Joan Allen Hasn’t Retired—but There’s a Reason You Don’t See Her Much Anymore

You haven’t made a movie since Room, which was filmed more than a decade ago. Will you make another one?

I don’t know. It’s all changed so much, and so much of it is television, streaming, those kinds of things. There are a lot fewer out there, and there’s so many that are made for Netflix and Hulu and all these things—like that seems to be the lion’s share of what’s out there these days.

A lot of your best films—I don’t know that they’d get made today.

Exactly.

That makes me melancholy, saying that out raucous.

I know, I know. That’s why I’m glad to see this year something like—well, I loved Anora. That’s the kind of film I’m, like, thank God they’re making a movie like that. Independent, smaller.

Some of the films that I did were in-between. They were not like a $5 million budget back in the day—which would mean something else financially today—but they were medium-sized. Where’s that? Like, I was shocked when I read that The Brutalist filmed in 34 days.

And in Budapest, and for under $10 million.

That’s shocking to me. Because, well, it also has such an epic feel, and it’s long, and the score is so bombastic and bold.

Did you feel, at the height of your career when you were working more regularly, that the kinds of movies you were making were falling away? Did you notice the business changing?

Yeah. I don’t really know the analysis of the cycles of the entertainment business, et cetera, but the genesis of Netflix really changed it. Perhaps that whole part of the industry went from these independent films to, I don’t know, the streaming services and making things for Netflix and Hulu and things like that. I actually remember when House of Cards was the first one. I thought, Wow, they’re doing that for Netflix—and that’s not a film. Those are film actors.

I don’t know of any actor who’s had a four-year film run that I love as much as yours, from 1995–98: Nixon, The Crucible, The Ice Storm, and Pleasantville. And talk about range—those are completely different roles.

Those years, those were amazing. Wow. Those were something. I was amazed at the people that I got to work with. That was quite a period, and all really close together. I thought Pat Nixon had its own challenge because she was a real person and I needed to try not to do an impression of her, but to get the essence of her. But each one of them were coming on the tail end of each other.