Jesse Plemons is deliriously tired. Draped across a sofa at Cannes’ ritzy Carlton Hotel with his legs outstretched, backlit by the late-afternoon Mediterranean sun, the actor apologizes for losing his train of thought on occasion, or tripping over the odd sentence. I cannot blame him.
It has been a long five years. Of course, Plemons, 36, is likely just hitting the film-festival wall. He’s fresh off the world premiere of his new film “Kinds of Kindness,” the social rigors of the Croisette party circuit, a press conference and an hours-long junket.
But he’d have to be at least a little worn out going in from his meteoric rise: Since I last interviewed him for The Times in 2019 — for a piece headlined, in retrospect erroneously, “Being one of TV’s best character actors suits Jesse Plemons just fine” — he’s worked with acclaimed filmmakers Jane Campion, Martin Scorsese, Alex Garland and Yorgos Lanthimos, earned his first Oscar nomination and third Emmy nod and, a week after our conversation, walked away with Cannes’ best actor prize. Not that he planned it that way. “It’s just a survival technique,” Plemons, who broke through as a teenager in NBC’s high-school football saga “Friday Night Lights,” says of his reluctance to plot out career moves.
“I’ve been doing it for so long that it almost doesn’t benefit to look too far ahead. And that’s kind of worked for me so far ..
. I’m constantly just looking at this next thing and following m.