Filmmaker Chloe Zhao has enjoyed huge success, helming movies like Nomadland (2020) and Eternals (2021), but she says that it has come at a cost. Speaking to Sir Sam Mendes at a screening of Hamnet in London, the filmmaker, 43, said, “It does cost something. Only now in my 40s, I’ve come to terms [with it]. 

Before, I would read as many self-help books as possible and go like, ‘I must fix this!’ But alchemy costs things. You can’t transform without letting something die.”