The Menu Actress Hong Chau has had a busy year and embraced playing various characters. In her recent films, Chau has depicted a self-absorbed artist in Showing Up, a sinister Maître d’ in The Menu, and a concerned nurse in The Whale. In order to get into these roles, she has drawn from personal experience and aesthetic decisions, such as how her character may wear their hair.

During a new interview with Variety, Chau says that when she read the character description for Elsa in The Menu, “a severe Scandinavian woman, which obviously isn’t me,” she decided to ask director Mark Mylod if she could have a tight bun and angular bangs to embody the character.

In order to get into character for the nurse in The Whale, Chau reflected on her recent experiences in the hospital while pregnant with her daughter. She was enamored by the many kind nurses that helped care for her and remembered loving their tattoos. So, in order to embody them, she had makeup artists incorporate tattoos for her character even though they aren’t seen on screen.

“You don’t really see them on screen,” says Chau. “It was just for me, but taking the time with those small details really helps.”

Chau says that she was able to harness her approach to building characters by learning from her co-stars, including Joaquin Phoenix (The Joker), Reese Witherspoon (The Morning Show), and Josh Brolin (Deadpool 2) on her first film, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice.

Hong Chau is Busier Than Ever

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Variety reports that Chau has a laid-back approach to her career. “I don’t feel like I’m really pushing for anything,” she says. “I’m not on the phone hounding my agent.”

This approach has Chau getting more work than ever despite her early reservations about taking on the nurse role. When Chau’s agent first approached her to be in The Whale, Chau said she was not interested since she had a newborn and thought the script was dark. However, she was soon persuaded and is now offered more roles than ever.

Chau has a full plate of upcoming projects, which she is reasonably tightlipped on. Chau will be seen in the upcoming Wes Anderson film Asteroid City, scheduled for a June 2023 release. Chau will also star in Yorgos Lanthimos’s film And, which is currently in post-production with the plot under wraps. The release date for And has yet to be announced.