--- title: Macbeth: How Marion Cotillard Took on Lady Macbeth description: Marion Cotillard spoke to TIME about playing Lady Macbeth opposite Michael Fassbender in a new adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy. canonical: https://time.com/4143638/marion-cotillard-macbeth/ author: Eliza Berman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-12-11T21:10:37.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:04:44.638Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Macbeth: How Marion Cotillard Took on Lady Macbeth og:description: Marion Cotillard spoke to TIME about playing Lady Macbeth opposite Michael Fassbender in a new adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy. og:url: https://time.com/4143638/marion-cotillard-macbeth/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9f85a3e75a16236c/698874b9524fc03f6edf5d99/marion-cotillard.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Moet British Independent Film Awards on December 06, 2015. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Macbeth: How Marion Cotillard Took on Lady Macbeth twitter:description: Marion Cotillard spoke to TIME about playing Lady Macbeth opposite Michael Fassbender in a new adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9f85a3e75a16236c/698874b9524fc03f6edf5d99/marion-cotillard.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Marion Cotillard Tackled One of the Most Coveted Roles of All Time > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. ## Video: MACBETH Trailer [Watch (HLS stream): MACBETH Trailer](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/cDPtWEOX.m3u8) (1:53)  _Published 2015-06-04. MACBETH Trailer_  by [Eliza Berman](https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 11, 2015 9:10 PM UTC  Marion Cotillard at the Moet British Independent Film Awards on December 06, 2015. Marion Cotillard at the Moet British Independent Film Awards on December 06, 2015.Karwai Tang--WireImage/Getty Images  by [Eliza Berman](https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 11, 2015 9:10 PM UTC Ask Marion Cotillard whether she ever draws from her own experience to relate to her characters, and the answer is an emphatic _non_. “I could never relate any of my characters with my own life because we’re not the same person,” she says. “I need to find everything I will need in the character. If it’s not there, then I will create it.” Though Cotillard says this approach applies to all of her roles—which have ranged from her Oscar-winning turn as the French chanteuse Edith Piaf in _La Vie en Rose_ to a woman forced into prostitution in _The Immigrant_—it’s particularly understandable in the case of her latest role: Lady Macbeth. Cotillard plays the power-hungry antiheroine—who encourages her husband to secure their rise to power by murderous means, then descends into madness, wracked with guilt—opposite Michael Fassbender in director Justin Kurzel’s new adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy, which hit theaters last week. Cotillard tells TIME she can pinpoint the very moment she knew she would one day utter the words, “Out, damned spot!” before an audience. She was in acting school, watching another student working on Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy when it struck her. “That day, I thought that I would play Lady Macbeth one day. I knew it,” she says. “I don’t know why, but I really wanted to experience this very tumultuous, dark and at the same time human character.” But she never imagined she’d get the opportunity to do it in English. Though she had studied the play in her native French, preparing to perform the part in English required wrestling anew with the Bard’s turns of phrase and double meanings. “I really discovered Shakespeare\[an\] language when I was preparing the movie, and I was very happy to discover it in his language.” Playing one of the most coveted roles in the history of the written word brought with it a level of pressure Cotillard hadn’t experienced with any of her previous roles, including the iconic Piaf. “It was hard to get rid of the images of Judi Dench, for example, who really reached perfection in Lady Macbeth,” she says. “But then I thought, I cannot compare myself to those magnificent actresses, particularly when the job is not done yet.” Rather than consciously attempting to draw from or differentiate her own performance from the Ladies Macbeth of Dench, Vivien Leigh or Francesca Annis (to name just a few), Cotillard allowed Kurzel’s vision to define the contours of her interpretation. And that began with deconstructing the monster, she explains: “Not just showing two monsters who are monsters and therefore do horrible things,” she explains. “There’s a reason _why_ they’ve become monsters. There’s a reason _why_ somebody who lives in madness is mad.” Kurzel’s vision plays out among the starkly beautiful mountains of Scotland where the film was shot, returning the story to its original setting. The low-hanging pewter clouds and severe, snow-dusted peaks set a somber, quiet mood over which the drama plays out. Cotillard found that despite the physical challenges of acting through hailstorms and brutal winds, she was able to internalize the outward trauma and channel it into her performance. “We had to use to use the violence of the elements to emphasize the story that we were telling,” she says. While she draws no straight line from Lady Macbeth to herself, Cotillard still finds relevance in the four-centuries-old tale of her character’s swift rise and steady demise. It’s a meaning she came to discover alongside Kurzel, and one which, when it hit her, helped her understand why the desire to play this role had stuck with her since that day in school decades ago. “We all live with fears and pain, and if you don’t face them, if you try to cover them, it just creates the illusion that you will escape \[them\],” she says. “But if you dive into this illusion, it can only lead you to madness.” Macbeth: How Marion Cotillard Took on Lady Macbeth ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4143638/marion-cotillard-macbeth/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4143638/marion-cotillard-macbeth/"},"headline":"How Marion Cotillard Tackled One of the Most Coveted Roles of All Time","datePublished":"2015-12-11T21:10:37.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:04:44.638Z","description":"The Oscar-winning actress plays Lady Macbeth in a new adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy","url":"https://time.com/4143638/marion-cotillard-macbeth/","keywords":["movies","Shakespeare","Marion Cotillard"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9f85a3e75a16236c/698874b9524fc03f6edf5d99/marion-cotillard.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliza Berman","jobTitle":"Berman is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9f85a3e75a16236c/698874b9524fc03f6edf5d99/marion-cotillard.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Moet British Independent Film Awards on December 06, 2015.","caption":"Moet British Independent Film Awards on December 06, 2015.","creditText":"Karwai Tang--WireImage/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4143638/marion-cotillard-macbeth/","name":"How Marion Cotillard Tackled One of the Most Coveted Roles of All Time"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"MACBETH Trailer","description":"MACBETH Trailer","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/cDPtWEOX/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-06-04T13:45:48.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/cDPtWEOX.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4143638/marion-cotillard-macbeth/","duration":"PT1M53S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4143638/marion-cotillard-macbeth/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```