Julie Delpy clarifies she didn't turn down fourth part of Before series as film was never in pipeline

Following reports that Julie Delpy said no to a fourth film in the popular Before series with director Richard Linklater and co-star Ethan Hawke, the actor-filmmaker said her remarks were misinterpreted because the follow-up was never in development. Earlier in the week, in an interview with a French news outlet, Delpy had also talked about mulling over retirement from the film industry. In order to set the record straight, the actor told Variety that the trio — Linklater, Hawke and she — couldn’t come up with a good enough idea to take the series forward. “What happened was that we — all three of us — agreed that we couldn’t come up with something good for a fourth one. It’s that simple. We didn’t fight. We’’re not on bad terms. Everyone’s happy… It’s so much drama for nothing. We just didn’t come up with a good idea,” she said. Delpy played Celine to Hawke’s Jesse in the 1995 movie Before Sunrise about two strangers who meet on a train and strike up a conversation. A sequel Before Sunset was released in 2004 and a third film Before Midnight was released in 2013. Delpy and Hawke served as producers and co-writers along with Linklater on the two films. The 51-year-old French-American actor said they had promised each other that they wouldn’t feel “forced” to make a fourth movie. “If we didn’t find something… why push it and make a bad fourth one instead of keeping it a good trilogy?” Delpy mused. She said there was a short exchange between the trio about one idea, “but it was basically an idea that none of us liked. That was the end of it. It was half of a bad idea that went around and we were like, ‘‘Let’s not do it’’.” Delpy is looking forward to the premiere of On the Verge, a Netflix series she created, co-directed and stars in about women in their mid-40s to mid-50s.