Question
Did actually shooting in Greenland enchance what
you were doing?

Julia: Oh definitely. I mean, Bille [August] and I went to Greenland actually 
before in November, and spent about a week 
to ten days there, and that was very important because it was 
important for me to establish a relationship with Greenland and 
an affinity with it as if it were a character, and it does kind of 
act as a sort of character, a character that is yearned 
for by Smilla, that is missed, that is part of so
many of the characters lives.

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Question
The thing I was interested about - I had read the book beforehand, and the book is densely written, and the descriptions are very vivid - what kind of relationship did you have with the book?

Julia: Well, I read the book as well, obviously, and reread it 
and reread it, but ultimately you work from the script, but I felt 
the script is pretty faithful to the book, faithful to the spirit of 
the book. Obviously there are things that can't be included in
a two-hour film, but I think Bille worked quite hard, and 
Ann Biderman wrote a beautiful script in terms of it.

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Question
It maintains an intellectual curiosity, it's fascinating. Now, your character is the most enigmatic in the movie - is that difficult to maintain throughout making a picture, a character whose function
seems to be to keep the audience slightly off-balance?

Julia: For me, the thriller aspect of it on its own was not that interesting - if you hadn't had this complex character being in the centre of it, then it really wouldn't 
have been that interesting.
But because she is who she is, and because it's also as much 
as it is a thriller, it is an emotional journey for her, where she resolves a lot 
of things, it's about the falling of Smilla herself.
And she is a character who is quite tough  and quite 
inscrutable at moments and that's because of her
vulnerability, she's sort of  brought down all of these barriers,
to just cope with the fact that as a child she felt at a certain point 
when her mother died she was put into a loveless environment,
and she associates love with pain, and she's going to
prevent anybody from causing her pain.

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