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'I Will Always Remain a Child at Heart', Maritta Hallani Tells Asharq Al-Awsat

Maritta Hallani.
Maritta Hallani.
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'I Will Always Remain a Child at Heart', Maritta Hallani Tells Asharq Al-Awsat

Maritta Hallani.
Maritta Hallani.

Maritta Hallani’s fans were surprised with the ‘look’ she chose for her new music video. Unlike her previous appearances, Hallani looked like a romantic, mature woman who knows what she wants. She even didn’t spare her acting talent, and presented some scenes that reflected a remarkable cinematic performance.

In her new song, ‘Shou ela Maana’ that follows two other recent ones, ‘Ana Bent’ and ‘Law’, Hallani collaborated with emerging composer Ghina Sinno. “I met Ghina when I was visiting the song’s composer and distributor, Jamal Yassine. I listened to the lyrics she wrote and I loved them right away. Ghina and I are from the same generation, I felt she wrote something that resembles me and the girls of my age,” she told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Maritta believes ‘Shou ela Maana’ mirrors reality, and urges independence and freedom, calling young girls not to be afraid of expressing their minds, and never spend their life trying to please others.

Maritta has made a sounding comeback to singing after a period of intermission. “I got lost in acting, and the pandemic also delayed this comeback. Today, I made my decision. This return was necessary because there are people who love me as a singer. The music video of ‘Shou ela Maana’ was new with its elements and my appearance.

“Director Serge Majdalani thought thoroughly before giving me the idea, and because he’s young, he found an opportunity to translate it into vivid ideas to give me an innovative style,” Hallani said.

Today, Maritta has become more comfortable in front of the camera, saying: “My work in acting played a role in that.” She played the role of the mature, independent woman, inspiring this personality and appearance from Italian star Monica Bellucci. “I am happy with this change as an artist, and although opinions were divided over it, most of the comments ended up for my benefit.”

About the criticism that hit the music video, accusing it of boldness, Hallani said: “I think people overreacted because the scenes are familiar. But the change that transformed me from the innocent girl that the audience was used to made the whole difference.”

Indeed, Maritta’s fans love her shyness and innocence, they see her as a big child that would never change. “I don’t like to lose this trait of my personality, and I feel that the child spirit that characterizes me would stay with me. No matter how much I age and grow, childhood will stay with me. It’s not a secret that pink shades and simple, flowery dresses still entice me today,” she added.

Those who know Maritta, know she still has a child in her and in her closet. “One time, my mother was organizing my closet and was surprised with the number of colorful dresses and red hearts in it. She even called my father to make him see it,” the young singer recalled.

Maritta believes that there is nothing wrong with being real. “When people lose small details of their personality, they change completely, they are never the same anymore. Their traits define their identity or they become a replica. I don’t like to imitate, what you see in Maritta resembles me. I don’t have two personalities and I can’t separate my personality as an artist and a regular person. We might get inspired from here and there, our personality could be affected, but this change is never radical,” she said.

Maritta composed the music of her previous song ‘Ana Bent’, which was distributed by Jamal Yassine. “At the time, I was still a college student. I was driving back home when the idea hit me, and I recorded the song in order not to forget it,” she said.

Maritta recently finished shooting a new 30-episode series titled “Bleeding” produced by Gold Films. It’s written by Jad Khoury and directed by Elie Rammouz. “In this work, I play the role of Petra, which is different from the other roles I played. I was afraid in the beginning, but when we started shooting, the bad feelings faded. I lived the role in all its details and pains, and I enjoyed the whole experience,” she said.

“Bleeding” in a Lebanese, Iraqi, and Syrian production starring Ismaeel Tamr, Assaad Rashdan, Khitam el-Leham, and Tatiana Merheb. Maritta performs many songs in the series. “It’s not a musical, but the role I play gave me this chance. It’s an interesting social drama,” she noted.

Change and avoiding repetition are Maritta’s main goal on the screen, which she clearly translated in her role in “Bleeding”.

“I had many offers before this series, but I found nothing new that could bring an added value to my journey. I’m still in my beginnings, and I have time to build a path that meets my aspirations. I consider my choices slowly even if I have to be absent for some time,” she noted. Maritta says she likes the Lebanese screen because a large share of her fans are Lebanese. “I prefer Lebanese works despite the lack of support. Production has dropped due to the economic crisis, but successes are still being made despite everything.”

Hallani is preparing to partake in a local work that will be screened in Ramadan.

Maritta says she doesn’t discuss her work decisions with her parents. “I love to ask them about their opinion, and to share my concerns and ideas with them, but I know what I want and the nature of works that suit me,” she said.

The young artist said she liked the second season of the ‘Salon Zahra’ series, she found it comic and entertaining. About her future works, she revealed that she’s preparing to release new songs in Egyptian and Lebanese accents.

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‘The Brutalist’ Doesn’t Work without Guy Pearce

Guy Pearce poses for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film "The Brutalist" in London, Wednesday, Jan.15, 2025. (AP)
Guy Pearce poses for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film "The Brutalist" in London, Wednesday, Jan.15, 2025. (AP)
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‘The Brutalist’ Doesn’t Work without Guy Pearce

Guy Pearce poses for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film "The Brutalist" in London, Wednesday, Jan.15, 2025. (AP)
Guy Pearce poses for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film "The Brutalist" in London, Wednesday, Jan.15, 2025. (AP)

Over the years, Guy Pearce has been good in most all things. But he’s been particularly good at playing characters with a refined disposition who harbor darker impulses underneath.

That was true of his breakout performance in “L.A. Confidential" as a squeaky clean police detective whose ambitions outstrip his ethics. It was true of his dashing upper-class bachelor in “Mildred Pierce.” And it’s most definitely true of his mid-Atlantic tycoon in “The Brutalist.”

“I’m really aware of how precarious we are as human beings,” Pearce says. “Good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. Moment to moment, we’re trying to just get through the day. We’re trying to be good. And we can do good things for ourselves and other people, but pretty easily we can be tipped off course.”

That sense of duality has served Pearce’s characters well, especially his men of class who turn out to have less of it than they seem. His Harrison Lee Van Buren in “The Brutalist” may be Pearce’s most colossally two-faced concoction yet. If Brady Corbet’s film, which was nominated for 10 Oscars on Thursday, is one of the best films of the year, it’s Pearce’s performance that gives the movie its disquieting shiver.

Pearce’s Van Buren is a recognizable kind of villain: a well-bred aristocrat who, at first, is a benevolent benefactor to Adrien Brody’s architect László Tóth. But what begins as a friendship — Tóth, a Holocaust survivor is nearly destitute when they meet — turns increasingly ugly, as Van Buren’s patronage, warped by jealousy and privilege, turns into a creeping sense of ownership over Tóth. The psychodrama eventually boils over in a grim, climactic scene in which Van Buren pronounces Tóth “just a lady of the night.”

“What was great to discuss with Brady is that he is actually a man of taste,” said Pearce in a recent interview. “He’s a man of class and a man of sophistication. He’s not just a bull in a China shop. He’s not just about greed, taking, taking, taking. It’s probably as much of a curse as anything that he can recognize beauty and he can recognize other people’s artistry.”

For his performance, the 57-year-old Pearce on Thursday landed his first Oscar nomination – a long-in-coming and perhaps overdue honor for the character actor of “Memento,” “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The King’s Speech.” For the Australian-born Pearce, such recognitions are as awkward as they are rewarding. He long ago decided Hollywood stardom wasn’t for him.

“I get uncomfortable with that, to be honest,” he says. “I’m really happy with doing a good performance. I can genuinely say within myself I’ve done a good job. Equally, I know when I’ve done a (bad) job. But I’m also well aware of how a performance can appear good purely because of the tone of the film. I might have done exactly the same performance in another movie with not such a good director, and people might have gone, ‘That was full-on but whatever.’ Whereas in this film, we are all better than we actually are because the film has integrity to it that elevates us all.”

Like F. Murray Abraham’s Saleri in “Amadeus,” Peace’s Van Buren has quickly ascended the ranks of great cinema villains to artists. The character likewise has some basis in reality, albeit extrapolated from a much different time and place. Corbet and Mona Fastvold, who are married and wrote “The Brutalist” together, were fueled by their hardships with financiers on their previous film, 2018's “Vox Lux.”

“We didn’t have a Van Buren but we certainly had our fill of complicated relationships with the people who hold the purse strings,” says Fastvold. “There’s a sense of: I have ownership of the project because I’m paying for it, and I almost have ownership of you.”

Pearce has been around the movie business long enough to shake hands with plenty of wealthy men putting money toward a film production. But he says none of his own experiences went into “The Brutalist.”

“There’s always this slew of producers at a higher level than us who come and visit the set,” Pearce says. “I’m polite and I go, ‘Hi, nice to meet you. Thanks.’ But I’m a little caught up with what I’m doing. Then three years later you’ll meet someone who says, ‘You know, I was a producer on “L.A. Confidential.”’ Ah, were you?”

Pearce, who lives in the Netherlands, has generally kept much of Hollywood at arm's length. In conversation, he tends to be chipper and humble — more interested in talking Aussie rules football than the Oscar race. “Any chance to have a kick, I'll have a kick,” he says with smile.

That youthful spirit Pearce tends to apply to his acting as well. Pearce, who started performing in the mid-'80s on the long-running Australian soap opera “Neighbors,” doesn't like to be precious about performing.

“If I’m hanging on to it all day, it’s exhausting,” Pearce says. “The thing that still exists for me is using our imagination, which is kind of a childlike venture. I think there’s something valuable about that even as adults. I think you can be all ages at all times.”

Pearce compares receiving the script from Corbet to “The Brutalist” to when Christopher Nolan approached him 25 years ago. Both times, he went back to watch the director's earlier films and quickly decided this was an opportunity to pounce at.

In digging into Van Buren, Pearce was guided less by real-life experience than the script. The hardest entry way to the character, he says, was the voice. “Thankfully,” Pearce says, “I’m friends with Danny Huston and he’s got a wonderfully old-fashioned voice.” He and Corbet didn't speak much about the director's hardships on “Vox Lux.”

“I know that it was troubled. Brady is going to have trouble on every film he makes, I reckon, because he is such a visionary,” says Pearce. “I know on this there were producers trying to get him to cut the time down. Of course, all those producers now are going, ‘I was with him all the way.’”

To a certain degree, Pearce says, he doesn't fully understand a performance while he's doing it. He's more likely to understand it fully afterward while watching. Take that “lady of the night scene.” While filming, Pearce felt he was saying that line to put Tóth in his place. “But when I watched it, I went: ‘I’m just telling myself. I’m purely telling myself,’” he says. “There’s something even more distasteful about it.”

It's ironic, in a way, that Van Buren, a man bent on control, is played so indelibly by an actor who seeks to impose so little of it, himself.

“There’s a performative element to Van Buren. He exhausts himself because he’s trying to dominate, to be the one in charge, be Mr. Charming,” Pearce says. “I don’t think he can ever enter a room without being self-conscious. That’s an exhausting way to be, I reckon.”