Lily-Rose Depp dedicated a lot of time to learning the English accent because she didn’t want to embarrass herself on the set of Nosferatu.

The French-American actress was so desperate to work with The Witch director Robert Eggers that she auditioned for the role of Ellen Hutter in his Nosferatu remake despite the English accent requirement.

“I used to always joke that the English accent was the one that I could never do. It always leaned kind of cockney,” she told Natalie Portman in a chat for Interview Magazine. “And then when I got this audition in my inbox, and I saw that it was an English accent, I was like, ‘I’m about to super embarrass myself in front of Robert Eggers.’

“But I wanted it so badly, so I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to have to try to get my English accent up to speed.’ I worked with a wonderful dialect coach, William Conacher, who was insanely helpful. I think accents are like a wig. If it’s not good, it’s just not good.”

In the Gothic horror film, The Idol star plays a haunted young woman who is stalked by the ancient vampire Count Orlok, played by Bill Skarsgård.

In addition to her English accent, Depp also had to contend with wearing a corset, moving with meticulous choreography and having fake blood in her eyes.

“There was blood that I would have to put in my eyes, and I’m tearing up just talking about it. My eyes are very sensitive, so the eye blood was a whole thing for me,” she recalled.

“Also, there was a moment when – without giving anything away – there’s a lot of blood on my bare body. And because the camera’s so precise, I had to sit in that position for so long. I was just thinking to myself, ‘Everything is mental. I’m good. I’m chilling.'”

Nosferatu, which also stars Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Willem Dafoe, will be released in the U.S. on Christmas Day and the U.K. on New Year’s Day.

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