It's a great role for any age. Any actress wishes they would find a screenplay that means as much to them as "Aquarius" meant to me, as a person and a citizen.

In Brazil, there is a fear and a denial of our past. Downtown Rio used to display the history of colonialism in Brazil. They had beautiful buildings and theaters, and there was a bakery that was threatened to be demolished, but people insisted against it. They laid down in front of it and said, "You're going to have to go over my body to destroy it." It frustrates me when I see people on Facebook posing in front of old buildings while on vacation, because they could've posed in front of equally beautiful buildings at home in Rio.

You see all these old buildings [in Rio] going down or catching fire overnight, and it is so sad. I am very connected with these buildings because they are our history. It is the only one that we have.

People have reacted to the length of "Aquarius" in very positive ways. For example, at the beginning, you have people in a car on the beach at night. One character says, "I'm going to play you this great track." She pushes in a cassette tape, and they listen to about 45 seconds of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust." You can actually see the pleasure registering on their faces, but it takes time, and audiences have appreciated that.

Today we find many actors, they are Latin, they are Hispanic, they are living in the Unites States, they are American, but very rarely you find them in a lead role.

I didn't want to overstate anything, but at the same time, the scene expands on some of the themes in the film [ "Aquarius"].

["Aquarius"] it had a bit of a rocky arrival in cinemas because we were given the 18+ rating, which did not make any sense in terms of the Brazilian rating system for a film like this.