{"id":878697,"date":"2026-06-19T17:23:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T17:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/878697\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T17:23:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T17:23:31","slug":"eve-hewson-on-spielberg-disclosure-day-and-growing-up-with-bono","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/878697\/","title":{"rendered":"Eve Hewson on Spielberg, Disclosure Day, and Growing Up with Bono"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEve Hewson<\/a> was already nervous. It was her first big scene with Colin Firth in Disclosure Day<\/a> \u2014 a drawn-out mind-control standoff \u2014 and she\u2019d been fretting about holding her own with the acting powerhouse. Then she got to set and noticed snipers on the roof of the soundstage.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI get into the hair and makeup trailer and ask what\u2019s going on, and they\u2019re like, \u2018The fucking president is coming,\u2019 \u201d she says. \u201cSo not only is Barack Obama showing up, but the entire rest of the cast who isn\u2019t in the scene is coming to meet him. So I had to do the whole thing in front of [the former president] and Steven Spielberg<\/a>, plus Emily Blunt and Colman Domingo and Josh O\u2019Connor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actress, 34, has had a lifetime to learn how to be in the presence of formidable figures; her father is Bono<\/a>. She spent her childhood mostly out of the spotlight in Dublin, where her parents nurtured her creative side by putting her in plays and music lessons (of course), until her former tutor became an independent filmmaker and asked her to help out on set. \u201cThat\u2019s when I got the disease of Hollywood \u2014 and it is a disease,\u201d she says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

\n\tHewson then went to the New York Film Academy and NYU\u2019s Tisch School of the Arts to study acting and started auditioning in earnest. \u201cI was in all these audition rooms with all these gorgeous California girls, and I was so Irish,\u201d she says. \u201cAt the time, all of the roles for young women were girl-next-door types, and I was sort of mysterious and weird, so it took a beat for me to find my place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe found her way to Spielberg once before \u2014 a small role in Bridge of Spies, in which her big scene called for her to hide under a coffee table as soldiers shoot up her house. While the cameras were rolling, Spielberg would stand just out of frame with two wooden bats, banging them together to startle her. \u201cIt was so practical, and so helpful, and I\u2019d never had a director be that attuned to what I needed,\u201d she says. \u201cI carried that with me afterwards \u2014 whenever I had to do anything big on set, I would say to the directors, \u2018Can you just bang something together to scare the shit out of me?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Frankie Shop coat; Toteme top, skirt; Kinn Studio jewelry.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhotographed by Celeste Sloman<\/p>\n

\n\tSpielberg kept following her work from there: The Luminaries, Behind Her Eyes, Bad Sisters. In late 2024, when news broke that he was making another UFO movie, she took notice. \u201cAnd then out of the blue on a random Wednesday, I got a phone call from my agent telling me he wants to Zoom with me in an hour and a half,\u201d she says. \u201cHe told me, \u2018I\u2019ve been watching you, and I\u2019m so proud of you, and I have a script I want you to read; your character\u2019s Jane.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n

\n\tSomeone from his team hand-delivered the script, and Hewson \u2014 who assumed it would be a small role and that she would probably die early in the film \u2014 was shocked to see Jane on page one and in most of the subsequent pages. \u201cI\u2019ve been telling friends of mine who are actors, even if you think something is a small movie, Steven Spielberg is going to watch it one day and he might cast you, so make sure you show up,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe pair took one more Zoom meeting, during which Hewson pitched him some ideas for the character (\u201cI can\u2019t even remember what I said, to be honest \u2014 I have that Irish gift of the gab\u201d), and she had the offer by the end of the week.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen the two reunited for Disclosure Day, Spielberg\u2019s intuitiveness was even more apparent. Her character is the audience surrogate, the outsider learning about the government\u2019s plot to hide alien life from the public. \u201cShe has to be the vulnerable one, and her emotions had to be very immediate, and he would tell me stories that would help me get to where I needed to be, and he would say, \u2018I\u2019m right there with you,\u2019 \u201d she recalls. \u201cIf you cry, he\u2019s standing at the monitor crying too. During that scene with Colin, when I\u2019m having to fight him off with my mind and be really tense, Steven told me the next day that it felt like he\u2019d spent 10 hours working out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the Disclosure Day stars embarked on a worldwide press tour, Hewson was elsewhere \u2014 in Dublin, filming the motorcycle racing flick Isle of Man opposite Channing Tatum and living with her parents. \u201cI\u2019m 34, and I\u2019ve been spending my Friday nights with my mom and dad watching movies, but we all love it,\u201d she says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHewson in Disclosure Day.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNiko Tavernise\/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment<\/p>\n

\n\tBut even from afar, she\u2019s been noticing the extra attention that a starring role in a Spielberg summer blockbuster brings. Hewson believes the casting announcement alone helped her score a few more lead roles. \u201cAnd when the trailer dropped, I started hearing from people I hadn\u2019t spoken to in 10 years,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m nervous that so many people are going to see this movie \u2014 every dentist I\u2019ve ever been to, but also the entire world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story appeared in the June 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eve Hewson was already nervous. It was her first big scene with Colin Firth in Disclosure Day \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":878698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[61260,185,250166,171,350016,1801,2407,357121,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-878697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-bono","tag-celebrities","tag-disclosure-day","tag-entertainment","tag-eve-hewson","tag-international","tag-steven-spielberg","tag-thr-spotlight","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116777938236129192","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}