but you dissolve the pressure by working hard.

If you feel the pressure and you buckle

or you feel the pressure and you don't put in the time

or the prep, you're gonna choke.

You use the pressure or you use the fear

or challenge to just put in the time,

and it's up to you to fly with it or try to.

[soft dramatic instrumental music]

So The Ragged Child, it was the televised version

of a play that I had appeared in

with the National Youth Music Theater,

which was a young people's theater company.

It pulled together from auditions all around Great Britain,

kids from all types of backgrounds.

It was an interesting experience.

I guess it was one of the first times I'd

ever done this, the stop start process of filming.

It was very much an ensemble piece,

so each of us shared the weight of the responsibility

of the piece, although the lead

was played by Johnny Lee Miller,

who obviously has gone on for a wonderful career.

So I view my time in the NYMT as a big part

of my training, actually.

Your training never stops, but that was a real part

of stepping up and taking responsibility as an actor.

Jerome Morrow, that's a nice name.

- It's my name.

- I can't be you without it.

- What makes you think you can be me at all?

So I'd done a couple of other films,

but Gattaca felt like a huge, huge break.

First of all, to work with Ethan and Uma,

Alan Arkin, Ernest Borgnine, Gore Vidal,

this extraordinary group of highly regarded

and talented individuals.

I guess I was spoiled looking back

because also to work on something

that I just so believed in, unique, resonant,

timely, political, had great style.

But my memories of it were wow, yeah,

moving to LA for the first time.

I was staying in one of these little self-contained suites,

just up off Sunset, renting a [laughs] Ford Mustang,

driving around, hanging out a lot with Ethan.

Ethan and I got on very, very well, I remember.

We filmed some of it in Marin County.

We did that drive up the highway together,

which took us a weekend.

It really felt like the first time I'd come

to Hollywood and I was making a movie,

and it was a true moment of destiny

and dreams.

It's great that that film that early on in my career

was a film that also stood the test of time.

I've made about, God knows, 30, 40 films since then.

That's still a film people talk about,

which is really, it really meant something.

There are a couple of others I did around that time,

which people [laughing] don't talk about so much,

which is no bad thing. [laughs]

Oh, I can just imagine, if only Dickie would settle down.

Doesn't every parent deserve a grandchild?

Oh, God.

Never, never.

Swear on your ring, Marge.

I'm never going back.

The Talented Mr. Ripley.

I was making a film in London produced by Carolyn Choa.

I was aware that Carolyn was married to Anthony Minghella.

Anthony, by all accounts, was watching the rushes

of this film come in decided to offer me Dickie Greenleaf.

In my insane arrogance as a 20 something year old,

hostile to the idea that I would be cast

as this pretty boy, turned it down. [laughs]

I was thinking at the time that

what I should really be doing

is just playing character roles and hunchback,

just trying to find real weird, twisted characters.

I luckily came to my senses and realized

that he was putting together this extraordinary group

of young actors and that he himself,

obviously, having just won 50 Oscars or whatever it was

for The English Patient, was probably gonna be good,

safe hands to put myself in.

And my experience of that particular film

was absolutely golden, but it was also somewhat misleading

in that I was sent, first of all,

down to Ischia to get a suntan,

learn to sail, and practice my saxophone.

I've never since been given that [laughs] kind

of carte blanche or invitation on any other job, sadly.

I was overwhelmed with nerves because suddenly,

you have Gwyneth and Cate and Philip and Matt turning up

alongside all these other great actors.

I used the bravado and the confidence

and the swagger of Dickie as a way

of pulling my way through that,

and I think I pretended I was Dickie,

basically, for the whole time, which worked.

It was very well received.

It was the first time I got a nomination by the Academy,

and so in many ways, it was a huge turning point in my life.

It still sits in my heart as one

of the most wonderful memories, mm.

[light jaunty instrumental music]

Many a Mecha has gone to the end of the world,

never to come back.

That is why they call the end of the world Manhattan.

- And that's why we must go there.

- My memories of AI, wow, there are so many.

So I went from the sun-kissed coast of Italy

to East Germany, where I was filming Enemy at the Gates.

I get this phone call from Steven Spielberg,

which is the phone call most actors

spend a lifetime waiting for,

and he was developing AI alongside Stanley Kubrick,

who sadly passed away early, early on in the development

of this particular version of the film.

I would finish working Berlin, fly to Paris,

get on the Concord, fly to New York,

and land before I'd left, get met on the runway

at JFK with a helicopter, and flown to Steven's house.

This is [laughs] to rehearse.

If that doesn't make your head spin, nothing will.

That kind of treatment is, well, for me, otherworldly.

It was a really interesting experience in the hands

of this extraordinarily powerful director.

He was incredibly collaborative,

and we came up with this idea of the dancing

and the music and the guy with a walking jukebox

so he could paly old classics and dance to them

and seduce whoever he had to seduce.

He was open to so many ideas, and, in a way,

the challenge was just be as imaginative

and as creative as you can, and I'll see if we can do it.

And most of the time, he was like yeah, we can do that.

The makeup was an extraordinary journey.

Initially, they wanted to make a fake me,

so they took a mold of my face

and stuck the mask of me on my face.

First of all, it made my head way too big,

and secondly, it meant that you

couldn't actually register anything I was doing.

So we ended up just built these tiny,

little pieces that just made every line

on my face perfectly symmetrical and straight.

And then I also remember, because, unfortunately,

it all grew back tenfold, they shaved almost

[laughs] all my hair off.

Everything was shaved every morning, and they sprayed me

like a doll every morning and polished me.

Sitting in a chair for four hours and being transformed

does help because you go in as one thing,

and you come out really looking and feeling as another.

I had a rigorous routine that I went through everyday

with the choreographer.

That discipline was also very important

to setting this physical

neutral zone for Gigolo Joe to operate out of,

and getting the walk right.

'Cause he was a robot, we wanted certain things

and certain moves to be repetitive.

And if you watch the way he walks, people walk like.

He actually walked with a rhythm.

He did this thing where he turns his head every other move.

And so getting into that and locking that

was an important ground zero to start at everyday.

Finding the character is finding the right look,

the clothes, the makeup, the hair, all of that,

and then you end up with what just feels right.

[subdued atmospheric music]

- And what do you do?

- I work wood.

[hammer banging in distance] [men chattering]

Cut.

Mostly work wood.

Well, Cold Mountain.

So I'd start this extraordinary relationship

with Anthony Minghella,

and I remember him saying come on the odyssey with me.

This is gonna be this huge physical journey, and it was.

We battled the seasons and the elements every single day.

It was deeply emotional, too,

because a lot of my character's journey was physical.

I remember also, I had this big relationship

with animals and that Anthony wanted all the animals

to be real, so I was always fishing

and learning to cut cows open

and pull chickens' heads off and all of that stuff.

It was very hands on.

If you're up a mountain in six foot of snow,

you're up there with a crew.

If you're in a bog or if you're in a swamp

with gators six feet away, they're in there with you.

So it's a very bonding experience

to go from baking heat to sub-zero temperatures

and everything in between.

It's all about the people around you.

If you're with a really wonderful group of people

and the part requires it and they're there with you,

then absolutely, you do it again.

Please tell me the truth.

- Why?

- Because I'm addicted to it, because,

without it, we're animals.

- I'd seen Closer on stage in London and in New York.

Again, Mike Nichols, a director just of legend.

A dream team.

How lucky am I?

Suddenly, I'm in the room

with these other three wonderful, wonderful actors.

I remember the rehearsal process was really interesting.

We rehearsed it in New York.

We read through the script, but,

most of the time, we really just listened

to Mike recounting stories of his love life.

I remember halfway through saying to each other like,

maybe we're not gonna input anything.

And what I realized he was doing

was he was laying his life bare in order to feel safe.

It was like he was in confession.

And so suddenly, anything we discussed,

anything we shared, because the piece is about meeting

and breaking up with the loves of your life,

so it's always dealing with the most raw, the most intimate,

the most revealing and vulnerable moments.

And in a way, he was going through this process

of confession and allowing

the conversation to always be safe, which worked.

We shot it in and around London,

which was a real treat because I was at home.

So much of London now I drive past

and I think, oh yeah, I filmed there or oh gosh.

And so suddenly, these little landmarks

in my hometown are also touchstones of memories.

But sadly, there's this one strip,

the scene at the very beginning

when I spy Natalie Portman coming through the crowd,

Spitalfields Market, has been completely demolished.

The shops have all gone, and it struck me the other day

how sad that was 'cause I have such vivid memories

of shooting that scene.

The play, those who know the play,

will know that the ending in the play is very different,

or at least it goes a little further,

and we filmed that ending.

Although it's quite an eccentric ending.

My character Dan calls the other two together

and has this breakdown where he describes

that Alice, Natalie's character, has died.

And he goes through this whole confessional

where he discovers that she's stolen her name

from the memorial of this young woman back

in the Victorian age.