In 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein reshaped literature forever. A gothic icon of scientific ambition shadowed by the consequences of creation – its intrinsic ties to justice, revenge, loss, family and love have inspired over 400 adaptations. Now, three-time Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro revives the story after decades of research, piecing together references from different interpretations. Injecting new life into the myth and the monster, Felix Kammerer joins the cast as William, the brother of Victor Frankenstein, following a chance meeting with del Toro. Starring alongside Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Christoph Waltz and Mia Goth, Kammerer explores the extremities of humanity, embodying a character shaped by the director’s lived reflections on brotherhood, fatherhood and identity. Kammerer’s previous characters are no strangers to the comradeship found in the face of destruction, with breakout roles in war epics All Quiet on the Western Front and All the Light We Cannot See, where he bonded with fellow actor and friend, Louis Hofmann.

Felix Kammerer: Hallo!

Louis Hofmann: Felix!
FK: How have you been?

LH: It’s weird speaking English to you.
FK: It’s really weird talking to each other in English.

LH: How are you? Where are you?
FK: I’m in Vienna at the moment. I’m just preparing for the big trip to Venice – very excited and super nervous.

LH: What do you do when you’re nervous?
FK: I just let it happen, I just go through the storm.

LH: Whenever I try to distract myself from being nervous… I quit smoking, Felix.
FK: No shit.

LH: I did! Nine months ago, I’m a smoke-quitting baby now. Like a pregnancy, it’s now nine months since I quit.
FK: Well, that’s fun because I do have a nine-month-old daughter.

LH: I should act surprised, but I know, I’ve been told.
FK: You know?!

LH: Congratulations! Oh my god, you’re a dad.
FK: I’m a dad now.

LH: It’s happening, we’ve crossed the threshold.
FK: We’re not the young people on the block anymore. There are younger ones coming up.

LH: I’ve always felt the youngest in whatever group I was in, like the baby. And I always felt quite comfortable in that role. No one really expected too much of me and I could try to impress and surprise. Whereas now, I’ve been doing this for seventeen years, I’m not the newbie anymore.
FK: There are people coming after us who are really the young ones.

LH: I had that feeling in London a few months ago, in Peckham where I lived… I moved back to Berlin two weeks ago.
FK: How long were you in London for?

LH: Almost three years. OK, so you don’t do anything against your nervousness?
FK: Do you do something?

LH: I started meditation two months ago.
FK: So when you get nervous on a premiere night, you just sit down on the carpet and meditate for twenty minutes.

LH: Twenty minutes is a good time. It’s not necessarily against nervousness, it’s just against fighting your feelings and embracing the nervousness, like you say, you ride the ride. It’s much easier to feel it out.
FK: To me, it feels a bit like you’re building up strength or experience on how to deal with it. As a child, when you fall on the playground, you learn how not to hurt yourself, so when I go through nervousness, I really learn how to deal with it. Maybe I’ll come to a point where it doesn’t work anymore and I’ll have to find something else.

“When I do theatre, I always have at least one moment where I realise, “That’s actually how you do it. That’s where I want to be, and that’s how I want to work.”

LH: We’ll find out. You’re going to Venice now with a film, with a monstrous…
FK: I see what you did there. [both laugh]

LH: I’m sure no one’s done that before. A monstrous film by an all-time master director, Guillermo del Toro, I would be nervous as well. [both laugh] How was the moment you got the call? Where were you and how did you feel?
FK: Guillermo and I had our first meeting at the Oscars in 2022. We met on the way to the toilet. He grabbed me on my shoulder, turned me around and asked me, “When are we going to work together, kid?” I said, “I don’t know, you’re Guillermo del Toro, you tell me.”

LH: Very good answer.
FK: He asked for my details and I thought it was one of those conversations where people say, “I’ll call you,” and then you never hear from them again. Two weeks later I got a call from my agent who told me, “Guillermo del Toro would like to Zoom with you,” we Zoomed for ten minutes and I thought it was going to be an audition or something and he said, “Here’s what’s going to happen, I’m going to send you a script, you’re going to read it and if you like it, you call me.” I read it that night and I loved it. I called him back in the morning and said, “I love it. When are we going to audition?” and he said, “You’re on it, man.” Half a year later, we got together in Toronto and started filming. It was very sudden, and I was very lucky.

LH: What did you like about the script? I imagine you get a script from him, and there’s no way you’re not going to like it, but still. Have you seen all the Frankenstein films, or have you read the novel? I feel like it’s part of our culture to know Frankenstein, but I’m not familiar with the story.
FK: I only read it when I was in my studies in my twenties. When I read it for the first time, I couldn’t really connect to it, and then when I read it again for the shoot, I started really liking it because it’s a very atypical novel. It’s written in novel-letter structure, so you have a lot of letters and a lot of prose, what I really loved about the script was that Guillermo took parts from all the Frankenstein material that’s out there and combined it. It’s not just the original novel, it’s also the other films, it’s also Frankenstein’s Bride, it’s parts from comic books that were made from Frankenstein. You can really tell that he took a deep dive into this matter for nearly 30 years and has created his very own, very deep version of Frankenstein that now comes to life through his vision.

LH: I saw a post the other day on Instagram about Guillermo del Toro speaking about the usage of AI, how much he’s against it and how much he is for using real sets. I’m assuming that the sets you were on were absolutely incredible.
FK: Monstrous. [both laugh]

LH: I would like to know what kind of person he is. I would imagine him as a gentle cinephile. Is that true?
FK: Yeah, to some degree. Sometimes it feels like he is one of the very few people in the industry who still keep this childish or very naive way of telling stories and filmmaking. That has something very refreshing to it but also you feel very safe because it’s all about the project, it’s about the filmmaking, it’s about the process. Oscar Isaac said this a few days back, he’s so open about his process that he keeps everyone on set, no matter if it’s a runner, cast or production, he keeps everyone in the same loop and is very transparent. If he likes a take, he shouts out, “I love it!” But if it doesn’t work, he also shouts very loudly, “That was shit, let’s do it again!”

LH: Did that happen to you once?
FK: It happens multiple times to everyone, and I think when you’re Oscar Isaac, who has been working with him on this project for such a long time, you understand it better. I did talk to Guillermo for quite some time about the character I play because it’s also influenced by his personal life. I was very nervous, I was the young guy on the set and then you do two or three takes and suddenly this master shouts through the whole set, “That was shit let’s do it again, Mr!” You think, “OK, I guess I was shit…” [laughs] After a few weeks you realise it’s not him telling you you were shit it’s that there was a problem, something didn’t work out, let’s do it again.

LH: It’s really transparent.
FK: It is. It was fun, it’s something to get used to, but once you learn, it’s actually a fantastic way to work. Have you seen any other Frankenstein films?

LH: No, I haven’t.
FK: Have you read the novel?

LH: I haven’t. [both laugh]
FK: You’re going to have a blast when you watch the film because I think people who don’t know anything about this won’t be in a position where they think, “Oh no, where’s that part I loved so much? Where does that come from?”

LH: That’s always the case with novels when they’re being made into films. Usually, the ones where I’ve read the novel always miss something that wasn’t taken from the novel into the film.
FK: I’m actually quite interested to hear what people say about the character I play because in the novel, it’s a five-year-old boy who people just write about in a letter, and he’s been killed by the monster. Guillermo wrote a completely new character, I’m wondering how people are going to take it.

LH: You said he used some of his personal stories for your character. That must feel very special to be asked to play a character that is influenced by his personal life.
FK: This whole film was very personal and to some degree, maybe even autobiographical for Guillermo. It’s these two brothers, their relationship, it’s a question for understanding life, understanding family, understanding death, creation, and he really did put a lot of himself into the script. It felt like a huge responsibility to play someone who, as he said, has many parts of himself in it. But at the same time, it’s not just that character, it’s Victor Frankenstein too, and Mia Goth’s character also has parts of Guillermo and his life, family and friends. I wasn’t the only one, but still, to know that parts of what you’re playing are influenced by a director’s personal life isn’t making things easier in terms of nervousness. Also, because Frankenstein in its original form, but also the version that Guillermo created, has so much to do with family upbringing, education, how we raise children, how relationships between fathers and sons work – it’s a huge topic in the film. You see your child growing up and you try to bring them to a point where they don’t become what you have become. But, by trying to prevent it, you create exactly what you didn’t want to create. That’s why we also talked a lot about family and children. At that time, I already knew I was going to be a father and Christoph [Waltz] and Oscar have children, Mia has a child and Guillermo has children. We all started talking about what it’s doing to you when you have a child, when you’re expecting a child.

“You can really tell that he [Guillermo del Toro] took a deep dive into this matter for nearly 30 years and has created his very own, very deep version of Frankenstein that now comes to life through his vision.”

LH: What is it doing to you?
FK: My daughter is not a year old yet, but already now, I can tell the biggest gift is that the most important thing in your life can’t be yourself anymore. Before you have a child, you think about your work, your friends, your family, your life, and the moment there is a child, you extract your most vulnerable spot. You take it out and you put it out in the open, and now you have to take care of yourself with your weakest point being outside of you. Suddenly, everything shifts because you don’t think, “How am I going to be perceived? How am I feeling? How do I do? What do I want?” It’s all, “What about this little creature?” And that’s exactly what it’s about in Frankenstein. To have those thoughts and that arc going through while filming was so eerie and so meta. I played a character who asked the questions of bringing up children, of relationships with brothers and fathers and parents, and then personally being in the same situation, asking myself the same questions. That will forever be one of the craziest experiences while making a film.

LH: Wow, I cannot imagine.
FK: Especially when you have a director like Guillermo del Toro who knows filmmaking but also knows family, because his family is really big, he has stories with his father, his mother, his siblings and his children. It all connects suddenly and you realise it is just there, the connection to real life is there, we aren’t just making a science fiction-esque film about a monster, it is about real life.

LH: I always feel like that’s the task when you make something like science fiction or mystery or something rather abstract, to break it down to what it really is about. In that case, it’s family, and then it’s all of a sudden really easy to connect with it. It’s not this big story anymore, it’s an intimate story about family.
FK: It’s right there in front of you.

LH: You create playlists for your characters, I read that on the internet. [both laugh]
FK: Yes, I do. Weirdly, I recently did a radio show about those playlists where it featured some of the songs from films I’ve done over the years. One of the songs was from the time when I started preparing for a crime series, Pagan Peak. While working on that project, there were a lot of summer rains and thunderstorms and the person I played connected with a little lizard who lives in the woods and is mostly found in places where it’s very wet, humid and cold. So, every time it was raining I took off my shoes, popped in some music and ran through the rain. [both laugh] Do you use music on set?

LH: On set, not really, no. I used to have this habit where I picked songs before reading a script, so I would later connect the song to the script. Recently I stopped doing it because I felt like it was adding a colour to the script that wasn’t intended, so now only when I find a song within the script will I put it on and listen to it. I do sometimes create playlists for projects or characters because it’s a very non-intellectual way to tune into a character. It’s easy, somehow.
FK: I only use it on set before I go to the scene, I leave my earphones in the trailer. But
to set the mood for the day, when you know we’re going to shoot those certain scenes. It could turn out to be a problem if scenes are changed. [both laugh]

LH: That’s true. I’ve experienced that sometimes listening to a very sad song before an emotional scene limits the variety of feelings that I can feel, and it puts me in a place that is rigid. It puts me in a spot, not an action, then I feel like I’m playing that scene from that spot, which I think is boring. I always feel like it’s the most interesting when it’s dynamic.
FK: I still remember when we did All the Light We Cannot See, you told me that when it’s written in the script, ‘he starts crying’ or ‘he cries’, you just erase that.

LH: I saw a video of Jessica Chastain speaking about how she handles scripts and she said that she does that. I’m undecided, because every time you see something crossed out, you’re kind of like, “I know it says he’s about to cry, but I’ve crossed it out, so I’m ignoring it!” [laughs] But you bloody know. It sometimes does help.
FK: After you told me that, I started doing it because I found it to be so helpful. I do understand what you mean by the “I know what’s behind the curtain.” But still, it takes away this pressure of this is what needs to happen.

LH: Exactly. Expectation is the death of everything. We can all thank Jessica Chastain for that. I saw her on stage once in New York in A Doll’s House and she was magnificent. I read that Eden was filmed in Australia, Frankenstein was in Toronto, then you come back to Vienna and you have your theatre, and you’ve got your structure. Do you come back to rehearsals? [Felix used to be a permanent member of the Burgtheater ensemble in Vienna]
FK: I did in this particular case. I actually left the company a few years back, I’m doing plays as a guest actor but I’m not part of the company, so I’m not working regularly on multiple plays on this repertory system we have in Austria and Germany. I left the company because it wasn’t possible to shoot films while being part of this theatre because you have so many restrictions date-wise. I left the company, but then because I knew that I wanted to be home at least for some time after my daughter was born, I skipped some projects and I asked two directors I’d already worked with if they were going to do something at the theatre here and one of them actually was. So, I started doing a play with him, Der Fall McNeal – it also played on Broadway [McNeal] with Robert Downey Jr. That was perfect because I could just go in, do six or seven weeks of rehearsal, do the play here, be at home and spend time with a newborn. Usually, I’m not doing so much theatre anymore.

LH: I always feel like it’s such a challenge to return from this bubble, from this world. You come home and so much effort goes into finding your way back into your groove. That’s why I’ve always admired actors who do one or two plays from time to time, because then they’ve got a certain structure still happening.
FK: It does help to go back to your roots. I started in theatre and I did about seven years of theatre before I did my first film, so going back to theatre is always like going back to what I’ve learned, how I started and where I’m based. When I do theatre, I always have at least one moment where I realise, “That’s actually how you do it. That’s where I want to be, and that’s how I want to work.” Doing one play a year is like a check-in to see if I’m still on the same page with myself.

LH: I’ve got a certain envy for that, I imagine it to be very grounding. Is there a theatre piece or a film or anything that you go back to? Or something you recently discovered?
FK: My evergreen, the only answer to that question is The Lobster by Yorgos Lanthimos. To me, that is the best film that has ever been made and will stay the best film ever made forever.

LH: Whatever comes next, nothing is going to be better than that! [laughs]
FK: For me, it’s the perfect film. It’s just flawless. Colin Farrell is my absolute favourite actor, and he pulls off a way of acting in that film – I don’t know how he did it. It’s acting without emotion, it’s being plain and neutral, but still showing internal movement, and it’s so weird. It’s like watching someone feel through plastic foil. I think I watch that film five or six times a year, over and over again. I can recite it from top to end.

LH: The film I thought was flawless recently was Anatomy of a Fall. I remember people telling me it was flawless and me going into the cinema thinking, “I’m gonna get you, I’m gonna be disappointed by you.” I was very aware of my experience watching it and in my mind ticking all the boxes like, “Yep, great choice, great decision, I love how you did that.” I was in awe watching it. I have a theatre performance that I sometimes go back to because there’s a recording of it, and that’s Sandra Hüller’s Hamlet. I saw it live and I enjoyed it, but I was very far away. Then I found this recording and just really fell in love with the way she interpreted it. So Felix, you started with seven years of theatre, then you made this incredible film where you have a beautiful performance in it, All Quiet on the Western Front, then you did Eden, then you did Frankenstein and you’re soon to be doing a film with Daniel Brühl about the tennis player, Gottfried von Cramm. It’s an extraordinary collection and variety of films.
FK: I’m excited about the film about Gottfried von Cramm. We are already in development and going into production.

LH: It’s a family project.
FK: It is a family project, with everyone from All Quiet. [laughs] We’ll see how that turns out, bringing the family back together.

LH: That’s amazing. Maybe we’ll cross paths in Venice, I’m there as well.
FK: That would be amazing.

LH: Maybe by accident in a cafe. you’re drinking a cappuccino, I’m drinking an espresso. I hope you have the most wonderful premiere. It was lovely speaking to you.
FK: So lovely, thank you.

Interview originally published in The HERO Winter Annual. 

GROOMING BRADY LEA AT A-FRAME AGENCY USING LA COLLECTION PRIVÈE CHRISTIAN DIOR AMBRE NUIT AND ELEMIS;
PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT BRUNO McGUFFIE;
FASHION ASSISTANTS MADDISON SLEEUWENHOEK AND NICHOLAS SKEENS