**DIOR** jacket, skirt, and boots and **BVLGARI** necklaces, bracelets, and rings.

Imagine, for a moment —because that’s all we have in life , moments of here and now—that you have been given the rarefied gift of being an independent film director. Imagine, deeper, that you, the director, have also written the film, and the story is about your life. You have one chance to get this right. So, the obvious first step, you find an actor, but it can’t be just any performer. You need a sublime actor, one with sparkling eyes and wit as sharp as Great White teeth and a heart that can melt like butter at the drop of a hat.

You somehow, by cosmic coincidence, find that actor, and you tell her you need a certain shot, a certain scene. Not just any scene, but you need a scene of a heated argument. And not just any argument, but a break up—the culmination of the film’s spirit. YOU NEED THIS. DESPERATELY.

**CHANEL** jumpsuit and BVLGARI earrings and bracelet.

The best you can say as the director is, ‘I need you to laugh and then sort of melt and then cry… but not fully cry… I want just one tear to trickle slowly down your face like a drop of clear honey water… okay?’

The actor you hired smiles silently and nods and takes in your direction.

You nod back trepidatiously, unknowingly.

You call out to ready sound and ready speed and everyone on set gets whisper quiet and you call ACTION! and the scene plays out the argument and you watch your actor from behind the camera as the emotion unfolds and you are in awe.

Awe. Awe. Awe.

You are in AWE.

Because the actor delivers it. The actor erupts with laughter at her desperate predicament and then folds like a loaf of uneaten bread, and she lifts her head toward the camera and peers through the lens and into your eyes and you are in AWE, and in the back of your mind you hope and pray she lets out that one tear and you wait one millisecond… two millisecond… three millisecond…

And then your actor does it… it drops, the tear… falling like cascading heart music… Debussy of emotion… one tear… falling… the actor… delivers…

Well… okay. Here we are. Back to this moment. What you just read may have been imagined, but, actually, in essence, it actually happened. The actor in question is the 24-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman. The director you channeled was Lauren Hadaway. The film you pretended to be shooting was the actual film The Novice .

The Novice is an unnerving thriller of a kind of sports movie about rowing. Rowing? Yes, rowing. It makes for a dazzlingly wet spectacle. Isabelle Fuhrman plays a young woman on the edge of a dream. She’s obsessed with making the varsity squad and will bleed and cry and break and tear her body to no end to achieve her goal.

It is clear that this film would not have worked as well as it does if it didn’t have such a gutsy and capable actress like Fuhrman playing the role—and yes, she can make one tear fall out of her eye, and she does, in a moment of serious pathos… but… how??? Either way, we may never know how, but the proof is in the pudding in terms of honors and the success of her performance— if you’re into that sort of thing—because Fuhrman delivered and won Best Actress at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Fuhrman is a very interesting filmic creature, one we will be seeing for many years to come, as it feels like she is really just getting started, even though she has been working steadily for the last decade, at least. Notably, she has been dubbed a ‘Horror Icon’, which, if we think about it, we can probably count the amount of ‘Horror Icons’ in the world on two hands. She was dubbed thus for her role as Esther in the psychological horror Orphan from 2009. She was also in that little blockbuster called The Hunger Games—remember that? Fuhrman meanwhile delivered a spitfiring performance in the television show Masters of Sex, which people frankly adored.

**ZADIG & VOLTAIRE** dress and **BVLGAR**I earrings, necklace, and ring.

Oh, Fuhrman, we see you, and we will continue to see you. In the reflection of our silver screens. And imagine, dear reader, what Fuhrman might say about her film The Novice and the process of getting that tear to fall? Or don’t imagine, because Fuhrman is here on the telephone, with us in the here and now, letting us in on the dream, and we can just be captive: “I’m very much an open book. I have always been like that,” she admits, hair tied back, eyes wide and honest like wondrous plates of ivory, “Every time I read something, and I connect with the story, it never becomes difficult for me to reach certain emotional places within it, because I understand the feeling. In life, when I experience something that emotionally hits me, my entire body feels it, and I always feel like those are the moments I strive for as an actor. I can’t always reach them, especially if I have an expectation of reaching them, but there were moments I felt that during the shoot of The Novice that I was way more emotional than I thought I was going to be. To the point that I felt like I was falling into certain thought patterns as the character that were really dark, and not necessarily good for my own personal mental state. But I shake that off at the end of the day. When I would go home, I would put epsom salt in a bath, and eat so much food in the tub, and soak my sore muscles and say, ‘We’re gonna do it again tomorrow.’ And I’d wake up and be so excited for the day. I never really knew what to expect, which was wonderful about this film.”