Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Career, ‘Tangles’: ‘Awards Chatter’ Podcast

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is best known for comedy. A recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and the National Medal of Arts, and an inductee of the Television Academy Hall of Fame, the veteran actress shares, with the late Cloris Leachman, the record for most Emmy wins for acting — eight, spread between the unforgettable TV comedy series Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine and Veep — with another three for producing.

But, interestingly enough, what brought her to this year’s Cannes Film Festival — where she visited Meta House to record an episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast in front of an audience of festivalgoers — was the world premiere of a deeply moving dramedy: Tangles, Leah Nelson’s animated feature directorial debut, which was adapted from Sarah Leavitt’s 2010 graphic memoir of the same name. The film chronicles the impact on a family of the diagnosis of its matriarch — voiced by Louis-Dreyfus, who also was a producer of the film — with Alzheimer’s disease.

Over the course of an hour, the 65-year-old reflected on her path to acting. A performative streak in elementary, middle and high school led to the study and practice of theater at Northwestern — but she left school after three years because she was offered a job on Saturday Night Live, becoming, at just 21, its youngest female cast member to date. She did not enjoy her three years on the show (1982-85), but bonded, during her third year, with an equally unhappy new writer there: Larry David.

Not long after, David and Jerry Seinfeld co-created a sitcom that was initially called The Seinfeld Chronicles, and did not feature a female star, when it debuted on NBC in 1989. At the insistence of the network, such a character was added, and Louis-Dreyfus, at David’s urging, was cast in the part of Elaine Benes. It quickly became clear to her — if not quite as quickly to audiences, who took a while before embracing the show — that Seinfeld, as it was renamed, was something special. “The comedies on television had a familiar rhythm to them,” she recalled. “This show did not. This show was sort of almost an anti-joke in a way. I recognized the difference on the page, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is wild. It’s like my friends have gotten into the system and fooled everyone!’”

In 1998, after nine seasons during which the show became hugely popular, Seinfeld went off the air and Louis-Dreyfus, like her co-stars, had to figure out how to follow its success. She appeared in two more network comedies, Watching Ellie (2002-03) and The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006-10), before moving over to cable with HBO’s Veep (2012-19), Armando Iannucci’s send-up of a female vice president of the United States. She recalls thinking, “The idea of a vice president is so delicious because you’ve made it … but you haven’t made it!”

Louis-Dreyfus, who grew up partly in Washington D.C., also saw interesting parallels between D.C. and Hollywood: “In politics and in show business, you’re selling a brand. The brand is yourself and you’re trying to stay relevant as time goes on. For example, I’m here with you right now trying to stay relevant. And in politics, exactly the same is true. That I could relate to, and as a woman who’s getting older in the business, or getting older in the world of Washington, D.C., it all seemed to make a lot of sense.”

In addition to her celebrated comedy series, Louis-Dreyfus has been a part of a wide variety of other notable projects, from more dramatic turns in the Nicole Holofcener films Enough Said (2013) and You Hurt My Feelings (2023) and the art house indie Tuesday (2023), to playing CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine in the Marvel projects The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) and Thunderbolts* (2025).

As for Tangles? It was sent to Louis-Dreyfus by Lauren Miller Rogen, the producer and wife of Seth who has become an Alzheimer’s disease activist, and struck a personal chord with her. “There’s Alzheimer’s in my family,” she explained. “My grandmother died of it and my mother-in-law is currently suffering with it, and I understand the disease well, and the toll that the disease can take on a family. I’m living that as we speak. I was immediately intrigued by this project too because it was based on this extraordinary graphic novel, and the idea of tackling this subject through animation geared towards adults was so intriguing to me.”

The film deals with heavy subject matter but manages to retain a sense of humor, as well. “Ultimately,” Louis-Dreyfus argues, “this movie is about communication and being in community and the value of family. All of that is sorely needed right now, certainly in our country, and globally, you could argue. I’m hopeful that with this film, when people see it, they might take away a new way of approaching those they love during difficult moments.”