Movies

Watch Greta star Isabelle Huppert sip wine, mutilate adorable stuffed animals

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Published on February 28, 2019 10:30AM EST

Cinephiles around the world know French icon Isabelle Huppert as one of the finest actors working today; casual moviegoers might know her as an Oscar nominee for her leading role in Paul Verhoeven’s 2016 thriller Elle; EW’s stockpile of cute and cuddly stuffed animals, however, know her as the last thing they saw before departing this world for plush-toy heaven.

Ahead of Friday’s release of her new film Greta — about a widowed woman (Huppert) who stalks and ultimately lures a young New York City waitress (Chloë Grace Moretz) into a sinister web of violence — Huppert stopped by EW’s New York City studio to tap into the same maniacal energy she brought to the Neil Jordan-directed thriller, plunging various sharp objects into the cotton-filled flesh of several inanimate victims (all while sipping wine, of course). The result is our exclusive video (above) that walks a delicate line between darkness and humor, largely in the same vein as Greta.

“All of a sudden, there was a body language,” Huppert previously told EW of the devilish rush she felt while improvising a wickedly funny ballet dance to accompany one of Greta‘s Chopin-soundtracked murder scenes. “I called it a little dance of madness. It speaks to the aspect of the film that’s always on the border of something dark, funny, and completely strange…. I never really think about what I do, I just do it. The films think for me.”

Greta hits theaters this Friday, March 1. Watch Huppert slash stuffed animals to smithereens in EW’s exclusive video above.