Walton Goggins on sex symbol status and being directed by his wife in new film The Uninvited

But thanks to The White Lotus and sci-fi drama Fallout, the Alabama-born actor is finding new peaks of popularity on TV, and now stars in Hollywood satire The Uninvited…

You were directed by your wife Nadia Conners on The Uninvited – what was it like mixing business with the personal?

The adjustment was very difficult the first couple of days! We’re both Scorpios. We are extremely independent people. We both have very specific ideas about things. She was the director and I had to listen to her the way that I listened to directors – but I had to push back on things that I disagreed with, for my story. But we did find a rhythm. And we did get to a place where we weren’t taking things personally.

You play a Hollywood agent. Did that feel familiar?

I’ve had a number of agents over the years and I know quite a few of them. I’ve seen their lives and it’s not an easy job, really. You have to balance an extraordinary ego with being egoless… a lot of people in this town walk around with a low-grade anxiety. That’s just kind of the nature of any artistic endeavour.

The story sees your character throw a lavish showbiz party. Have you lived that glitzy Hollywood lifestyle?

I’m not machiavellian when it comes to socialising. I don’t go to parties looking for something in exchange. No interaction with anyone is transactional for me. If you’re asking me if I prefer a Hollywood party to a party at our home with Hollywood people, I would take the latter. Nadia and I have been throwing parties for a long time, and I quite like socialising with 20, 25 people at our home. It’s a great way to spend an evening. I’m an extroverted introvert, right?

You and Nadia live in an old hunting lodge in the Hudson Valley, New York state. Is that to keep away from the showbiz madness?

It wasn’t about being away from this business or away from Hollywood. I love Hollywood. I spent 30 years in Los Angeles. It’s one of my favourite cities in the world. I went there when I was 19 and left when I was 49. Really, more than anything, I couldn’t imagine living 40 years in the same place. So we were looking for an adventure. Who knows where this road will lead?

Do you worry about your career trajectory, and the very up-and-down nature of acting?

My career has been like a great stock. It never went up too high, and the dips were never too low. It just kept building over time. Everything is cyclical. Everything ebbs and everything flows. And whatever moment I’m having now, there will be another one on the other side of it. And it’s not defined by access to work for me, it’s defined by quality of life. I’ve been doing this a very long time. I never want work to go away, but fractionally speaking, a bigger part of it will be spent with my family and my friends and a cocktail on the beach in the Mediterranean.

Everyone’s gone wild for your role in The White Lotus. How was it working with creator Mike White?

He is a unique voice in the world and writes an existential crisis like nobody else.

Thanks to the series you’ve become a bit of a sex symbol. What do you think about that?

Well, I think I’ve been around a long time. I live my life in a way I find attractive in other people. So if that is why people find me attractive, then I’m all for it. Yeah!

By contrast, you’re now shooting season 2 of Amazon Prime Video’s post-apocalyptic drama Fallout, where you are almost unrecognisable as the nose-less, mutated Ghoul. Do you like such transformations?

It just makes it easier to disappear! When we were filming The White Lotus, it was just me, but it may as well have been the Ghoul make-up, because I’m just stepping into the deep pain that this person has. So, whether you change yourself physically or you change yourself emotionally, they’re both new skins that you put on to tell a story.

You had two great experiences with Quentin Tarantino, on Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight. Would you like to work with him again?

Who wouldn’t want to get another invitation to work with one of the greatest auteurs to ever sit behind a camera? But what I have learnt in my life, regardless, is I got the golden ticket, and I got it twice.

So, do you prefer working in film or television?

I like both. I came into television at the nascent stage of this new golden era. It was The Sopranos first and then The Shield, which was my first experience on TV. No one, no actor, had ever experienced a serialised unearthing of a character that they were playing over such a long period of time. That was like doing an 84-hour movie!

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The Uninvited is released in UK cinemas on Friday 9th May.

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