Oh, Nina Hoss’s eyes—there’s always a whole movie in them. They ask questions, cast suspicions, fall in love, spill secrets. They first came to prominence in her native Germany, particularly in the films of Christian Petzold, for which Hoss has served as his ever-complex muse. In 2014’s Phoenix, she played a concentration-camp survivor shielding her identity from the man who turned her in, until a corker of a last scene—a feat of performance calibration that the Washington Post called “breathtaking.” (She won several U.S. critics awards for best actress, including from Toronto and Seattle, for the film.)

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She takes audiences on a similar ride in Todd Field’s masterful Tár, right down to another delicious closer. The difference this time? Finally, Americans are meeting Hoss’s gaze. She’s been working in English-language projects for over a decade now, but it’s taken until now for a stateside director to realize her singular, mesmerizing quality on camera. Hoss plays Sharon, enigmatic wife to Cate Blanchett’s renowned conductor, Lydia, in Tár. They share both domestic and professional lives: Sharon is First Violin in Lydia’s Berlin orchestra, a woman of her own musical ambition and obsession. Their very livelihoods are tied up in one another—a fact that turns dangerous as the film teases Lydia’s downfall.

Lydia, we learn, has wielded her power to troublesome ends, as allegations of grooming younger female musicians surface against her. How much does Sharon know? How much does she care? How will she step in when the reckoning finally comes? These questions loom in the background, unspoken, but prove utterly central to the film via Hoss’s every expression. The camera can’t stay away from her eyes. They propel the narrative, subtly, and mark a major moment for a major actor in the process.

Hoss was in Telluride for the first time this year, joining Blanchett and Field for the film’s U.S. premiere. She mingled with fellow actors and filmmakers and fest-goers as we met, at an outdoor brunch thrown by the film’s studio, Focus Features. We snuck away to a table for an in-depth conversation on her exceptional career—and this thrilling next chapter.

Vanity Fair: Your performance is very slippery and quiet, until your big final scene. But there’s very rich characterization throughout, just in us watching you.

Nina Hoss: You just hope, when you don't have so many lines to express it—when you're shooting it, you never know: Will this gaze be there in the end?

Were you surprised at how much Todd leaned into Sharon’s gaze? Because she really is kind of an audience proxy, in the final cut.

Yeah. I was happy, because it creates this character. That character has her own life. It was just an amazing project to work on, especially also with Cate, of course, who gave it all this intensity that I have to position myself [opposite], because Lydia leads the whole thing. There are less women in the position of First Violin than there are female conductors. That is the position orchestras don't like to give to females yet. So that Sharon has this position in the greatest orchestra of the world means a lot and must have been so hard for her to achieve, and to keep that position, you are not done. Everyone in the string section has an eye on your position.You have to prove yourself again and again and again to stay there. That to me was also so informative, who Sharon is, in the juxtaposition to Lydia. That's where they meet, I think, in this passion for music.

Todd Field has said you challenged him to some degree on Sharon’s role in the story, particularly one scene—I assume it’s that final confrontation?

He gave me the script and he said, “Whatever you feel, tell me, because I'm not finished with Sharon.” Because the point of focus was of course Lydia, everything was there for her. But I thought there were little moments and things that you could tweak in the scenes where I knew I would have a better chance to position Sharon in a stronger way, in a more exciting way. He was super open and collaborative. We sat down in a café in Berlin. He was writing down all these things, the ideas we had. It was about the last scene, yes. But we went through all the scenes and then checked where I could squeeze out some more detail for Sharon. Yeah, that is something I do. That's when I thrive. You’ve just got to push in and put your standpoint there and try to make it work.

But is that something that you have to learn as an actor, to advocate for your characters? You’ve had many great roles over your career at this point, so I’m wondering when that kind of process started feeling comfortable for you.

Well, it’s so-so, because the more you know, the more can go wrong with it. So it gets also more scary. That's what film is also about: You have to put yourself in this moment where you don't judge yourself, you're just really open, free and aware and all the senses are open and you just let go. And that is something you achieve as an actor, because it is a purely collaborative work, I find, only if you feel completely trusted and carried. If you feel the first audience, which is the director, is excited to see what's about to happen, and if you have that feeling, then you just want to go there. This idea of putting fear in actors or things like that, the old way, it might work in places, but I never believed in it. And I think I always took myself out of situations where people tried working like that.

Your character in this, it's obviously a supporting role, but it reminded me of Phoenix a little bit. In both cases, there is this constant sense of, What is she thinking? How much does she know? What is she going to do? And then it opens the whole movie up. It's a tricky thing to play, all in the eyes. In those scenes where you have no dialogue, are you mapping things out moment to moment, second to second, in terms of where the character is? Or is it more spontaneous?

I really don't like to think too much about it. I just know that I do enjoy these moments a lot. [Laughs] You learn so much more about people when you look at how they behave, where they look, what their look is like, when they say something—do they really mean it? Or are they bored, but they have to be there with you? There is so much in a look, it's so much richer than you might think when you read the scene. I'm just so curious to find the richness of all these looks because I don't want to miss that beat. I don't want to miss anything. Of course, I also don't want to overdo it and put, like [makes a dramatic facial expression]. If I think that there’s the obvious way, I try to find all the other ways. What else could be in it, what else could she be thinking? What’s going on in her?

With Sharon, the question hinges on how much she knows, and then, how much she cares.

Yes. If she notices that there is a new little something that excites Lydia, in this look, I can decide: Is it something she's experienced before? Is it something she's really afraid of? Or is it more of an adult looking at your partner thinking, “Really? Do you really have to do this again?” It's more of a confident, grown character who's of course also wounded by it, but can handle that aspect of the character. She knows what's going on. Which brings me to the fact that she's not innocent. She is someone who kind of supports the system. And that's what this film is also about.

Which brings us back to your conversations with Todd.

Right, because I needed to know if that was something he’d be interested in exploring. That Sharon is not just the betrayed wife, but that she's also someone who enforces this behavior.

So there's the unspoken quality of this dynamic between Sharon and Lydia, there's the unspoken scenes that you have individually. So then with you and Cate, how much did you talk about these unspoken, but very present, dynamics?

We didn't talk too much about it. We just made sure that we both knew, how did they meet? How did it come about that they adopted a child? Like, for us it was a child from Syria when refugees came in. All these things: Who was the driving force in that, who does the daily chores? All these things to have an idea of how this couple functions. Are they still passionate? We basically went in and both thought, “Let's see what happens.” We didn't even know if we were going to kiss, for example, in the first scene.

It was improvised?

Yeah, I don’t know if this take was, but the initial choice. And that's just the great thing, working with Cate Blanchett who is the most amazing actress. You know something can happen. Once you can go into the scene and you go, “Let's see where we are going to take it," and we know we're going to react to each other. It's this magical thing about acting.

You filmed the conducting scenes first, right? That, I’d think, would also be key to unlocking the relationship.

Yes, which was terrifying. But then it was such a blessing. The orchestra only had this period of time for us, and they embraced us so beautifully. It kind of informed, “This is what these two women are doing.”

You're getting immersed in it right away.

You're getting immersed in it. You have, yourself, privately, this amazing experience. I've never been within an orchestra and listening to the sound they create, you get goosebumps—really. It's just that lots of people together create the most beautiful sound you can imagine. That is just something that you have to experience, that you can take that into the rest of the shoot.

And you learned to play it too.

Yeah. I did learn to play it. And Cate learned to conduct it and it was great with these musicians because they forgot, at a certain point, that we were acting. That was the dream. Maybe even more, the ambition. I don't want to look like an idiot in front of these musicians. [Laughs]

I wanted to zoom out a little bit and ask you a little bit about working in American projects, this probably being your biggest so far. Your debut was about five years ago, right?

It was, A Most Wanted Man. Anton Corbijn gave me that part. That was the opening. Alex Gansa, the show runner from Homeland, saw me in it, and then he called me. I’ll never forget—right after the show aired, at 11 o'clock, in my hotel room. And I said, “What?” And he said, “Yeah. I really want you to be in Homeland,” as I was watching the show. And I’m doing Jack Ryan next.

To your earlier point about figuring out what kind of directors you want to work with, obviously this is a whole new terrain. How do you think about moving forward as more opportunities open up?

Yeah, it is new, and that's what is exciting about it. I'm also very aware I'm European, and not British, so there are only particular stories that are fitting, so to speak. But I'm just enjoying it more and more. I get more and more relaxed about playing in English. It's a different starting point. It’s like, yeah, okay, I'm a fan of French cinema, but I grew up with American cinema. To be able to have a little dip into that and to keep on working in this world, and it's just really a dream for me, truly a dream. People like Todd Field. It's so rich. I feel so—all these references, I am part of cinema culture, and it's just amazing. I'm so humbled by it. I really want to give it a shot. But next year, for example, I'm going to do a French film and I'm going to work in Germany—no question, I'm not all of a sudden leaving everything behind.

Saying you’re feeling like a real part of cinema culture, here you are in Telluride, and your film is pretty much the talk of the festival.

It's crazy. I'm just really taking it all in. I’d never [been here] before. Christian [Petzold was with Barbara, and he was so full of praises and really, really loved it. And I couldn't go cause I was on stage then, that weekend. I always wanted to go. Nearly made it with one other film and then didn't get invited, and now this.

It's interesting because it's a very demanding movie, in the best way. Which I think is the hallmark of a lot of your work. Certainly your films with Christian. Is that encouraging for you as an artist, that you can make something so complex and try out all the things you're talking about, putting all of these subtleties into it, to see it very much embraced?

It's the greatest. Of course you want to make it all so rich and with so many layers so that people want to watch a film again and again, and find different things that I'm maybe even not aware of. When you watch the film, you will see a different film. What kind of experience do you bring with you to see the film? Some will hate Lydia, some will love her, some will want to protect her. It has to do with yourself, in the point where this film picks you up from. Those are the films I am interested in, the films I really love—where I know, I myself can watch it and go, “Last time, I didn't even notice that, what the hell?” You can get surprised. It's not safe. We need to explore more. We need to listen more. We need to talk more. Have a conversation without the pre-judgment. Tat's what cinema is. Asking questions more than giving answers. And yeah, that's the fascinating thing in my work—what I am looking for.