- Share via
Speaking to The Times in 2019, Brazilian acting legend Fernanda Montenegro described receiving an Academy Award nomination 20 years earlier for her role in Walter Salles’ “Central Station” — and her extensive campaigning for it — as “a trip to Jupiter.”
Montenegro’s stateside recognition was unprecedented: the first time a Brazilian actor competed at the Oscars. But the glitzy, long process of interviews, parties and industry events was shocking and incredibly foreign for the venerated star.
“I was 70 years old, speaking in another language, representing another culture, and I was celebrated by major artists who I’d never stopped watching on the screen,” Montenegro added. “They treated me as an equal.”
Now, in a fairy-tale-worthy full-circle moment, her daughter, Fernanda Torres, has landed her own lead actress Oscar nomination — Brazil’s second in history — for the searing 1970s-set historical drama “I’m Still Here,” also directed by Salles, in which the 95-year-old Montenegro has a brief appearance.
“I was also going to Jupiter but with a better spaceship,” Torres, 59, says about her awards-season experience during a recent interview at CAA’s offices in Century City right after doing a Q&A with Salles at the agency’s screening room.
Brazilian performer Fernanda Torres won for female lead actor in a motion picture, drama, besting stars such as Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman and Pamela Anderson.
She’s spent considerable time in Los Angeles over the last few months, on a jam-packed schedule of screenings, press and television appearances (including a January appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”). Though we’re chatting near the end of this long journey, the fashionably casual Torres, wearing a leather jacket, still speaks about “I’m Still Here” with spirited conviction, laughing constantly.
She compares her numerous postscreening Q&As to an evangelizing mission. “It’s like a priest going village by village, taking the word of the Lord,” she says.
“I’m Still Here,” a Portuguese-language film, isn’t the most obvious awards contender. Based on Marcelo Paiva’s memoir, the movie chronicles the true story of Eunice Paiva (Torres), a housewife turned lawyer and activist who raised her children and fought for justice after her husband, Rubens, a former politician, disappeared in 1971 during Brazil’s military dictatorship.
“It’s amazing how this film touches hearts,” Torres adds. “Little by little, people started to talk about it, and it became this dark horse in the middle of big films.”
The cinematic crusade paid off. “I’m Still Here” also received Oscar nods for international film and — in a surprise — best picture, alongside such Hollywood behemoths as “Wicked” and “Dune: Part Two.”
In January, Torres made history as the first Brazilian actor to win a Golden Globe. Brazilian fans have been euphoric ever since, exalting every social media post about her and the film with likes in the millions.
“In Brazil, we are very proud of our culture and we consume our own culture,” Torres explains. “But it’s very rare that someone [succeeds] abroad, so when it happens, there’s this pride that someone is recognizing something that we always knew was a talent. It’s like a confirmation.”
Torres’ Golden Globe win and her eventual Oscar nomination were cause for widespread elation in the South American country.
“There was a humble woman who said, ‘I thought that I was there. That trophy was for me. It was for all artists. I thought it was ours,’” a deeply moved Torres recalls about a TV clip of a woman emotionally reacting to the actor’s Golden Globe win that went viral. “In Brazil, it’s achieved this depth. I know fame, but this is not fame — it’s more than that.”
Montenegro, who lost the Oscar to Gwyneth Paltrow in “Shakespeare in Love,” is overjoyed to see her daughter repeat her improbable feat being nominated all these years later.
“She’s very happy — she’s proud,” Torres says, beaming with adoration for her vivacious mother. “She’s 95 and still working like a furious lion. To live so long and to see this happening, and for a film that we are in together, is beautiful. I mean, it’s pure magic.”
Brazilians were thrown into a collective funk back in 1999 when Montenegro wasn’t victorious. (“My mother is like a queen in Brazil,” Torres says.) According to news outlets, fans have never gotten over it, with many of them taking to social media every year on Oscar night to call it “the greatest injustice in history.” Judging by the fervorous posts of this year’s race, they hope Torres has a better outcome.
But amid the red carpets, photo shoots and glamorous encounters with Hollywood A-listers, one runs the risk of forgetting what’s truly important, Torres offers.
“You can lose yourself thinking it’s about you,” she says. “In this case, I always remember that what makes people so surprised with my presence in the film is the fact that I was able to connect and be faithful to Eunice Paiva. She’s the star in this film. She taught me a lot about acting, about restraining emotions, about not being melodramatic, about self-control.”
Fernanda Torres grew up in Brazil during authoritarian times and channeled that memory for her role in ‘I’m Still Here.’
Since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival last year, “I’m Still Here” has accrued critical praise for Torres’ unassuming performance grounded in internalized grief. Aside from Salles’ direction, Torres also channeled some key advice from her mom.
“In one of our conversations, my mother once told me, ‘When you do a Greek tragedy, you cannot start crying with the first bad news,’” says Torres. “‘On the contrary, you have to swallow and endure.’ And I remembered this when I was playing Eunice.”
With the U.S. and other countries around the world now facing the threat of authoritarianism in a real way, Torres believes that her character’s patient yet diligent resistance can be a model for how we can endure and defeat retrograde ideologies and oppressive governments.
“She understood that it would take a long time for the dictatorship to be over and that her fight would take decades, but she never gave up,” says Torres. “She went back to school and became a human rights lawyer. We have to be prepared for a long marathon, like Eunice.”
Paiva, who died in 2018, is still enacting change at home through “I’m Still Here.” Not only has the film brought together people from opposing ideological factions into Brazilian cinemas (it has sold more than 4 million tickets since its release in November) but in the country’s Supreme Court, minister Flávio Dino cited Salles’ film while discussing amending a 1979 amnesty law so that certain crimes committed during the dictatorship — such as the concealment of a body — can be prosecuted.
Beyond politics, Torres thinks “I’m Still Here” has done so well around the world because audiences feel an elemental empathy for a mother and her children in distress. Salles’ narrative focuses on the human experience under dire circumstances.
“Walter always quotes my mother because she once said, ‘I just want to do existential theater.’ And Walter made an existential movie.”
As for how the spotlight on the film and her performance could have an effect on her career, Torres remains cautious. After she won an acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986 (another national first for Brazil) for Arnaldo Jabor’s “Love Me Forever or Never,” things didn’t change.
“There was nothing abroad for me,” she recalls. “I didn’t speak English as well as I do today, and I was not a special beauty, which helps when you are young, so I went back to my country, where there was no cinema industry, and I did a lot of theater.”
This time around, after many successful years on popular TV projects, she would love to work with Pedro Almodóvar or Denis Villeneuve, or to be part of the cast of “Severance.” (“I would pay to be there with Ben Stiller, [John] Turturro and Christopher Walken, please,” she says, a pure fan.)
Still, Torres won’t ever entirely leave Brazil because it’s where she feels she can make a difference with her offscreen work as a newspaper columnist, novelist and playwright.
“When people ask me about Hollywood I think, ‘What is Hollywood?’ Hollywood can be anywhere.”
The Oscars will take place during Carnival week, Brazil’s festive nationwide celebration. “People would go nuts,” says Torres about the reaction that any win for “I’m Still Here” would no doubt generate. For now, Torres has already transcended her previous celebrity status to enter a rarefied echelon as part of Brazil’s collective consciousness in a new way.
“The pinnacle of achievement in Brazil is to become a costume in Carnival — for people to go in the streets dressed up as you,” Torres explains, smiling. “And it’s happening already. People are dressing up as me holding the Golden Globe or as me in one of the sitcoms I did.”
About what could happen on Oscar night, the regal yet disarming Torres is choosing to be grateful for all the accolades she’s already received.
“I think the chances for me to win are very low,” Torres says, maybe too humbly, of a race that has already seen its share of twists and turns. “It can happen, but I don’t know. I don’t like expectations. I want to be there, happy just because I’m there.”
Whether or not Torres’ name is in the envelope, it’s already etched in Brazil’s history.
