Olivia Wilde Hit Bottom. Here’s How She Bounced Back.

When the actor-director Olivia Wilde was last in the public eye, around the time of her 2022 dystopian thriller, “Don’t Worry Darling,” things weren’t going very well. Wilde had to deal with the twin fallout of decidedly mixed critical reaction and a harsh wave of tabloid attention. The film was plagued by reports of feuding between Wilde and her star, Florence Pugh. Wilde was also hounded online for her relationship, which has since ended, with the pop star Harry Styles, who played a supporting role in the movie. If that wasn’t enough, the press cycle for “Don’t Worry Darling” brought with it continuing scrutiny over her 2020 breakup with her longtime partner, Jason Sudeikis, with whom she has two children. This year, though, it has all been very different.

“The Invite,” a painfully perceptive domestic sex comedy that Wilde, who is 42, directed and co-starred in, has been one of the year’s sleeper hits. She followed that up by playing, to delicious effect, a sexually domineering and manipulative art-world star in the director Gregg Araki’s “I Want Your Sex.” And she’s capping her year off with a small but scene-stealing role as an angrily spurned lover in the upcoming “Behemoth!” starring Pedro Pascal and directed by Tony Gilroy. I spoke to Wilde last month in London, where she was prepping her next directorial effort, a Christmas comedy called “Naughty,” about what it’s like to hit a low and how she so dramatically turned things around in her work and life.

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I was thinking about the three roles you played this year in “The Invite,” “I Want Your Sex” and “Behemoth!” All these characters are tightly wound, and I wondered if being a director has changed how you see yourself as an actor. Being a director freed me up to not feel pressure to be the ideal ingénue growing into the idealized female character in any film. I now choose roles from a much more curious place. But I hadn’t put together that these three characters are extremely high-strung in different ways. My character in “I Want Your Sex” felt like she was on the opposite end of the spectrum of femininity as my character in “The Invite.” They’re both movies dealing with the idea of sex and sexuality and desire and eroticism from two completely different perspectives.

Why are you interested in exploring questions of sex and identity at this point in your life? It’s funny. I turned 40 a couple of years ago, and I suddenly felt more present in my body and more connected to my sense of confidence and sexuality than ever. We were told for a long time that that’s when things start shutting down. Less is available to you in terms of your career, in terms of your exploration of your own identity, sexuality. Yet every woman I know from like 40 to 70 has told me: “Oh, no. That’s when you really understand yourself.” You’re so much more honest with yourself, and there’s an awesome blossoming that happens at that point. So I think I was curious about inspecting that in different ways and particularly in comedies, because it’s good to laugh at this stuff.

We don’t really think about it this way, but there is something inherently funny about sex. Oh, completely. It’s hilarious. There’s something funny about everything that we don’t talk about. There’s something funny about people white-knuckling things in life. I remember when we made “Booksmart,” I found it so funny to reconnect with the stress we felt in high school about what we had accomplished and where we were going to go to college. The intensity of that stress is very funny to me now. The idea of high emotional stakes in a low-stakes situation really makes me laugh.

“Booksmart” was the first film you directed. It’s about two high school friends who are wrestling with expectations about how girls are supposed to behave and what they’re supposed to want. What do you think those girls would make of your character, Angela, from “The Invite”? It seems to me that Angela is exactly who the girls from “Booksmart” don’t want to be. I love that. I think they’d be really disappointed in her for giving up her career for marriage and kids, even though she doesn’t really think that she did it for those reasons. It’s a slow erosion of self that happens through this sense of duty. She has subtly assigned responsibility for that erosion to her husband [Joe, played by Seth Rogen], but really it was a decision Angela made on her own to sacrifice her own dreams as an artist. Molly and Amy from “Booksmart” would be horrified by that. But of course, they’ll get older and confront what a lot of people do, which is this negotiation one goes through at a certain point in life where they feel they must make sacrifices. There’s this sense of what you’re supposed to do, and it happens so slowly. It’s a bit of the frog-in-boiling-water concept — a slow realization that you have given something up, and you’re not even sure when or how.

Have you gone through that? I didn’t go through a sudden realization of like, Oh, my god, what have I given up? But I certainly have pivoted. Specifically at 35, I started directing movies, and it did feel like I was suddenly turning the ship in a different direction. And the panic that I didn’t go to film school; I had a lot of insecurity about that lack of traditional education. But the anxiety that everyone confronts when they consider pivoting is about this sense of: Am I allowed to do this? Do I have permission? There’s that great Nora Ephron commencement speech where she says: “I’ve had four careers and three husbands. You can change your mind.” I remember being so liberated by that one comment.

The potential risks of trying something different can be very scary. Not everyone is comfortable making that leap. When did we decide that you have to figure out your whole identity by 24? Like, pick your partner, pick your career, pick your identity — and if you change, it’s a little bit suspicious, a little chaotic. What would people do with their lives if they felt like they were allowed to change careers and change versions of themselves past college?

I can find myself thinking skeptically about change. In the abstract, it can be easy to say, “I need a change” or “We need a change in our relationship,” but where is the line between selfishness and making changes that other people can actually adapt to? Do you know what I mean? We can’t deny we are changing. You are changing, so it’s not a decision to change. It’s a decision to acknowledge the change. Like in a relationship, you’re not saying, “Now I’m going to allow for my partner to change.” No, they’re changing. You’re changing. You can either embrace it or resist.

I’m thinking, what if I showed up at my house on Monday in a leather jacket and said, “Everyone get used to it!” [Laughs] “This is the new me! I’m leather-jacket Dave now.” You know, every year in school you’re like: “I’m going to be different this year. This is my new look. Different music, different vibe.” There’s this excitement of that creation and exploration of identity. I don’t know why we stop allowing it. It becomes something we don’t like. We don’t trust it.

Just to tie some of this into your work, “The Invite” does such a good job of acknowledging the ebb and flow within a relationship and how someone could have a desire for more or for something different. But what were the aspects of the film specifically to do with relationship dynamics that you felt most connected to? Oh, my god. The resistance to changing your life because of how it will affect others and the pain of that. Also just the difficulty of relationships. Because it’s [expletive] hard. It’s impossible. I’m going to try to link lives and cohabitate with somebody over a long period of time and co-pilot this life and this child? I think people are eager to release some of that shame and laugh. The movie’s obviously heavily influenced by Mike Nichols and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and one thing I love about that movie is that George and Martha fight and fight but they are so codependent. They follow each other around the house. They won’t be in separate rooms. It reminds me of my kids. My kids bicker and bicker, but they love each other. They hate when one of them goes away, even for a sleepover. I think that in a relationship, once people reach contempt, it’s not the aggressive rage, it’s the indifference that is truly terrifying. That is the sign that you may be beyond repair. These are all things that I’ve experienced at different points in my life.

You referred to shame a second ago. What have you felt shame about? It feels like a failure when you can’t make a relationship work, particularly if it’s with the person you have children with. We talk about a lot of different things in the film that are racy in different ways, but I think the most subversive part of the movie is a moment where Penélope Cruz’s character says, “You think you’re doing something noble by staying together for your children, as if they don’t notice, as if they don’t feel this anxiety that they’re marinating in.” That is by far the most difficult, painful decision I’ve ever made in my life, to understand that it was not better for my kids to live in a house where their parents were not aligned. My parents are still together and have an incredible relationship. They worked together for many years; they’re both journalists. And I always thought that would be me. And the shame also comes from that — when you feel like you haven’t nailed this thing that we’re supposed to nail. We’re told if you’re good at it, you’ll stay with someone forever. If you’re not so good, it’s a bit of a disappointment.

The idea of needing to stay together for the kids is obviously a hugely sympathetic and common one, but my parents divorced when I was very young and —— Really? How young?

I was 4 or 5. I cannot imagine a world in which my parents had stayed together. It was clearly the right decision, but I’m sure, particularly for my mother, incredibly fraught. Very, very brave. I really take pride in how good we are at co-parenting our kids in my family. We have reached this healthy equilibrium. It’s so hard. Anyone who pretends it’s easy — like, “Oh, you just consciously uncouple, and then you find a way” — that’s BS. I feel relieved that I’m able to give them a life with parents where there’s a real sense of authenticity in terms of how everyone’s feeling and doing. When you’re trying to hide it from your kids, they sense it. They’re the most intuitive people in the house. And then people start to feel, like, What is real? Because I can tell that something’s being performed for me. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

I want to ask a question about your character in “I Want Your Sex” — an art-world provocateur. I read that you drew on Madonna from her “Truth or Dare” documentary for your performance. Can you tell me what you took from her? The most incredible documentary. I think it’s my favorite music doc. There’s the famous scene where I think she was in Toronto performing, and they were told right before the show that if she performed one lewd act, which was just a part of her performance, they would arrest her. And she’s like, Great, put me in jail. There’s this complete fearlessness. She knows her power. And I think that was exactly how it related to Erika Tracy, the character from the film. It’s this awareness of one’s ability to provoke and a fearlessness to do so. I also appreciated being able to be very comfortable in my body in that film. You don’t think that you’re going to turn 40 and play a dominatrix.

That’s the second time you’ve referred to getting older and feeling comfort in your body. Were there times earlier in your life when you felt a lot of discomfort in your body? Yeah, and it’s been a pretty smooth, exponential evolution toward being comfortable. I think having kids made me feel more comfortable in my body. Again, there’s a lie we’re told that you have kids and you’re done, just put you out to pasture and shoot you in the head because your body means nothing. But it’s the opposite. Once you’re aware of what you’re capable of in having kids, I think suddenly you’re like: Wait a minute. Am I a superhero? What else can I do? And then watching your body repair itself from this insane endeavor of making a human — wow, respect. I had my first kid at 30 and then 32. So it’s been 10 years, and I feel like I’ve just become more and more comfortable.

You know, the last time you were making the big press rounds was for “Don’t Worry Darling,” and that whole thing got, I don’t want to say derailed, but —— “Derailed” is a fair word.

It got wrapped up in a lot of extracurricular stuff about your personal life and rumors of tension on setand things like that, in a way that seemed wildly —— Disproportionate.

How much of that do you think had to do with sexism? I don’t know. I think a lot has to do with the way we receive information. I don’t begrudge a populace who is inherently distrustful of public figures because of the way that our country has run itself into this very dangerous rut of fascism, or nearing fascism. And it’s happened because we have lost track of certain skills of critical thinking. But it’s been fed to us with this onslaught of information that’s impossible to unwind and organize. I know it seems crazy to take your question about a tabloid storm and relate it to something like fascism, but I come from a family of journalists. Beyond my parents, my grandfather was a wonderful journalist who’s famous for this saying: “Believe nothing until it is officially denied.” I think that’s healthy. So I didn’t blame people for feeling curious about what became this media storm around that movie. When there’s a lack of information, people fill the void with assumptions. Some of it has to do with the way the media talks about women, but I think it’s broader than that.

I want to make sure I understand you. Your hypothesis is that there would be dribs and drabs of maybe-inaccurate information coming out about the film, and in the absence of factual information, people became attracted to the story because they were filling in the blanks themselves. Yeah, they become storytellers. I think we all do that. So, yes, my hypothesis is that because there was something kind of titillating and mysterious about what people felt they knew about that movie and everything around it, they created a narrative that was so far from the truth. And every story needs a villain. I was cast as said villain. It’s something I don’t have any rage about. I think it took me a few years of zooming out and thinking about lots of other things to realize, Oh, that really had very little to do with me. I also grew a lot from it. I’m a very different person now. Anything that forces you to do a bunch of therapy and think deeply and read a bunch of books and travel — anything that throws you off is actually potentially very, very good for you.

How are you a different person now? I’m way less concerned with how I am perceived. It’s sort of like the saturation point. You’re outside with an umbrella, but you’re already wet, and you’re like: I don’t need this umbrella. I am already soaked. So I think that I approach things without a real fear of whether or not I’ll be adored. I didn’t even realize I had that before, but I did feel this kind of heartbreak of like, Oh, no, I’ve been misunderstood. It’s so destabilizing, and I’ve lost that. There’s a certain amount of vulnerability that I’m now able to express in my work that before was locked away. So it broke me, but in a way that was necessary in the end.

I don’t want to put you in a position where I’m asking you to unpack the worst moments of your life. And yet —— [Laughs] That’s what I do!

But when you say something like “It broke me” —— It’s a very dramatic thing to say.

It sounds dramatic, but it could also be true. Earlier this year, you were on Alex Cooper’s podcast, and you talked about that moment around “Don’t Worry Darling” as when you hit rock bottom. Very few other people have had the experience that you’re talking about. So can you help us understand what that was like and why it made you feel broken? You say very few people have had the experience. Maybe at that scale, but people are going through ruptures in their lives all the time. For me, the real heartbreak has nothing to do with public scrutiny or anything in the media. I went through a rupture in my own life. I went through a separation that was incredibly heartbreaking. So to go through that and then to avoid dealing with the real pain of what was happening to then launch into a movie in Covid, that’s an insane thing to do. All of that personal stuff being warped and twisted and used in this public way, that’s the part that’s specific to this industry. The crazy thing is, that was four years ago, and it is the least interesting thing about me. And yet I find myself having to talk about it over and over again. The annoying thing is that we could have a conversation about so many things, and the pull quotes and headlines will be about the past. That’s the part that bums me out. Because I don’t live in the past. It’s not the experience itself. It’s having to rehash it.

Which I’m asking you to do. But I get it. I understand. I also think if you’re going to make a movie about relationships and pain and identity, you have to be willing to say, I’m not coming from a place of complete ignorance. I have been through some [expletive] that gives me a little bit of authority on some of these topics.

You know, I’m thinking about your hypothesis from a second ago. I’m sure it’s correct, but on a more base level, you were dating a pop star, and people since the 1920s have been hungry for stories about backstage drama in Hollywood. Your story had the elements tabloid readers and tabloid makers are into. So maybe there was also a more straightforward reason for the attention. Or maybe it all worked together. It all worked together. A perfect storm. It’s funny, sometimes this business reminds me of the scene in “Galaxy Quest” when Sigourney Weaver and Tim Allen are running down that tunnel on the spaceship with all the big slicers. And Sigourney Weaver’s character just goes, “This is a terribly written episode.” Sometimes this business feels like a terribly written episode. But then, you know, that episode ends. It was just for sweeps week.

Something that I was curious about was how earlier in your career you were on the cover of GQ posing in a swimsuit, and you were No. 1 on Maxim’s Hot 100 list. But as someone who is clearly an intellectual person, did you have ambivalence about primarily being appreciated publicly for your appearance? I would think that would be weird. I feel so relieved to no longer feel pressure to be that. It’s so clear to me that I’m only still working because of my brain. It’s so fun when you get past the point where your physical self is the valuable thing, or could even be misinterpreted to be the valuable thing. I mean, the Maxim thing is so insane. Can you imagine if they did that today? Ranking women based on looks?

I mean, I hate to tell you —— [Laughs] You’re like, Have you seen the internet? This is why I love directing, because my only purpose as a director are the decisions that come from my mind. I don’t have the physical ability to move the lights, to run the cables, to shoot the cameras. My brain is the valuable thing on set, and my heart. I feel so happy to be in this place where I get to enjoy aging in a way that some actresses don’t. There aren’t many professions where the more experience you have, the less valuable you are. But acting is one of them.

I read that Esther Perelwas your therapist in your 20s. Is that true? I revealed that, and then realized that I wasn’t supposed to.

I was just curious if there is a piece of guidance that she gave you back then that you still carry with you. I should note, Perel was a consultant on “The Invite.” I think she’s given me advice more recently as a friend and as a colleague — the idea of taking responsibility for your own happiness and understanding the value of your choices. It seems so simple, but it’s very easy to accidentally blame your unhappiness on your profession, on your partner, on your parents. Taking responsibility for your own happiness is a worthwhile endeavor.

It’s also hard because that requires you to look critically at yourself, and people don’t always like to do that. They don’t. I used to go around being like, I don’t have any regrets, and you get to a point where you’re like, Yeah, I regret things. The idea that it somehow makes you stronger and better to be like, I have done nothing wrong and I feel no shame, why is that strength? I am very happy to be open about having felt that sense of failure. I have confronted that darkness, and it’s OK. I think we have to start framing life as an inevitable series of failures, acknowledging that the definition of success is not avoiding regrets. It’s learning from everything.

So to wrap up: When you were promoting “Don’t Worry Darling,” it turned into a weird hot mess but now feels like a celebratory moment of accomplishment for you. I wonder if that change feels like it reflects something about who you are right now? Or maybe it reflects the fact that the public reception to you or your work actually has very little to do with how you feel about yourself? That’s so interesting. You would think I’d have given that some thought. If I had tried to make “The Invite” right away, I don’t think that there would have been this kind of reception. I don’t think people would have accepted it from me. I think that I needed to go and do the work and take space and get smarter and better. And, I don’t know, maybe the world moved on to someone else. In high school, the bullies end up getting sick of picking on the same kid, and they’re like, Well, he didn’t die, and move on to the next. I made myself a man in that metaphor. Unpack it.

Paging Dr. Freud! Hmm. But to come full circle on this conversation, the concept of change and pivoting — it’s not like, Now I’m whole and evolved and this is me. What this experience has shown me is the capacity for change, and I can’t wait to figure out who I get to grow into. I’m very curious about what’s next, what else I have to learn, and say, and be.

This interview has been edited and condensed. Listen to and follow “The Interview” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, iHeartRadio or Amazon Music. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok.