Three years ago, Alden Ehrenreich shared the screen with Robert Downey Jr. in the latter actor’s Oscar-winning turn in “Oppenheimer.” This October, he will share the screen with another Academy Award winner in Helen Mirren in the Bleecker Street thriller “A Talent for Murder,” which premiered at TIFF this past week.
In a film that plays with the boundaries between reality and fiction, Ehrenreich plays Edward, a literary agent given the task of trying to convince famed novelist Patricia Highsmith, played by Mirren, to come out of retirement and write one more novel in her series about Tom Ripley, an amoral con artist and serial killer who nonetheless charmed countless readers.
Highsmith agrees to Edward’s request, but only if he helps her plan out the perfect murder. As he tries to agree to this request, Edward begins to discover that he has quite a bit of Tom’s spirit in him.
Ehrenreich told Steve Pond at TheWrap’s 2026 Toronto International Film Festival studio that it was a challenge trying to make Edward feel like a grounded character, even as he begins to show some of Ripley’s more callous tendencies.
“The Edward character is having a much harder time internally, and the Ripley character not so much,” he said. “He basically ends up being very comfortable with his own sociopathy. He knows what he wants and is going after it, and then try to find those ways in which the story and the pressure cooker of the story can bring out things in the Edward character that feel anger or whatever it is that maybe starts to rhyme with the Ripley character.”
Directed by Anton Corbin, the vast majority of the movie takes place within Highsmith’s luxurious home in Switzerland. Working with cinematographer Robbie Ryan, who recently worked with Yorgos Lanthimos on “Poor Things” and “Bugonia,” Corbin used the camera to give Highsmith’s home its own unnerving character.
“As soon as you bring a camera in there, everything becomes small. But you then use it to your advantage with corners and angles that make it more spooky,” he said. “We try to find a few Hitchcockian kind of angles, and yeah, it is the big challenge to make the film feel claustrophobic.”
“A Talent for Murder” will be released by Bleecker Street and LD Entertainment on Oct. 23.
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