Center of Attention

In a luminous new film, Past Lives, actor Greta Lee steps into the spotlight.

- Jen Wang

HER TIME

“Nora’s the most normal human being I’ve ever played,” says Lee, 40, of the character at the center of Past Lives. Givenchy dress. Photographed by Tess Ayano.

On the first day of shooting Past Lives—the film-festival breakout about a woman torn between the two loves of her life—its star Greta Lee was caught unprepared when a production assistant asked if she had a “set drink.” Lee had never heard of such a thing. “I’m like, ‘Do you mean over there?’ ” she remembers asking, and pointing in the direction of a craft services table. “I could feel my own panic, like, I’m not playing this part correctly. We’d just started filming, and I felt I had so much to prove.”

So Lee, a 20-year veteran of film, television, and the stage, did what any resourceful person would when struck by the bolt of impostor syndrome. “I went to my trailer, shut the door, and googled ‘Brie Larson, Marvel, set drink.’ Then I came back and told them it’s this energy seltzer water,” she recalls. “They bought me, like, 30 cases of this water that I never want to see again. It’s so activating, it changes your personality.”