Barbie Ferreira on ‘Faces of Death,’ ‘Mile End Kicks’ and the Internet

Barbie Ferreira doesn’t really have a dream role.

“[For me], that’s anything that’s well written and with a director that I really like,” the 29-year-old actress tells The Hollywood Reporter on Zoom.

She admits she’s not so concerned with genre, evidenced quite well by the two projects she’s a part of releasing this month — the horror remake Faces of Death and the Canadian indie Mile End Kicks. “I’m really open to so much stuff,” she explains.

The actress, who shot to fame on HBO’s Euphoria, found herself particularly drawn to the “indie sleaze” nature of Mile End Kicks. Set in 2011 Montreal — yes, Ferreira explains, they are calling it a period piece — she’s found parallels to her teen years modeling and going out in Brooklyn.

Now, almost 30, Ferreira continues to choose projects carefully. She emphasizes that her happiness is most important to her. “I always had this dream of being a working actor that has a normal life. I can still teeter on that,” she says.

“I feel bad for pop stars who can’t go outside of their house without a million people,” she continues. “That’s not my journey.”

Below, Ferreira digs into her new projects, trying to stay offline and surrounding yourself with real people.

What about Faces of Death sparked your interest? Were you looking for horror?

I really wanted to do a horror. I know people are like, “What’s your dream role?” [For me], that’s anything that’s well written and with a director that I really like. I’m really open to so much stuff, and I love horror. When I got sent the script, I just thought it was such an interesting way of talking about the internet. The fact that violence is just so ubiquitous with being American, or anyone at this point because the internet is so global — we’re all just watching incredible violence all day without even noticing how much damage we’re doing to ourselves.

Your character Margo works as a content moderator, correct?

I just immediately was like, “Wow, a life that is …” There’s got to be a level of numbness and a level of unprocessed stuff that you can’t get through. I watched a lot of YouTube videos about content moderators and people interviewing them. It’s a really brutal job to be constantly watching the dregs of the internet at all times. [It] has to do something to the psyche.

What’s interesting is that we also all are doing this. I mean, we go on Twitter, we go on Instagram or X, whatever. I don’t have one of those. I mean, you can just be scrolling, looking for news. All of a sudden you’re seeing people get bombed, people get shot. Real death, real-life things happening, so for me, I thought it was an interesting take on it. I thought about how Faces of Death in the ’70s was so radical and how it would not be radical now because of just the level of violence that we see very clear on an iPhone all the time. How interesting it is to bring it into a contemporary audience and have a conversation about the companies that the powers that be get to make tons of money off of violence.

It’s a really interesting point. We are seeing this and becoming desensitized to what we’re seeing.

And it’s every day. I mean, especially in times where there’s so much political violence and so much of the internet is everywhere, you see it every day. I think of children who are watching this. I think of what happens to the human psyche, what’s happening to me, things that we can’t ever quantify because it’s part of our culture and our society … There’s nothing we can compare it to. It’s just how everyone’s living.

Do you try to stay offline?

Girl, I try, but I love the internet.

I know.

I just do the internet different now. I play Scrabble online. I play Monopoly. I’m playing Animal Restaurant. I’m on my burner TikTok watching cooking videos. I think there’s nothing that one can do when one grows up on the internet and it’s part of our world; it’s part of everything.

How is it different?

How you curate your own experience on the internet is so important. Even me, who tries extremely hard to do that and puts a lot of effort into getting my brick on my phone. Dude, I’m not interested. I’m not interested. I’m not interested. It still comes up because it pumps those things into the algorithm. It feels like I have a very interesting relationship with the internet. It’s why I’m here in a lot of ways. It’s the reason I’m Barbie and who I am. I grew up on the internet. I made friends online [throughout] all my teens. When it wasn’t cool. People were like, “You’re talking to someone online. It’s definitely an old guy. You’re weird.” I’m like, “No, that’s my friend because she’s my friend. It’s not even like that. She’s real.” We FaceTime or whatever [it was called], we [would] OoVoo.

OoVoo. Oh my God. Wow.

I think there was a certain innocence in that way, where it wasn’t so ubiquitous. I look at my mom and my grandma who are now attached to their phones in the way that I am. I never thought I would see the day. They’d be like, “Get off that damn phone.” Now we’re all on our damn phones.

There’s no escaping it no matter how much you try, unfortunately. I wonder if, with acting, you feel like you have to be online in a way that if you had another job, you wouldn’t.

Totally, and I think that’s brand new. My theory is also that no one wants to really. … People don’t love actors who share too much on the internet either. I think there’s this balance as an actor. You want to create the air of mystery, so people can really drop in when you’re in character and not have to think about it, but also you have to sell yourself in a big way just in general these days. I’m always trying to be mysterious, even though I’m extremely not mysterious in real life, but just to people away from me enough where they can believe my character.

I get that. You don’t want them to always see you as you.

No. I’ve done enough damage. I’ve been on the internet so long, I’m trying to undo some damage of, they know who I am.

You’re taking some of your digital footprint back.

They know me making fun of something online, like posting funny memes. I love doing it, and I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with it. More so I just love to have a balance of it because obviously, when you also let a lot of people in, especially if it’s in the millions of people, sarcasm, nuance, it’s harder to reach. I’ll sometimes make a really obvious joke that I couldn’t even begin to think someone would not interpret it right. They’re like, “Are you serious?” I’m very cognizant of that and that my platform has changed from the way I used it before I was an actor. I’m also almost 30. You know what I mean? We got to hang it up being an Instagram baddie at some point. Maybe not. Maybe not for me. I’ll do it forever.

I know that people have plenty of access to you on social media and feel comfortable saying things behind a computer screen. How do you handle that?

Honestly, it’s just been happening for so long, like 13 years of my life. Almost half of my life has been people have giving unsolicited opinions on me in any way. It still hurts, obviously, but it’s just different now. I have a greater understanding of society and the internet. Every person is getting shit. I’m not so special in life, where I’m not going to get shit. The more shit I get is probably because I’m doing something right. Obviously, the shit I get in is different. I want it to make sense for my legacy and my body of work.

I lean into it more nowadays. I understand that people are going to talk about me, whether it be negative, positive or somewhere in between. I’m not scared anymore. A lot of the times I felt like I was hiding, and literally, physically hiding in my house. Now I just feel freer. It’s just less important to me. I understand that it’s going to happen to everyone. I have plenty of friends who are really great, and they have their moment and then immediately get completely torn apart for no reason. It’s everyone. We’re all in this together, so it really does feel like it’s not a personal problem.

I can understand that. Do you wish anything could be different?

I do wish society just stopped being so rude to people who have good intentions. I feel like no one’s looking for good intentions anymore. People just want to bully and get the likes and say the rage bait comment. That’s the way that we live right now. I try to live in real life as much as possible. Even if I’m just on my phone playing a game, but my friends are next to me. I have real people that I love. I have a really amazing friend group and family. We are very close. I pretty much run a commune in my house where my friends go in and out. All those things really help with the internet because the internet is not real. The perception that you could have for yourself can change so much. You read something, and then it creates this vision of what you are to other people, and it’s just not true. It’s hard because the internet likes to gaslight you into thinking you’re something that you’re not all the time.

You’re absolutely right, it is everyone. I mean, I’ve received death threats. I write about celebrities.

Baby, it’s everybody. You name a person. If it’s something about my looks… I look at a bitch, who is the hottest person on Earth. All her comments are rude. Every article is rude. Someone’s acting, everyone’s being rude. It’s just what sells these days. I guess I’m just going to power through until we find love in our hearts.

Exactly.

I don’t know if that’s going to happen in Hollywood, but that’s OK.

We can hope. I would love to talk about Mile End Kicks. What was so special about this project?

Honestly, I thought it was really cool to do an indie sleaze movie. I grew up in the tail end of that era, and that’s who I looked up to. I was out and about, when I was 16 years old, hanging out with these indie sleaze icons. Well, not hanging out. They didn’t know me, but I was around them. For me, it was such a special period of time. That’s when I really came into myself, in 2011, 2012, 2013. That’s when I started modeling for American Apparel and getting into the art world of New York. I was in Brooklyn all the time. It just felt like great parallels to Montreal.

I loved the idea of a period piece of something not so long ago. People were in such nostalgia culture too. As we can all see. Everyone’s like, ’90s, 2000s. Now, it’s 2011. All right, let’s get into it. But I think people yearn for a time when it wasn’t so complicated. They yearn for a time where it’s messy. People are very scared to be messy these days. They’re very buttoned up because we live in a surveillance culture where everyone’s like, “I’m going to get a TikTok made of me.” Even kids who are in school are like, “I’m going to get pictures taken of me doing this.” It’s an incredibly scary way of living, so I think there’s a real big yearning for a slightly different time, when technology was still there, but it was used in a fun way. Where you’re taking photo booth pictures and you’re posting your status. It’s not like you’re selling yourself on there to make your dreams come true.