Felicity Jones and Kerry Condon on the Moving Naturalism of ‘Train Dreams’

“We didn’t have any interaction prior to the shoot, which I think was by design, partly for Joel’s character emotionally,” Jones tells Vogue. “I filmed all our scenes at the beginning of the shoot. It was like its own enclosed film. I remember Clint saying, ‘The idea and the feeling is that she is gone, and that part is over.’”

In fact, the full cast, which also includes William H. Macy, Clifton Collins Jr., and Paul Schneider, only got to meet when they attended the film’s Toronto Film Festival premiere. “Apart from Joel, the rest of us were all getting to know each other as we were doing press,” Jones continues. En masse, they made an impressive group: “Everyone who’s in it is an actor that you’ve at some point gone, ‘They’re excellent,’” Jones adds. Here, both actors share with Vogue their experience working on the film.

Vogue: What was most surprising and exciting for you when you saw the film for the first time, and your work in relation to one another?

Kerry Condon: I’ve told Felicity this so many times, but that first scene in The Brutalist is so good, when she’s sitting at the table and it’s all kind of a two-shot. So I remember that I had just seen that and knew Felicity was going to be great in the movie. It was kind of a given and I was just glad to be in a movie with good people.

Felicity Jones: I felt similarly. Clint’s got good taste. He’s very hands-off and trusting of his cast. He lets you get on with it and steers when he needs to. I’ve been describing him as a swan: quite serene on the surface, seemingly unflappable and nothing’s a problem. And then underneath, there’s all sorts of things going on, but he doesn’t trouble you with that. A natural leader.

KC: He was very grateful that I did the movie, and I thought that was so, so sweet. There was the kind of energy most great directors you work with have, like, Thank you for doing my movie. I always think that’s a really nice quality in somebody.

While your characters don’t share scenes, they jointly represent some of the themes that I responded to the most in this movie: resilience, love, friendship, grief… What was it like for you to read the screenplay? What did you respond to most in it?