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“I feel like I’m imitating an American accent, but it really is mine,” Monica Barbaro jokes. The actor has spent the morning rehearsing in an English accent for her stage debut in the National Theatre’s revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. During interviews, she says, she switches back. “I feel it’s best to use my own voice.”

Today, Barbaro – Oscar-nominated for her portrayal of activist and folk singer Joan Baez in James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown – is using that voice to reflect on a new chapter as a theatre actor. She is playing Madame de Tourvel, one of literature’s most famous casualties of seduction and manipulation. It’s a daunting challenge, not least because of the role’s formidable lineage, with Juliet Stevenson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Annette Stroyberg and Reese Witherspoon among those who have previously taken it on. “Speaking aloud in a theatre for this big of an audience is new for me,” she says, apprehensively.

For A Complete Unknown, Barbaro, 35, spent months studying Baez’s voice and music, learning guitar and wearing prosthetic teeth to capture the singer’s distinctive look. “We filmed it only a year and a half ago, and it was put out within months,” she says. “It was really intense. It took a long time for me to land afterwards and feel more like myself again.”

Of all Dylan’s relationships, it is his partnership with Baez that has lingered most in the public imagination. When they met, she was already a bona fide folk star and civil rights champion, while he was relatively unknown. Their relationship was shaped as much by their creative symbiosis as by its personal intensity, which made it all the more poignant when he ultimately eclipsed and distanced himself from her.

Mangold’s film included scenes of Baez and Dylan’s performances in Greenwich Village and at the Newport folk festival – where the director bent the truth by using their breakup duet on It Ain’t Me Babe as the backdrop to a love triangle. “Joan and Suze [Rotolo, Dylan’s girlfriend from 1961 to 64, a fictionalised version of whom featured in the film] were empowered women,” Barbaro says. “They were a huge part of Dylan voicing his opinions about political matters. They told him what was important to talk about, they were a huge influence on him. And the film honoured that in a way.”

The more Barbaro learned about Baez, the more she came to idolise her. “I’m just like: ‘Then she marched with Martin Luther King, are we clear on that? Do people know that?’ It was really nice to hear from a lot of people who watched the movie that they were intrigued to find out more about her.” Another thing that deepened Barbaro’s connection to Baez was their shared mixed identity (Barbaro is a quarter Mexican, and Baez is half Mexican). Barbaro has spoken of the challenges of navigating an industry that tried to categorise her, and how reading Baez’s memoir and its exploration of dual identities, of not belonging, felt “so personal”.

It wasn’t until last year that the two actually met in person, when Barbaro travelled to see Baez perform in San Francisco. The experience, she says, was “so trippy. It was so strange to hear in person the voice I’d been obsessing over for so long. There’s a worship quality to it; I felt in complete awe of her. It was kind of a whirlwind moment. We’ve kept in touch. I think now, with all the pressure off, it would be really cool to sit down with her for an afternoon and just talk. I can hear her songs again and not panic.”

She calls the Oscar nomination “totally surreal”, but something she tried to process in advance. “It seemed embarrassing to want it, or celebrate it, and I needed to confront that it was something I’d love to have. Then, when it happened – unbridled joy.” It was a big shift for an actor who went into the film fangirling over the rest of the cast and the director. “I had to constantly encourage myself to believe I could take up space. The Oscar nomination was a nice reminder that I did that, I worked hard, I showed up every day.”

We meet in the labyrinthine tunnels of London’s National Theatre during a break in rehearsals for Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Barbaro arrives in jeans and loafers, her hair unstyled and face free of makeup – a far cry from the glossy red-carpet photographs and magazine shoots that have trailed her recent ascent. Throughout our conversation she speaks thoughtfully, as if testing each answer as she goes, and seems most comfortable discussing the process of acting itself: rehearsals, character and the strange psychology of performance. She says she was drawn to the production partly by the chance to work with director Marianne Elliott (War Horse, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), who has collaborated with playwright Christopher Hampton to revisit his Olivier-winning 1985 adaptation, placing greater emphasis on the women at the drama’s centre.

Few stories have proved as durable as Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 novel. Denounced by early critics as “diabolical”, it quickly became the most scandalous book in Europe. Even Marie Antoinette reportedly ordered a copy, requesting the binding conceal its author and title. Set among the corrupt aristocracy of pre-revolutionary Paris, the story follows the calculating Marquise de Merteuil (here played by Lesley Manville) and Vicomte de Valmont (Aidan Turner), former lovers who manipulate those around them for sport. When Merteuil proposes a wager, Valmont is tasked with seducing the virginal Cécile Volanges – and, more challengingly, conquering the devout Tourvel. “Sex is back”, proclaimed the London Standard’s website in an article showing pictures of the cast in rehearsal.

But for Barbaro, the story’s appeal lies less in its sexiness than in the darkness beneath it. “I find it to be quite depressing,” she says, laughing. “You can see the characters having fun with the games they’re playing with people. You can see why that world would be enticing. And then at the end you realise: that’s a horrific thing to do to somebody. It’s a proper epic, like a Greek tragedy. The seduction is really just the means of manipulation. What it’s about is power: systemic abuse, corruption and cruelty. Ultimately, you see patterns of abuse repeat themselves,” she says of the story’s enduring resonance. “Yes, Tourvel and Valmont die, but Cecile survives and essentially takes over Merteuil’s role. That, to me, is sadly very true.”

Such a portrait of elite excess feels resonant. “It was about the corruption of a certain class who could operate with impunity, and fuck over anyone they wanted.” Does she believe it’s a story modern audiences will be familiar with? “Oh, completely. The Epstein files were released a few days before we started rehearsals. It felt palpable. Particularly [Ghislaine] Maxwell’s role in it.”

In revisiting his script, Hampton has leaned further into the position of women in pre-revolutionary France, exploring the limited forms of resistance available to them. Merteuil – often cast as a villain – is imagined here as decades older than Valmont, her cruelty entangled with the precariousness of ageing in a society that prizes youth.

For Barbaro, the play’s enduring power lies in its emotional brutality. “As a modern woman with autonomy and independence, the thing I fear most in the world is dying of heartbreak,” she says. “That’s what makes Tourvel interesting. She can’t revive herself or escape the situation she’s in, her life is essentially ruined. She is controlled by her own shame, and that theme of shame is still relevant today.”

Part of the challenge, she says, has been making the characters intelligible to modern audiences. “It’s painful to watch Tourvel fall into Valmont’s hands because we know he’s manipulating her. But to get through the play, you have to recognise some part of yourself in someone who would still say yes. You can see someone at their game and still fall in love with them.”

Growing up, Barbaro knew a very different kind of privilege. She was raised in Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco, among steep hills, redwoods and the clean Pacific air. Her Italian-American father is a doctor; her mother, who is of Mexican, German and Nicaraguan descent, is a former nurse and dance lover who enrolled her three children in ballet classes. Barbaro trained seriously for years, studying dance at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Acting had captured her imagination earlier, though: she played Hermia in a school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the age of 12. “I didn’t identify as a dancer, I knew I wanted to act,” she says.

After graduating she returned to California, picking up commercials and small television roles before a performance as naval aviator Phoenix in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick transformed her profile. Salso wrapped Luca Guadagnino’s drama Artificial, about the founders of OpenAI, alongside her boyfriend Andrew Garfield. Not unlike Les Liaisons Dangereuses, it turns on questions of power: who holds it, how it is wielded, and the damage done in its pursuit.

One of the aspects Barbaro admired in Baez was her ability to “give her whole self” for a performance, despite suffering from stage fright: the ability to be comfortable with imperfection, of “not self-correcting as you go”. It is something she has tried to adopt for her stage debut. As a teenager she visited London frequently with her anglophile mother, seeing the Royal Ballet and wandering the galleries; performing at the National Theatre is a full-circle moment.

“It feels like going back to school. There’s a part of me that wants to prove my worthiness, and prove to myself that I can do it in all forms. And the National is the ultimate space to break into the more traditional, classic side of this art form. I get to carve out a part of the practice that I haven’t gotten to do yet.”

I think back to Tourvel’s use of religion as a mechanism for self-protection. What is Barbaro’s? “My workaholism,” she says. “And my commitment to my own independence.”

Acting, she adds, has become its own form of therapy. “I was, in a lot of ways, raised with the ideology to never embarrass yourself. But in the theatre, that’s the number one thing you have to be comfortable doing.”

For her, the “scary” thing about this play is it being set in an environment where vulnerability and honesty are manipulated. “They say: ‘Never show pity, especially to the vulnerable.’ If you’re subjected to horrifically toxic people, it’s very hard to be shameless about who you are. I think societally, we’re always trying to edge towards less of that.”

While Barbaro’s relationship with Garfield has brought even more attention, the terms on which she measures herself remain internal: a daily practice of showing up, doing the work and confronting the doubt that comes with it. Despite the Oscar nod and the critical acclaim that followed A Complete Unknown, she’s quick to tell me she “still auditioned” for this play.

“We ran scenes one through five yesterday, twice, and – I probably shouldn’t say this – but I went home thinking: ‘I’m a terrible actor and they’re finding out.’ I’m so glad this [fame and success] happened to me at this stage in my career, rather than in my early 20s, and thinking somehow I have some superiority or something. The scarcity of work in this industry has terrified me for so long, and it feels like a gift to not be in a state of desperation any more.”

Before Barbaro returns to rehearsals, I ask her what’s next. “I honestly don’t know right now, which is kind of a weird, exciting thing. It’s nice to feel that and not feel like: ‘Oh no, I’ll never work again.’ At least I know something will be there.”

With that, she hugs me, thanks me for my time, and returns to the real work.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses is at the National Theatre: Lyttelton, London, to 6 June.