influenced by all of that. Being in one of her films, it really had an impact on me. Then there's this side of Maria, which was her trauma, and what she went through. Not that I suffered from anything like that, but the feelings that I had, and I am sensitive to that, because I started young. It's something that I'm very aware of.

How was it for you working with Anamaria [Vartolomei] who played Maria? She's absolutely phenomenal in this as Maria – especially for you, Matt. You shoot some very intense scenes with her.

I love Anamaria, and wish she was here. She was with us in Lincoln Center a couple of days ago, but now she's in Japan. I just love working with her. She was great, and it was a really nice experience with her.

She's a fighter. She gets better as the movie goes. She's so good. Though she doesn't look like Maria Schneider, it doesn't matter, because she's so good. I loved working with her, but I was there only a week, and it was the toughest week.

Anamaria Vartolomei and Matt Dillon in Being Maria

Matt, you've had such an incredible career. So many people look to you as an acting legend in the way that people look at Brando. Was there anything that you felt came up for you that maybe you haven't already unearthed throughout your career playing him? I'm sure you've learned so much throughout, but did you feel like you learned anything specifically from playing this role?

I learned some French (laughter), and then they cut it out of the movie! I had to learn some French. I know from experience that first of all, Brando spoke really good French. Really good, in fact. I think he was fluent in several languages. He was amazing in that way.

I don't speak any French. I had to learn things, not phonetically, because I knew what I was saying, of course. But that aside, to me, there was so much there to work with. I like that as an actor. You don't often get to play somebody who's a real person, so you have this source material to work with. You really disappear more in the character, which I liked being able to do. It's interesting because it's the opposite of what Brando would do. Brando really was revealing a lot of himself, and that's what's so powerful about that performance. I don't know if I said it right. I always like to think I learned something from everything.

It's a hard thing, because you have to do that. We all know Marlon Brando. How many people do a Marlon Brando impersonation? (Audience laughs.) It's just through him because you can't avoid him. You can't say, "Well, I'm not doing Marlon Brando," and then finding that balance. The thing with Brando is that his inner life was so strong. So, yeah, I had that to work with – what he brought, that's why he was the greatest.

At one time, I played the alter ego of [the raunchy beat poet] Charles Bukowski in a film called Factotum. Have you seen that? That was great for me. Another surprise, you know. But I was like, I can't. I'd read him when I was younger and I was like, "I can't do this. I don't look like him." Then I agreed to do it. I thought it was good, the script and all. I spoke to Linda Bukowski and said, "Oh, this is great, because it's like the alter ego. It's not really Bukowski." She goes," Oh no, this is very much like him. This is Charles, this is Hank. you know."

I'm like, "Oh, okay, okay, I've got to go there." It's nice because there's plenty of material again. You know not to do an impersonation. It is an alter ego. Another surprise, I don't think I'll get anything better than that. The same with Brando.