Written by Annie Barber.
In 2023, Vanessa Eng found herself waiting in line to hear director Yorgos Lanthimos talk at London’s BFI Film Festival. Just months later, she secured her breakout role in one of his films, getting to work alongside other big names in the film industry like Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, and Alicia Silverstone. While we talk, Eng is laid-back and chatty. But don’t let her relaxed nature fool you — she is driven and very hard working. She started out in acting by taking on roles in student films, and now she’s ready to take on the world after her big-screen debut in Lanthimos’ most recent feature film ‘Bugonia’.
Taking it back to her early years, Eng reveals that she’s wanted to be an actor at a young age when she watched ‘The Cheetah Girls’ on her grandmother’s TV: “I remember watching and being like, ‘oh my God. I wanna be them so bad.’ Like ‘I wanna be a pop star. I wanna be snatched from nothing and thrown into this big spotlight and perform in front of people on top of taxis and wear cool headbands’ and you know, all of that kind of stuff. That’s kind of the moment where I was like, ‘I would love to be on tv’, but you know, nobody really took me seriously. I think [that’s because] when you’re a kid, everybody wants to be a movie star”.
She admits that this meant that she didn’t initially pursue the arts. Her first role was starring in a school production of the Wizard of Oz as Dorothy when she was in fourth grade. “Obviously nobody attended and there were like 10 kids who were forced into it because they had nothing else to do and they needed to do all these like extracurriculars at after school. They gave me the lead role mostly because I was loud and obnoxious, and I remember being like, ‘I don’t think that’s what Dorothy is, I’ve seen the Wizard of Oz’… but I think it was because they knew I wouldn’t be afraid to do it in front of people.” She reveals that the teachers were wrong: “I had the worst stage fright. I mean, I did it, but it was not good, and I remember beating myself up over how bad I thought I did. So I hung up that cape of ‘I can be an actor’ real quick after that and it wasn’t until grade nine when my friend basically tricked me into auditioning for the school musical that I picked up acting again. That’s when I realised like, okay, this isn’t actually that bad. I think it came back to me at a time when I was ready to accept it and it really took me out of my shell and gave me that confidence.”
Having been raised in an Asian immigrant family, she says that her parents expected her to become a doctor or a lawyer, which influenced her to take another break from acting. However, when she moved to London after the pandemic, she decided to delve into it again: “I started taking all of these acting courses whenever I had time in between my studies, and I did a lot of unpaid student short films to just see whether or not this was something I liked to do and it absolutely was… I think I just got lucky in that regard.”
Eng’s educational achievements are incredibly impressive. She did a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Literature, as well as two graduate degrees, one in International Security and the other in Foreign Affairs. She went into working in international affairs straight after wrapping on ‘Bugonia’, which is a testament to her strong work ethic. I ask her if her literature degree influences her approach to acting and the answer is a resounding ‘yes’: “I think it really has given me the ability to empathise with a lot of characters I normally wouldn’t be able to. I think when you are exposed to different ways of writing and different ways of developing characters, that also kind of affects how you approach your own life and also the work that you do, at least in acting… I think it’s all very interlinked, so it makes sense to talk about it. [Especially] studying political science because I started school in 2016 and that’s when the whole Trump Hillary campaign was happening. It was just a lot, and I think literature offers that form of escapism, that finding yourself in a role in, in the acting world is very parallel to, so it was always nice there. [It’s] very much two sides of the same coin, I would say.”
One of the student films that Eng starred in is called ‘Bi-Nocular Panic’ and is about a young woman who comes to some realisations about her sexuality while people-watching. She talks about her experiences filming ‘Bi-Nocular Panic’ and ‘Bugonia’, saying that the differences between the two were stark. Speaking about the former, she says “it was obviously like quite low budget. We literally filmed over the course of three or four hours. It was a quick in and out. We had one camera, one sound guy, and so it was very. Straightforward in that regard of being like, we have this time crunch. Let’s do A, B, and C. And so I had been so used to all of those short films and how to do, how to conduct myself there and how the crew would conduct itself around the set as well.” Contrasting it with the latter, she reveals that “being on ‘Bugonia’ was overwhelming in the best way. I had a car come pick me up every day. I thought I would have to show up, just sit by myself, but they were like, ‘why would you do that when the driver’s outside?’ and I’m like, ‘right, okay’. Before I would even open the door, somebody opened the door for me and was like, ‘here’s your coffee miss’, ‘here’s your trailer’ and I go, ‘what the frick.’”
She continues, saying that “being on a set of Bugonia was like totally mind blowing. I just could not believe that was, I guess, my first job, and that was the first ever year that I decided to kind of pursue acting a bit as a career. I had found out about this role from an open casting call, and I didn’t know who it was for or what it was about, I was just really thrilled that somebody was giving me a chance and taking me seriously”. She adds that, along with all of the great benefits of filming on a high-budget film, she experienced some imposter syndrome. She says “being on this big set where clearly there was money that went into it as opposed to all of these like unfunded student shorts was zero to 100, you know? It felt like I was in the fast lane a bit.”
Eng’s character in ‘Bugonia’, Corey, is the secretary of the CEO, who is played by Golden Globe and Oscar winning actress Emma Stone. She says that portraying a secretary “wasn’t really hard to turn on. One, because I have done so much secretarial work as a past job, and I’ve had to wear so many different hats of being a secretary. Like some bosses are quite particular about what they want; others have no idea what they want.” Next, she turns to what it was like to work with the film’s cast and crew, saying that the director “has this really nice trust in who he has in his cast. So I did [the scene] a couple of times and they were like, ‘okay, maybe if we do it less than that. Just whatever that means to you, just do it less’ and I did, and that’s actually the take that they went with, which is really cool because I definitely felt more comfortable there. It was just easy to play off of [Emma Stone] because she’s just obviously such a seasoned actor. So I think I got quite lucky to have [her] as my first scene partner”.
The film’s director, Yorgos Lanthimos, is renowned for his distinct and experimental film style. Eng didn’t know he was going to be the director of the film, having found out about the role from about it from an open casting call, and only found out when casting director, Sally McCleary, phoned her to tell her she had got the part: “she called me up and she was going through [the contract] because I didn’t have an agent at the time and she was like, ‘Yorgos really liked your tape’ and, you know that meme where there’s like a record scratch and you’re kind of like, ‘I’m sorry, what?’ and so straight away, that played in my brain and I go, ‘I’m sorry, did you just say Yorgos?’ and she goes, ‘oh man, I forgot to tell you. Yeah, like the director is Yorgos Lanthimos, your co-star, by the way, is Emma Stone’ and I literally sat there, I put her on mute for a second and I screamed… I was just like ‘my favourite director on the first try? I must have done something great in my past life or something to deserve that kind of luck this time around!’” She says that working with him was a dream and that his personality somewhat surprised her: “you would never expect this normal, funny, super kind guy to come up with the weird shit that he does. He is just so sweet.”
Eng’s cast mates in the film include Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, and Alicia Silverstone, all of whom she says she greatly enjoyed learning from: “they’re all very different, I think, technically as actors and so it was really interesting to see the process that they go through, [in terms of] staying in character… [and] changing up something just in case Yorgos didn’t like a way that they were doing something. Being able to see that flexibility, I think, really taught [me] that you can’t go into things with a certain perception.” She adds that seeing the actors have trust in themselves and the acting process helped her with the feelings of imposter syndrome that she experienced on set: “I think I’ve really learned to kind of trust myself in that process. I don’t think I’m the greatest actor, like I am just starting out. It’s very much just shooting in the dark but I’ve really learned that it’s okay to screw up, but it’s also okay to feel like you did something right. So I think the biggest lesson I took from everybody was just trusting yourself, especially because you have to remind yourself you got this job because somebody saw something they liked.”
The film is an adaptation of the 2003 South Korean film, ‘Save the Green Planet!’, which Eng watched after she finished filming. She says “I didn’t want to have a copycat situation… I find that if I watch a movie, it’s hard when you do, for instance, some sort of remake or adaptation of it, not to copy the characters who you’d seen before.” She mentions that the film’s writer, Will Tracy, who wrote ‘The Menu’ and several episodes of ‘Succession’, was also careful not to make the film a copy and paste of the 2003 film. In some ways, ‘Bugonia’ is a much more current film than its predecessor, as it covers topics like climate change, corporate corruption, and the normalisation of conspiracy theories.
Eng gives a very philosophical and thought through answer to the first staple Karma! question, ‘if you or your art were a colour, what would it be?’ She says ‘translucent’, because “depending on which way the light hits, it’s a different colour so I would say that, I’d like to think that in any kind of situation, I can mould myself to fit, without having to change who I am.” When I ask her for a song recommendation for Karma!s readers, her answer is equally thought out. After scrolling through her Spotify, she settles on ‘Separated’ By IAMNOBODI. She says “it’s good for the day, it’s good for the afternoon, it’s good for the evening. It gets me hyped up!” We continue chatting about music and she gives a bonus recommendation, Hua Li’s first full length album ‘Dynasty’, which she says she discovered because she went to her local record store when she lived in Paris and asked the person working there if he had any “non-mainstream” recommendations. She says “I didn’t even listen to it. I bought it, I brought it home, I played it, and it kept playing.”
Vanessa Eng is smart, charismatic, and talented. Her role in ‘Bugonia’ is sure to be the first of many. Yorgos Lanthimos’ ‘Bugonia’ is set for release in UK cinemas on Friday the 31st of October. Grab a ticket to see it at your local cinema now so you can see Vanessa in her starring role! Follow her on Instagram and check out her IMDb to see what she gets involved in next.
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