Olivia Wilde said she has become “so much more romantic” because of “The Invite.”

“It’s melted the cynic out of me,” she said at Locarno.

“I have spoken to people who have been through so much with their partners, and people have been in marriages for 40, 50, 60 years. They told me it was a very honest depiction of their own experience of really having several relationships with the same person.”

It’s Wilde’s third feature after “Booksmart” and “Don’t Worry Darling.”

“The Invite,” where she also stars alongside Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton, takes place one evening when Joe and Angela (Rogen and Wilde) invite their upstairs neighbours Piña and Hawk for a dinner party.

At first, she thought her hit film was about the end of a relationship. 

“Now, I feel that it’s much more about whether a relationship can begin again with the same person, whether you can have multiple relationships with one person, and actually whether there’s more merit to that than I would have thought before,” she said. 

The other unexpected thing?

“I did not think we were making this movie for all ages. I thought that this would probably hit people in a very specific part of their lives that were somewhere similar to our parts of lives, and then I’ve been blown away by meeting all these young people. In the States, our biggest audience is under 35, and a huge chunk of them are in their twenties,” she admitted.

“Their questions are not based in regret. They’re based in hope, and I have just been blown away by how advanced, how mature these audience members are in terms of the way they’re thinking about who they want to be individually, who they want to be in relationship to someone else. It’s made me less cynical across the board.”

She added: “In terms of the reality of cinema today and the theatrical landscape, in terms of romance and whether or not it’s dead, in terms of young people and their appetite for adult kinds of storytelling, this whole experience has made me much more optimistic.”

Wilde fought for the film’s theatrical release. 

She also called directing “the most thrilling and most fun job anyone could have.” 

“I love it more than anything. I’ve been waiting to do it my whole life and I took a long time to actually have the confidence to do it. I was 35 when I directed my first movie [‘Booksmart’], and I feel like my training in acting allowed me to speak the language of actors in a way that has been integral to the way I direct. I can empathize completely.” 

“I always say that directing is like being multilingual – you have to be able to speak to each actor in the language of their specific training and experience. I think that the job of acting never actually ends, even if you’re not in the movie.”

Initially, she wasn’t supposed to play Angela. 

“This project was really singular because we had such a unique kind of chemistry. There was this like-minded dedication to the project that made the process of acting and directing, I think, a lot smoother. There was also the benefit of being able to be in the scenes and to, at times, make a fool of myself so that they knew it was okay for them to make a fool of themselves. You kind of like jump first so everyone else is a little less nervous,” she laughed. 

“I had an extraordinary cinematographer, Adam Newport-Berra, who had my back in a way that made it possible, as well as the rest of the crew. But I don’t know if I could ever do it again. I think I probably won’t! But I’m glad I did it this time.”