Mariana di Girólamo Takes a Ride on the “Wild” Side

A weird thing happened to Mariana di Girólamo while she was working on Wild Horse Nine. The Chilean actress, a native Spanish speaker who had never been on an American production before, started having vivid dreams — in English.

Di Girólamo labored over her preparation for the role, first perfecting her sides for her audition self-tape and, later, after landing the part, working through the script with both her acting coach and director Martin McDonagh to master the distinctive rhythm of his dialogue. For a native speaker of Chilean Spanish, English required some adjustment — especially the idiosyncratic English in McDonagh’s screenplay about two CIA agents dispatched to a remote Chilean island on the eve of the 1973 coup. “We had to go over every comma,” she jokes.

When she started dreaming in English, she knew something had clicked. “It’s always been a goal of mine to start doing American movies, and now there are things that are actually easier for me to say in English,” she says.

Acting, di Girólamo says, is “in her blood.” Now 35 years old, she was raised among a deeply creative family in Santiago; her parents are artists, and her aunt, Claudia di Girólamo, is one of Chile’s most prominent actresses.

She initially resisted entering the family business and enrolled in a midwifery program during university, but an elective course in theater changed her mind. “I found I loved everything,” she says, “from learning my lines and working on costumes to that feeling of standing in front of an audience and really feeling it in your heart and your stomach.”

She pivoted to drama school — the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, one of the country’s most prestigious — and then spent a few years doing theater and local television before scoring what she considers her big break, a role in Pablo Larraín’s Ema, in which she starred opposite Gael García Bernal as part of a couple whose adoption goes awry. The film eventually would help lead her to McDonagh. “I fell in love with cinema through this movie,” she says. “I also know that Martin watched it, and he talked with Pablo about me, so it’s something that has been very important for my career.”

Years before he wrote Wild Horse Nine, McDonagh traveled to the remote Chilean island of Rapa Nui and was so taken by the landscape — more akin to Hawaii than mainland Chile — that he knew he wanted to set a movie there one day. Years later, he came up with a story about two CIA officers dispatched to the island shortly before the 1973 U.S.-backed coup. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell came on board as the spies, and McDonagh, intent on making the film as authentic as possible, wanted a Chilean actress for the third lead: a leftist student who captures the attention of Malkovich’s character.

After getting cast, di Girólamo flew from South Africa — where she was filming the Mexican series Nadie Nos Vio Partir — to New York, where McDonagh had convened a week of table reads at The Public Theater. Rockwell arrived doing method-lite, donning ’70s garb and eating a lot — just like his onscreen persona — and di Girólamo met the “beautiful and crazy” Parker Posey, who plays Rockwell’s wife in the film. She says she was struck by how much Malkovich knew about Chilean culture and filmography. “And he always had the most beautiful outfits,” she says with a laugh. “He approved one of my jackets, and it had me feeling like, ‘Oh my God, this is important.’ ”

Wild Horse Nine won’t hit theaters until Nov. 6, but thanks to its time on the fall festival circuit — it premiered at Venice, Telluride and Toronto — it’s already an Oscar contender.

“People would start applauding during the middle of the movie — it was really crazy,” di Girólamo says of its Venice debut. The offers have started coming in more and more as the movie approaches release, but she’s trying to be mindful about what she takes on next.

“I just keep reminding myself that I never even dreamt of working with someone like Martin,” she says. “This is such a beautiful surprise.”

This story appeared in the Oct. 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.