Kristine Froseth on Starring in One of Cannes’s Buzziest (and Eeriest) Films

Reported by Vogue.

Kristine Froseth arrived at Cannes as a first-timer and left with a 12-minute standing ovation. The occasion: the world premiere of Her Private Hell, a Neon thriller directed by Nicolas Winding Refn — the man behind Drive and The Neon Demon — that follows a mysterious mist descending on a futuristic city and unleashing a figure known only as "The Leather Man." Froseth stars alongside Charles Melton, Sophie Thatcher, and Havana Rose Liu, and she is, by her own account, still processing all of it. "Being in Cannes to begin with is a dream in and of itself," she said, according to Vogue.

The film itself sounds like a Refn fever dream — which, technically, parts of it were. Froseth describes a set where the script was a starting point, not a rulebook. Refn would arrive with new scenes born from actual dreams, cut others on instinct, and the cast would follow. "Every single day was like no other film set I've been on," she said. She plays Hunter, a fame-obsessed influencer on the verge of making a movie — a layer of meta that is not lost on anyone — and found the biggest challenge to be internalizing Refn's specific rhythm. Every frame carries intention. Nothing exists without reason. For an actor used to more conventional sets, learning to move through that world required a complete recalibration.

The Dress Was Always the Dress

For the red carpet, Froseth made a deliberate pivot from the film's dread and darkness toward something unambiguously joyful. Working with stylist Sandra Amador, she landed on a pink-bodice Armani Privé gown with a long black skirt — a piece she says she screamed at when she first saw the sketch. The two had spent weeks aligning on mood before the dress ever materialized: timeless, singular, and a little sparkly. "It felt like my inner child's dream of getting to wear pink and sparkles," she said. Method dressing and fashion risk were never on the table — this was a first Cannes premiere, and she wanted the classic glamour to match the moment. (She also wore a cream Ferragamo skirt suit to the photo call, because one impeccable look was apparently not enough.)

Between events, the schedule left little room for the Riviera itself, but Froseth wasn't complaining. Parties, dinners, her castmates — that was more than enough. Post-Cannes, she goes straight back to work: The Buccaneers season three is filming in Scotland, a Netflix adaptation of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence is wrapped, and a horror film called The Face of Horror, directed by Anna Biller, is still ahead of her on the release calendar. The pipeline is full, the momentum is real, and the girl who once watched Cannes from the outside just walked its most famous stairs in a dress she'd been dreaming about for weeks.

A standing ovation at your first Cannes premiere, in the perfect dress — some debuts are just that clean.

Read the original at Vogue.