The Big Picture

• Taylor Swift's album "folklore" was inspired by films and books, allowing her creativity to soar.
• Swift's collaboration on "Midnights" with Jack Antonoff was influenced by Joe Alwyn and Margaret Qualley's work in Stars at Noon.
• Swift's evolution post-'folklore' includes directing short films, creating thematic concert tours, and her latest, "The Tortured Poets Department."

Like all artists, Taylor Swift is no stranger to external inspiration. Her Grammy Award-winning album folklore emerged from the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many of us who isolated in 2020 and beyond, she watched movies to pass the time, marathoning titles as diverse as Pan's Labyrinth, Rear Window, L.A. Confidential, and Jane Eyre. "I feel like consuming other people's art and storytelling sort of opened this portal in my imagination," she explained to Entertainment Weekly. Before then, Swift credited Arya Stark from Game of Thrones as the impetus for her hit single "Look What You Made Me Do." She wrote "Death By a Thousand Cuts" thanks to Jennifer Kaytin Robinson's Netflix movie Something Great — which Swift's song, "Clean," had in turn inspired. ("I just wrote a song based on something [Jennifer] made," Swift told Elvis Duran, "which she made while listening to something I made, which is the most meta thing that’s ever happened to me.")

Known for — but not defined by — her intimate autobiographical songwriting, Swift returned to her deeply self-reflective style for her tenth studio album, Midnights. That particular Grammy winner still came about thanks to a stimulating confluence, one she shares with acclaimed actress and Drive-Away Dolls star Margaret Qualley.

How Are Taylor Swift and Margaret Qualley Connected?

When Taylor Swift was first developing Midnights, Joe Alwyn, Swift’s partner at the time, was filming the movie Stars at Noon alongside Margaret Qualley, the girlfriend (now wife) of producer Jack Antonoff, Swift’s long-time musical cohort. The irony of their significant others being simultaneously gone pushed Swift and Antonoff onto Midnights as "main collaborators" for the first time, as Swift shared on Instagram in late 2022. "We’d been toying with ideas and had written a few things we loved," she wrote in her caption, "but Midnights actually really coalesced and flowed out of us when our partners (both actors) did a film together in Panama. Jack and I found ourselves back in New York, alone, recording every night, staying up late and exploring old memories and midnights past."

Much like Midnights walked away with Album of the Year at the 2024 Grammys, the accolades awarded to Stars at Noon are nothing to sneeze at. The film hails from accomplished French director Claire Denis. Itself inspired by a book, The Stars at Noon by Denis Johnson, Denis — alongside her co-writers Léa Mysius and Andrew Litvack — updates the 1986 story of an unnamed female journalist in Nicaragua during the country's Sandinista Revolution against the Somoza family's dictatorial rule. Now, Qualley's Trish, a modern-day journalist, is stuck in Nicaragua because of COVID-19 restrictions. She meets the mysterious Daniel (Alwyn), and the two embark on a vulnerable but torrid affair as they navigate deadly sociopolitical threats.

Much like Midnights, Stars at Noon is a moodily paced and eerily atmospheric film with a heady soundtrack and a dark underbelly. Isolation triggers Trish and Daniel's mutual passion, so the coincidental ironies continue. Johnson likened his novel to "a spiritual allegory about hell," and Claire Denis follows suit by sprinkling despair throughout an unexpectedly romantic thriller. Within this structure, Qualley's understated performance stands out; by 2022, she had already co-starred in The Leftovers and secured two separate Emmy nominations for the miniseries Fosse/Verdon and Maid, respectively. Stars at Noon won the 2022 Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Prix award and competed for the festival's prized Palme d'Or.

How Has Taylor Swift Evolved Since ‘folklore’?

For Taylor Swift, folklore marked an important shift in her artistic evolution. And this is a woman who constantly reinvents her musicianship wheel across genres without compromising her fundamental essence: a poet applying her pen to universal feelings. COVID-19 knocking the world off its axis prompted Swift to toss the rules out the window for the first time. She moved beyond marketing considerations and creative restraints, the latter something she hadn't before taken into full consideration. "There is something a little heavy about knowing when you put out an album, people are going to take it so literally that everything you say could be clickbait," she shared with Entertainment Weekly. For folklore, "it was really, really freeing to be able to just be inspired by worlds created by the films you watch or books you've read or places you've dreamed of or people that you've wondered about, not just being inspired by your own experience."

The immense freedom and respect afforded to her name (and her continued cultural dominance) let Swift expand her portfolio into the visual realm. In 2021, she made her short film directorial debut with All Too Well, but Swift had already spent years conceiving, writing, and directing her music videos. For All Too Well, Swift studied doomed romantic dramas like The Way We Were and Marriage Story. The result — which was short-listed for an Academy Award nomination — led to her insightful Variety Directors on Directors conversation with Martin McDonagh, the man behind Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin. Swift then partnered with Searchlight Pictures for her upcoming feature-length debut and joined the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Then, there's the Eras Tour and its accompanying Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour concert film, a stage production with visuals that can't be credited entirely to Swift but undoubtedly stem from her expansive, thoughtful, and meticulous vision. Almost a year after Swift kicked off the Eras Tour, the highest-grossing concert experience of all time remains a juggernaut in-person and onscreen.

Taylor Swift and Hollywood Are a Perfect Match

With these jumps, Swift has demonstrated an implicit understanding of film language nuance. Visuals impact her creative process; not only does she draw inspiration, she layers storytelling throughout her music videos and on-stage presentations. Let's also not forget her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, whose very title recalls Dead Poets Society and features a track named "Clara Bow." (Bow's great-granddaughters spoke highly of Swift and drew comparisons between the two icons.)

Speaking of her newfound ventures, Swift shared during her Variety's Directors on Directors special: "I think this just kind of grew out of a natural extension of that storytelling. And I don't think I ever necessarily thought that it would be something I would necessarily sort of be allowed to do until I actually had enough experience to kind of say, hey, you know what, I want to step out and do this on my own and see what it's like, and the more I did it, the more I loved it."

In a truly full circle moment, Guillermo del Toro said he "[has] the greatest admiration" for Taylor Swift. Since she discovered Pan's Labyrinth during her COVID isolation, the statement is a bow on the wrapping paper of Swift's post-folklore career. After immersing herself in his resume, "my whole world turned into folk tales and forests and mythical creatures," she said at a Toronto International Film Festival screening of All Too Well. "The Shape of Water is one of my favorite films ever." Whether it's Stars at Noon, Guillermo del Toro, or good old Arya Stark, Taylor Swift and the film industry are tied together by a certain invisible string — no pictures to burn here.

Stars at Noon is available to watch on Hulu in the U.S.

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