Interview with the Vampire is a 1994 American horror film directed by Neil Jordan and written by Anne Rice, based on her 1976 novel of the same name, and starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. It focuses on Lestat (Cruise) and Louis (Pitt), beginning with Louis's transformation into a vampire by Lestat in 1791. The film chronicles their time together, and their turning of young Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) into a vampire. The narrative is framed by a modern-day interview, in which Louis tells his story to a San Francisco reporter (Christian Slater). The supporting cast features Antonio Banderas and Stephen Rea.
The film was released by Warner Bros. on November 11, 1994 to generally positive reviews and was a commercial success, grossing $223.7 million against a $60 million budget. It received two Academy Award nominations for Best Art Direction and Best Original Score. Kirsten Dunst was additionally nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film. A stand-alone sequel, Queen of the Damned, was released in 2002, with Stuart Townsend and Matthew Newton replacing Cruise and Banderas, respectively.
Plot In 1991 San Francisco, reporter Daniel Molloy interviews Louis de Pointe du Lac, who claims to be a vampire. He begins with his human life as a wealthy plantation owner in 1791 Louisiana. Despondent following the death of his pregnant wife and their future baby, he drunkenly wanders the waterfront of New Orleans one night and is attacked by vampire Lestat de Lioncourt. Lestat senses Louis's dissatisfaction with life and offers to turn him into a vampire.
Louis accepts but quickly comes to regret it. While Lestat revels in the hunt and killing of humans, Louis resists his instinct to kill, to Lestat's annoyance, instead drinking animal blood to sustain himself.
Eventually, amid an outbreak of plague in New Orleans, Louis feeds on a little girl whose mother died in the plague. To entice Louis to stay with him, Lestat turns the dying girl, Claudia, into a vampire. Together, they raise her as a daughter. Louis loves Claudia, while Lestat spoils and treats her more as a pupil, training her to become a merciless killer.
After thirty years, Claudia matures psychologically but remains a little girl in appearance. When she realizes that she will never grow older, she is furious with Lestat and tells Louis that they should leave him. She tricks Lestat into drinking the "dead blood" of twin boys whom she killed by overdose with laudanum. When he is weakened, she slits his throat. Though Louis is shocked and upset, he helps Claudia dump Lestat's body in a swamp.
They spend weeks planning a voyage to Europe to search for other vampires, but Lestat returns on the night of their departure, having survived on the blood of swamp creatures. Lestat attacks them, but Louis sets him on fire, causing the fire to spread throughout the French Quarter. In the furor, they escape to their ship and depart.
After traveling around Europe and the Mediterranean but finding no other vampires, Louis and Claudia settle in Paris in September 1870, where Louis encounters vampires Santiago and Armand by chance. Armand invites Louis and Claudia to his coven, the Théâtre des Vampires, where vampires stage theatrical horror shows for humans, in the manner of The Grand Guignol. On their way out of the theater, Santiago reads Louis's mind and suspects that Louis and Claudia murdered Lestat.
Claudia demands that Louis turn a human woman, Madeleine, into a vampire to be her new protector and companion, and he reluctantly complies. Shortly thereafter, the Parisian vampires abduct the three of them and punish them for Lestat's murder, imprisoning Louis in an iron coffin for slow starvation and trapping Claudia and Madeleine in a chamber where sunlight burns them to ash. Armand does nothing to prevent this, but the next day he frees Louis.
Seeking revenge, Louis returns to the theater at dawn and sets it on fire, killing all the vampires. Armand arrives in time to help Louis escape the sunrise and offers him a place by his side. Louis rejects him and leaves, unable to accept Armand's uncompromising way of life and his unpredictable nature as well as knowing that Armand allowed Claudia's murder.
As decades pass, Louis never recovers from the loss of Claudia and dejectedly explores the world alone. He returns to New Orleans in 1988 and encounters a decayed, weakened Lestat, living as a recluse in an abandoned mansion and surviving on rat blood as Louis once had. Lestat expresses regret for turning Claudia into a vampire and asks Louis to rejoin him, but Louis declines and leaves.
Louis concludes his interview with Molloy, who beseeches him to make him his new vampire companion. Louis is outraged that Molloy has not understood the tale of suffering he has relayed and attacks Molloy to scare him into abandoning the idea. Molloy runs to his car and takes off while playing the cassette tapes of Louis's interview. On the Golden Gate Bridge, Lestat appears and attacks Molloy, taking control of the car. Revived by Molloy's blood, Lestat offers him the choice that Lestat "never had"—whether to become a vampire—and, laughing, continues driving.
Cast
Tom Cruise as Lestat de Lioncourt, a French vampire who brings Louis on his misadventures Brad Pitt as Louis de Pointe du Lac, an 18th-century drunkard whom Lestat sired Antonio Banderas as Armand, the leader of the Parisian Brood Stephen Rea as Santiago, Armand's right hand who leads the Théâtre des Vampires Christian Slater as Daniel Molloy, a journalist interviewing Louis Kirsten Dunst as Claudia, a young child whom Lestat sired Domiziana Giordano as Madeleine, a dollmaker whom Louis sires at Claudia's behest Thandiwe Newton (credited as Thandie Newton) as Yvette Indra Ové as New Orleans whore Laure Marsac as mortal woman on stage George Kelly as dollmaker Marcel Iureş as Paris vampire Sara Stockbridge as Estelle
Production Development The rights to Anne Rice's novel were initially purchased by Paramount Pictures in April 1976, shortly before the book was published. The script lingered in development hell for years, with the rights being sold to Lorimar before ending up with Warner Bros. Pictures. Director Neil Jordan was approached by Warner Bros. to direct after the huge success of his movie The Crying Game (1992). Jordan was intrigued by the script, calling it "really interesting and slightly theatrical", but was especially interested after reading Rice's novel. He agreed to direct on the condition that he be allowed to write his own script, though he did not gain a writing credit. The themes of Catholic guilt which pervade the novel attracted Jordan, who called the story "the most wonderful parable about wallowing in guilt that I'd ever come across. But these things are unconscious, I don't have an agenda."
With David Geffen producing, the movie was given a $70 million budget, unprecedented for a film in the vampire genre. Jordan stated that:
Jordan also cited Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula as an influence:
Casting Rice adapted her 1976 novel Interview with the Vampire into a screenplay with French actor Alain Delon in mind for the role of Louis. Later on, when Interview entered the casting stage, British actor Julian Sands was championed by Rice and fans of the novel to play Lestat, but because Sands was not a well-known name at the time (being only famed for his performance in A Room with a View), he was rejected and the role was given to Tom Cruise. Because of his star power, Cruise received a record $10 million salary and a percentage of the profits. Before Cruise was cast, Rice and the studio wanted Daniel Day-Lewis to portray Lestat after Brad Pitt was cast as Louis, but Day-Lewis turned it down as he didn't want to portray a vampire.
The casting was initially criticized by Rice, who said that Cruise was "no more my vampire Lestat than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler", and the casting was "so bizarre; it's almost impossible to imagine how it's going to work". She recommended a number of other actors including John Malkovich, Peter Weller, Jeremy Irons, Rutger Hauer, and Alexander Godunov. She suggested that Pitt and Cruise switch roles, stating that "I tried for a long time to tell them that they should just reverse these roles—have Brad Pitt play Lestat and have Tom Cruise play Louis. Of course, they don't listen to me."
Eventually, Rice became satisfied with Cruise's performance after seeing the completed film, saying that "from the moment he appeared, Tom was Lestat for me" and "that Tom did make Lestat work was something I could not see in a crystal ball." She called Cruise to compliment him and admit that she was wrong.
Due to Rice's perception of Hollywood's homophobia, at one point she rewrote the part of Louis, changing his sex to female, in order to specifically heterosexualize the character's relationship with Lestat. At the time, Rice felt it was the only way to get the film made, and singer-actress Cher was considered for the part. A song titled "Lovers Forever", which Cher wrote along with Shirley Eikhard for the film's soundtrack, got rejected as Pitt was ultimately cast for the role, though a dance-pop version of the song was released on Cher's 2013 album, Closer to the Truth.
Originally, River Phoenix was cast for the role of Daniel Molloy (as Anne Rice liked the idea), but he died four weeks before he was due to begin filming. When Christian Slater was cast in his place as Molloy, he donated his entire salary to Phoenix's favorite charitable organizations. The film has a dedication to Phoenix after the end credits.
Ten-year-old actress Kirsten Dunst was spotted by talent scouts and was the first girl tested for the role of Claudia. Said producer Stephen Woolley: "We started looking at 6-year-olds, which is about Claudia's age in the book, but the role is too demanding for a 6-year-old. We needed a child with a mind capable of grasping the fine points of the difficult monologues Claudia has, and Kirsten was the first actress we saw. She gave a wonderful reading but we thought it was too good to be true, so we saw thousands of other girls. In the end we came back to Kirsten--she's quite extraordinary in the part." Julia Stiles also auditioned for Claudia but Neil Jordan considered her "too old".
Filming Filming took place primarily in New Orleans and in London, with limited location shooting done in San Francisco and Paris. Louis's plantation was a combination of primarily Destrehan Plantation, just west of New Orleans, and Oak Alley Plantation in nearby Vacherie. The depiction of 18th- and early-19th-century New Orleans was achieved with a combination of location shooting in the French Quarter of New Orleans and filming on a purpose-built waterfront set along the Mississippi River. Production then moved to London, where interior sets were constructed at Pinewood Studios. The sets designed by Dante Ferretti included the interiors of Louis, Lestat and Claudia's New Orleans townhouse, Claudia and Louis's Paris hotel suite, the Théâtre des Vampires (built on Pinewood's 007 Stage), and the catacombs where the Parisian vampires live. Shooting took place in San Francisco, mainly on the Golden Gate Bridge, with the external façade of Louis's hotel located at the intersection of Taylor Street, Market Street, and Golden Gate Avenue.
Brad Pitt admitted in a 2011 interview with Entertainment Weekly that he was "miserable" while making the film and even tried to buy himself out of his contract at one point. Pitt called the production "six months in the f—ing dark" because of the almost-exclusive night shoots, filmed mostly in London in the depths of winter, which sent him into a depression. The script, which he received only two weeks prior to filming, was also a source of disappointment. He unfavorably contrasted the character of Louis which he had admired in the book to that presented in the script: