Alicia Witt and The Unorthodox Faith of Longlegs

Alicia Witt appeared on our Zoom call in a T-shirt peppered with cartoon koala bears. For anyone who has seen her staggering performance as Ruth Harker, the agoraphobic hoarder mother of an FBI agent (Maika Monroe) in this summer’s serial killer thriller Longlegs, the disconnect seems like a practical joke. An actor who could reach such depths of trauma and despair to play this tragic of a character had to exude at least some of the same energy. But in her wide-ranging four-decade career that’s seen her collaborate with everyone from David Lynch to The Hallmark Channel, Witt has proven herself one of the few performers who can transform into anyone—a natural gift that has now earned her the widespread critical acclaim she has always deserved.

Yet, this dedication to her craft also explains why she’s one of the few moviegoers who has no interest in seeing Longlegs, a film that, despite scattershot box-office trends and Hollywood’s overreliance on franchises, just crossed the $100 million mark and topped off its long local theatrical run with a sold-out screening at The Belcourt Tuesday that featured a Q&A with Witt. 

“Ruth is so dear to me, and was also a deeply cathartic experience, in a way I couldn't begin to try to describe. So it's for those reasons that I'm not watching it, not because the movie itself scares me,” Witt said. “He [Longlegs director Oz Perkins] is just a world-class filmmaker, and I asked him, when we were doing press in LA, if he might consider making me an edit without Ruth in it. And he said he thought he could do that at some point. So I'm hopeful I'll get to see the movie without my own work in it.”

While most industry insiders attribute Longlegs’s success to the ingenious social media marketing campaign that its, distributor, Neon, began last January, the film is also the most prominent example of horror’s recent thematic shift toward religion that began earlier this year with Immaculate, The First Omen, and MaXXXine. For Witt, Longlegs’s refusal to rationalize Nicolas Cage’s Satan-worshiping serial killer as just another psycho is key to understanding the connection that the film has forged with audiences on the way to bona fide blockbuster status. 

“We all had a shared sense that by illuminating the darkness, you are letting the light in. And I feel that this movie is channeling a sort of light by acknowledging the dark side among us,” Witt said. “You don't nullify it. You don't make it not be there. In fact, it's the opposite when you acknowledge it and you stare it right in the face. If you've been through a deep personal tragedy, or you've been through an incredibly hard time, nothing can hurt you at that point. You’ve seen the worst, and you then kind of dwell in a place of great levity and light.”

As someone whose Christian faith is central to her identity, Witt feels her time playing Ruth was deeply spiritual, a sentiment she also shared with The Belcourt’s audience. While making the thousands of choices that would define the role, she and the rest of the Longlegs team experienced a series of godwinks fitting for a movie that features Cage as the most iconic serial killer since Hannibal. A flock of bald eagles visited the production. The crew found a mass of flies covering a window during a January shoot day in Vancouver before they planned to set up that exact shot. The night before reading the script, Witt had a dream that mirrored the key scene in the movie’s climax. “We all felt it,” Witt said. “That's why I believe this movie is doing so well, because it's not just a celebration of gore and Satan. It's way deeper than that, and there's something powerfully divine about this movie.”

Those familiar with Witt's work since her film debut at seven in Lynch’s 1984 Dune adaptation know that this sense of spiritual attunement is key to her ability to embody a wide array of characters who seemingly have little in common. “When I moved to LA, I wasn't cast in commercials. I didn't really fit a type,” Witt said. “And that was fine with me. I've always wanted to just disappear into characters. And the greatest compliment that someone can pay me is when they discover I was also the actor that they liked in whatever that other thing was, and they're like, ‘Wait a minute, I remember that performance so well, but I had no idea that was you.’”

Such versatility may explain why Witt has found herself a central figure in some of the horror genre’s key moments of evolution. She’s been a Lynch staple–most recently in the Twin Peaks revival, a performance that first caught the attention of Longlegs director Perkins. She also starred in the late '90s meta-slasher Urban Legend, the only Scream successor that could go toe-to-toe with that storied franchise. Now, after a series of supporting roles in hit movies from Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky to the Hugh Grant-Sandra Bullock romcom Two Weeks Notice, she has returned to horror at a time when studios like Neon and A24 have elevated the genre to the point that Witt’s performance in Longlegs could well be a frontrunner come awards season. “I always made a very concerted effort to not play the same kind of role over and over again, even if it meant working less than I could have, because I flat out passed on several roles that felt like were very similar to roles I had just played,” Witt said. “To me, the worst thing would have been to be known as just one thing, and then not to be considered for all of the other things.”

Witt’s ability to embody any character also led to a six-episode stint on ABC’s Nashville that resulted in her eventually calling the city home. A trained classical pianist and touring musician who has steadily made records in between acting jobs, Witt first came to Nashville in 2009 while on the road in support of her debut album. “I played this little set and was here for 24 hours, and I had an unprecedented feeling as the plane took off and I looked down at the city that my heart was being pulled right back,” Witt said. “I felt tears fill up my eyes, and I felt a longing to come back, to not leave.” 

In the intervening years, she found herself booking trips to Nashville as soon as she returned to Los Angeles. “It became more and more obvious that God was leading me here. This is where I belonged,” Witt said. “And by the end of that year, I was looking at housing prices and realizing the time had come to sell my place in LA. So in 2017, I made that move.”

One of Nashville’s major draws for Witt has always been The Belcourt, a fact evident at the Longlegs screening where she rattled off her favorite experiences over the years, including a night last fall seeing The Holdovers—a film by Alexander Payne with whom Witt collaborated on his 1996 debut, Citizen Ruth. “There's a reason why the Belcourt is usually one of my first stops when I've been on the road and come back here and have some free time,” Witt said. “I always feel like a trip home, no matter how brief, is not complete without a trip to The Belcourt.” 

As a dedicated Belcourt member, Witt sees the theater as a nexus of the city’s unique culture that other metro areas just can’t replicate. “It's the creativity, the sense of normalcy, the conversations that take place on a daily basis here in places like The Belcourt,” Witt said. She may never see the performance that’s sure to usher in one of her career’s most fruitful artistic periods, but Witt has found her place. And, as the support of the Longlegs crowd at The Belcourt on Tuesday indicated, the city is fortunate to have her. 

Longlegs is still playing in theaters and available for digital rental today.