Actor Diane Kruger is styled by Tracy Taylor in sensual neutrals for ‘In the Lead’, lensed by Benjamin Vnuk for Porter Edit January 25, 2019.

Kruger sits down with Jane Mulkerrins for a chat on motherhood and possible marriage, and the secret training involved in her role as an Israeli intelligence Mossad agent in the upcoming film ‘The Operative.

“We had to do some strange things,” Kruger explains. “Like having to convince a stranger in the street to walk you somewhere, and having to knock on someone’s door and convince them to let you into their home.” Kruger poses as tourist in the city. “And if you act believably, most people will go out of their way to help you,” she reflectgs out loud. “But I found it really hard to lie to people like that.” Even worse was training requiring her to travel through airport security on a fake passport. “There was a real possibility of getting arrested. It was terrifying.”

Lies, Lies & More Lies

If lies and deception are unsettling, Kruger must abandon her inner voice for her role in a second film ‘Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy’. ‘JT LeRoy’ (played on screen by Kristen Stewart) was presented in an elaborate hoax that fooled both Hollywood and the publishing industry in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Presented as a literary wunderkind and the author of “several supposedly semi-autobiographical books detailing a luridly hardscrabble childhood”, JT LeRoy was an entirely fictitious character, “created by writer Laura Albert, and played – in glasses and a wig – by her sister-in-law Savannah Knoop. “ Knoop (portrayed by Laura Dern in the film) co-wrote the screenplay.

The interview is interesting, as it weaves names we know into the narrative. Kruger’s character Eva, is “a conniving, manipulative European movie star obsessed with LeRoy and determined to secure the rights to his novel” Eva is based, in part, on the actress and director Asia Argento, who befriended LeRoy and directed an earlier adaptation of his story ‘The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things’.

Extended Family

Kruger met her partner and father of their new daughter, actor Norman Reedus, before her split from Dawson’s Creek actor Joshua Jackson, a 10-year relationship lived in the media spotlight. The couple so disdains inquiring eyes that they refuse to share the name of their daughter for as long as possible.

Reedus also has a 19-year-old son from his relationship with Danish-Peruvian supermodel Helena Christensen, who lives in their Manattan neighborhood. The friends and family spent Christmas together and are set to celebrate Reedus’ 50th birthday as well.

Read on at Porter Edit: ‘In the Lead’.