Sandra Hüller on four films, Oscar talk and Marvel rumours

Sandra Hüller is crying. The actor who can convey every human emotion on screen is, in the flesh, in tears. "This is really hard for me," she says.

The subject is Fatherland, Paweł Pawlikowski's black-and-white drama in which Hüller plays Erika Mann, the German polymath driving her novelist father Thomas Mann through newly divided postwar Germany. The film resonates personally: Hüller grew up in East Germany and still lives in what was once the GDR.

"Fatherland has a grief that you feel clearer coming from the East," she says. "I'm just grateful Pawel gave space to this political idea that didn't survive in Germany, but is one maybe people can still think about. The socialist idea."

She wipes her eyes, then laughs. "You're going to say I cried, aren't you? I can see the headline."

How many films is that, exactly?

Fatherland is one of four high-profile releases for Hüller this year. Two of them, Fatherland and Rose, are black-and-white arthouse films built around her. Digger, Alejandro González Iñárritu's film with Tom Cruise as a cartoonish oil tycoon, fared poorly with critics and worse at the box office. Project Hail Mary, meanwhile, grossed $684m.

There may be a fifth: Marvel's relaunch, Avengers: Doomsday. Hüller neither confirms nor denies. "I heard that as well!" she says of Marvel's reputation for an egalitarian set vibe. "Which would show having a lot of money available doesn't have to mean abusing your power. And that would be a great thing. In theory."

In Project Hail Mary she played stone-faced mission controller Eva Stratt, a deft foil to Ryan Gosling's reluctant spaceman. The role echoed her 2016 breakthrough in Toni Erdmann — then she karaoked Whitney Houston's Greatest Love of All; now it was Harry Styles' Sign of the Times.

"I think Eva Stratt made some people uncomfortable," she says. "It can feel unusual to be governed by a woman."

What happened with Digger?

Hüller is happy to discuss the year's biggest flop. "We expected a strong reaction. It's a polarising movie. And a political movie, which we weren't able to say in interviews. For whatever reason," she says. "But personally – I was surprised by the harshness of the rejection. People really hated it!"

She still loves it. "Years from now, it will be seen as a document of our times." Rumours persist her role as Cruise's sister was heavily cut. "You'd have to talk to Alejandro." Are they friendly? "Of course!"

At the film's royal gala premiere in London, she waited through hours of royal introductions in a frock and aching feet. "I've never met any royalty in my life, so I was also fangirling." She can't recall what she discussed with Prince William and Catherine. "I was in shock!" Would she meet them again? "Of course! I want to have tea with them!"

What's next?

Rose, a stark 17th-century fable shot in Saxony-Anhalt — where the far-right AfD took 43.8% of the vote in September — casts her as a war veteran passing as a man. Preparing, she watched men closely. "As a woman, I rarely enter a room and think of it as a battleground. But male behaviour is so related to that."

The AfD shadows Fatherland too. "Fascism doesn't arrive overnight. It gets here slowly, in little doses," she says. "The question is what we do about it."

Oscar talk simmers again after her 2024 nominations run (The Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall). She shrugs it off. "I struggle with seeing myself as someone special. I still consider myself part of a group."

Fame has paused her stage career in Leipzig, where she co-founded the Farn Kollektiv. Her workaround: directing two new plays for the group — one about revenge, one about goodbyes. "I love the discussions. I love watching people invent. And we will see how long this wave continues."