Ezra Miller’s career as a performer began ten years ago at Lincoln Center. Now, he’s back at the Cannes Film Festival for the second time in three years.

Fascinated with opera from a young age, Miller pursued a part in Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s White Raven and was cast in a summer 2001 run. He was just eight years old and soon joined the children’s chorus at the Metropolitan Opera for two seasons.

“Lincoln Center is the genesis point for everything I want to do for the rest of my life,” Miller told me yesterday, unwinding on a sofa inside the Majestic Hotel where he’d just finished a shoot with acclaimed photographer Brigitte Lacombe. We chatted for about ten minutes for the latest FilmLinc.com podcast from France.

Equally important is Ezra Miller’s history with Cannes. His first film, Antonio Campos’ Afterschool, was here in 2008 and now he’s back as the title character in Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin.

“This is the most incredible, the most majestic festival in the world, it’s almost too idyllic to actually believe,” Miller explained, “It completely changed my life and my view of the world…it’s been so magical that this is becoming the pinnacle stop off point to celebrate such magic.”

Despite moving to the big screen and festivals like Cannes, he doesn’t feel he’s strayed too far from his operatic roots.

“Opera is acting with song,” Miller elaborated yesterday, “It is simply creating a heightened enough emotional realty that the only way to possibly express what you feel is to sing it forth. I’ve just sort of divided it in two: now I sing forth my stories with my band Sons of an Illustrious Father and I, as understatedly as often as possible, try to intereprt the stories of these other people who dont really exist.”

“I don’t actually feel the course has changed,” Ezra Miller concluded, “Its still all looking quite the same to me.”

More in the latest FilmLinc Podcast from the Cannes Film Festival:

FilmLinc: Ezra Miller by FilmLinc

Eugene Hernandez is the Director of Digital Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and a founder of indieWIRE. Follow him on Twitter from Cannes (@eug) and follow the rest of FIlmLinc.com’s Cannes coverage in our special section.