She was a face on New York’s club scene when the Safdie brothers got in touch to tell her she’d be perfect to star alongside Adam Sandler in their new film. Now
Hollywood beckons…When sibling film-makers Josh and Benny Safdie were developing the script for Uncut Gems, their new film set in the shadier recesses of the
New York jewellery trade, they scoured their native city for inspiration. For their protagonist, Howard Ratner, a risk-craving gemstone dealer played by Adam Sandler, they drew on stories their father used to tell from his time working in Manhattan’s Diamond District.
For Ratner’s girlfriend and partner-in-crime, Julia, the Safdies took a more direct approach: they based the character on a young New York socialite named Julia Fox, whom they met in the early 2010s. A glamorous fixture of the downtown club scene, Fox was running a minimalist
fashion label and posting revealing videos of herself on the social media platform Vine. So closely did the Safdies mirror her in the character of Julia that, when they sent Fox a script a year later asking her to play the part, her first question was: “Have you been spying on me?”