Lady Gaga is further breaking down House of Gucci and how she channeled Patrizia Reggiani, the woman who was famously convicted of arranging the murder of her ex-husband, Italian fashion heir Maurizio Gucci. The “Applause” singer also revealed why she turned to acting in the first place, saying it allowed her to escape a traumatic childhood.
Speaking to Jake Gyllenhaal for Variety’s “Actors on Actors” segment, Gaga admitted she wanted to become an actress long before she wanted to pursue singing. “Since I was a little girl, I was so mercilessly bullied, and I had a really strict upbringing. So acting for me was a way to totally escape who I was,” she revealed. “And I think I’ve done it my whole career with taking on the artistic persona of whatever music I’m writing and living inside my art. And for films, it’s different, but it’s not.”
Part of that escape, she says, is becoming the characters she plays. The Oscar winner revealed new information about how she transformed into Patrizia, saying she studied animals.
“I studied a house cat for the beginning of the film. And then at the funeral, when she sees Al Pacino’s character, she suddenly turns into a fox because she’s hunting now,” she described. “I watched foxes hunt and they’re really funny, because they hunt mice in the snow and they leap up and they burrow. I actually did exercises in my hotel room where I would be the animal.”
The Grammy winner studied one more animal to complete Patrizia’s transformation — the panther. “It was because the panther moves slowly, but then when it kills its prey, it is really violent and it’s really ugly, and then after, it cries,” she revealed.
“I chose these animals as a way to map the physicality of the character,” said Gaga.
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