Elizabeth Olsen got her start in the theater and her big break — all her
breaks — in independent films.
From “Martha Marcy May Marlene” to “Liberal Arts,” “Kill Your Darlings” to
the new period piece “In Secret,” the younger sister of the Olsen twins has put
commercial considerations on the back burner, even as she dipped her toe in
potentially more commercial films such as last fall’s “Oldboy.”
But now, with “Godzilla” due in theaters and a the role of Wanda Maximoff,
aka “Scarlet Witch” in the “Avengers” sequel which shoots this spring and
summer, “Lizzie” Olsen is stepping into the big budgets and big paydays of
mainstream Hollywood. Not that she sees it that way.
“I look at ‘Avengers’ as this amazing ensemble piece,” she says. “All these
wonderful actors, a fun character to play, and I shouldn’t have to do any
rigorous extra training for her. How could I say ‘No’?”
She thinks that “every job informs the next job.” And stardom is still new
enough to Olsen that every film is a “first.” Maybe she’s not checking off hash
marks on her movie making life list, but “In Secret” was, in a way, prep work
for taking on a comic book adaptation.
“I was in period costumes for ‘In Secret,’ I’ll be in something just as
elaborate for ‘Avengers.’ And ‘In Secret’ was the first time I’ve ever filmed on
a sound stage. That experience, acting in a space where your world is not 360
degrees around you, that’s got to be good preparation for an effects movie.
Right? I feel like every film is, whatever the rewards, a new experience and a
stepping stone for me.”
“In Secret” is based on the 19th century Emile Zola novel, “Therese Raquin,”
that was later a play. Olsen is at the center of a French love triangle,
unhappily married to a sickly cousin — a marriage arranged by her aunt — but
in love and lust with a rogue, an artist and friend of her husband.
The French novelist Zola, who died in 1902, has never enjoyed the popularity
or reputation of Dickens or Austen. Such works as “Germinal” have been filmed,
in French, but in the English speaking world he grows more obscure by the year. 
“I read the script right around the time I was taking an academic theater
class at school (NYU), ‘Realism and Naturalism,'” Olsen says. “Our first
assignment was to read the (1867) book and the play. Just a coincidence that I
had studied the play, academically, and looked at its structure and how the
story works. I am amazed we even got to study it. But that made me excited to
try and do it, so the offer was a case of perfect timing.”
“Therese,” as the planned film was called, would be directed by Charlie
Stratton, who had directed a play based on the novel. At one time, Kate Winslet
was set to star. At another time, Gerard Butler was to be the hunky artist and
Jessica Biel would be Therese, with Glenn Close as the cruel aunt who forces
Therese to marry her son.
Olsen came on board, despite that tortured production history, with Tom
Felton (Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter pictures) as the cousin/husband,
Oscar Isaac (“Inside Llewyn Davis”) as the tall, dark artist and Oscar winner
Jessica Lange as the heartless aunt who becomes Therese’s mother-in-law.

“The fact that Kate Winslet was originally attached to the film, and that she
ended up reading the book on tape, made me even MORE interested in it,” Olsen
says. “If somebody as good as her wanted to do it — and I listened to an
interview of her talking about why she wanted to make it — I had to make this
film. I have such huge respect for her and her taste.”
Early reviews have given the film’s “atmosphere of caged heat” a thumb’s up,
with The Playlist raving about Olsen and Isaac getting across the
“passions…brewing beneath the corsets and vests.”
Olsen, who laughs at the idea of doing her first “bodice ripper,” loved her
character’s “impulses” and romantic “cravings. She’s referred to as ‘beastial’
in the novel. Zola talks about her as being someone of this wild, natural
African descent. We don’t play that up, but the idea that she has this inner,
unexpressed life force about her that she can’t express really drives the
character.”
And just three years into her screen career, Olsen is “learning to appreciate
the feeling of safety I get from a good leading man.” In an overheated romantic
thriller like “Inner Secret,” “You have to know that everyone is respectful and
respected. There’s so many (romantic) moments on a film set that you have to
make sure it’s all just fun and games. You need to be able to rub off whatever
you were doing all day at the end of the day.”