Goldsmiths movement expert behind Nosferatu remake

Lily-Rose Depp’s “haunting” performance in the remake of the gothic horror film, Nosferatu, is grounded in the expertise and research of a Goldsmiths academic.

Depp plays Ellen Hutter in the new film by Director Robert Eggers, which is a remake of the 1922 German vampire classic by Murnau.

Using her expertise and research into Butoh and associated research into possession, transformation and the occult, Theatre and Performance lecturer Marie-Gabrielle Rotie helped Depp unlock an intensely physical language of movement.

She said, "Lily-Rose is an accomplished mover and brings incredible emotional rawness to her work. My job was to build for her the language for possession and hysteria which are recurring themes of the film.”  

In numerous movement rehearsals with Depp, Rotie developed a framework of movements that could best convey the character as she falls under the vampire’s spell. Depp’s performance has been widely acclaimed by critics. 

During a post screening discussion in Los Angeles with film director Guillermo del Toro (who described the movement work as ‘remarkable’), Eggers recognized the impact of the role on Depp;

“.. [we had] Marie-Gabrielle Rotie, a Butoh choreographer who I worked with also on The Northman (2021). Lily did tons and tons and tons of body work with her.” The results were so impressive Eggers said, “A lot of people have wondered if some of that stuff is CGI enhanced, but she did all of that stuff physically.” 

Depp states in an interview in Vanity Fair, "Then we worked with an amazing movement coach, Marie-Gabrielle Rotie. She is phenomenal, really helped me map it all out. Going into it I had thought that it was going to be more improvisational; the physical parts were more vague to me in my head. I didn’t realize how choreographed it was going to be, but that helped infuse every moment with an intention. Physical work lends itself to emotional work. They kind of go hand-in-hand: I guarantee if you start shaking your body like crazy, you will kind of want to cry.'' 

For the movement choreography Marie-Gabrielle drew on her expertise in Butoh, research into 19th Century photography of ‘hysteria’; Neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, a contemporary of Freud, documented the convulsions and fits of women detained in asylums. The languages of possession and hysteria have been linked for Nosferatu, with Butoh acting as the physical medium. Butoh connects so well to Nosferatu through the idea that the performing body can be inhabited and possessed by ‘other selves’ such as ghosts or spirits.  Rotie drew on these ideas in her previous solo work, in particular Mythic (2010) which explored themes of haunting, and in which she embodied her dead grandmother, and ideas around ectoplasm and spiritual mediums.   

Butoh has its origins in the 1950s in Japan through founders Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. Central to this philosophical approach to movement was an attempt to find ways of moving that were neither codified or ‘Westernized’ but instead that tapped into the unconscious body.  Core Butoh methods included working with powerful poetic images and techniques for involuntary movement such as shaking, breathing, strong face, and eyes, to create expressivity from the actor's inner world.  

To create the movement material for Nosferatu, and months prior to filming Rotie states,

"Lily-Rose Depp in rehearsals in Prague, said to me, 'Do you really do this for a living?'’’ 

Rotie also worked with other actors on the film and choreographed the iconic final death scene between Depp and Bill Skarsgård, who plays the vampire Orlok. She contributed to the films ending a strongly physicalized and poetic emotion. She also worked with a huge cast of Roma performers for one scene and put a little magic movement touch into crowd scenes in a hospital.  

With over 30 years’ experience working in movement, Rotie thinks that industry recognition for the role is slowly shifting; 

“I am glad to see that the significance of movement choreography in film is gaining greater attention, and hope that my contribution through my work on Nosferatu further demonstrates how transformative movement choreography can be to the way an actor portrays a character.”

Nosferatu opens in UK cinemas on 1 January 2025