Beat Ling away at home and preparing who you think the character is.

But the reality is you have to leave so many sort of blank spaces for other people to fill by way of the director and the other actors and and the things that they think.

Andi also what they are bringing to the project through the roles that they're playing or what the director has to say.

If I am playing a role in the film that is an adaptation of a book, I would always read the book unless I had been specifically asked not to buy the director, but often for me.

I find that incredibly useful on Dhe. 00:00:53.560 --> 00:01:2.300 I will always find myself referring back to the book almost obsessively Actually, it sort of becomes my armor, my friend. 00:01:2.770 --> 00:01:6.900 Particularly in the case of Revolutionary Road and the reader both of those films I remember, really. 00:01:6.900 --> 00:01:12.710 I just with scour the book for pieces of information that surely the writer haven't found or surely the director hadn't seen.

And I always really enjoy that.

Can you talk about the feeling you all have about whether a film is going Well, we're not going.

You have no idea.

I mean, you have no idea about the end result.

Really?

I don't think I've been very wrong about a couple of them both ways.

Unfortunately, um, I mean, I think you know you can You can only hope to do the best work that you can that day.

His film is a collaborative medium.

There is a 1,000,000 times where it can go wrong, and there are a 1,000,000 times when it could go right as well.

But you know, you can not have communicated properly to a director, and the director cannot have communicated properly to the crew and the crew, you know?

I mean, it can There are a 1,000,000.

It is a miracle when it actually works.

It's never what I imagine it's going to be. 00:01:58.980 --> 00:02:5.170 I went about it a very strange way because I never set my I quite liked it. 00:02:5.170 --> 00:02:6.640 I liked acting at school. 00:02:6.750 --> 00:02:8.420 I was enchanting. 00:02:8.420 --> 00:02:11.460 Is that white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland?

I think I still have the costume.

I slip into it sometimes.

I did some acting when I was at University of sort of, you know, with drama society there, but it was never gonna be.

I never thought it would be my career.

And then, oddly enough, I made a film on amateur film at Oxford.

When I was there, some guy got together a little bit of money help of John's lead singer, whose portrait is just outside this room.

And, uh, and we shot that film and really, it was pretty pretentious.

But, uh, agents came up to me right here after in 19 summer of 1982 and it had a screening and said, Did you want to be an actor?

And I said, No, thank you very much.

And then I went home and I was thinking off because I was due to go off and do another degree somewhere else.

I suddenly thought Actually, I need money.

So I rang up the agents. 00:02:59.990 --> 00:03:2.680 I said, All right, be inactive for a year. 00:03:3.150 --> 00:03:20.040 And I was so bad, frankly, that I I thought I better do another job, another acting job to prove I'm not as bad as I was in the 1st 1 that that process has gone out going on for 30 six years when I was younger.

And then, you know, you'd be in digs up and down the country and hanging out in bars with actors.

And it would get to that part of the conversation where actors discussed their process.

I would go to the men's room or put the kettle on or just go quiet because my my dreadful secret was that I didn't have a process on.

I still don't have a process, and I I just never got around to having a process.

The standard questions, uh, how much research did you do for this part on dhe?

I am old enough now, and it's refreshing.

When you were younger, you have to lie. 00:03:57.830 --> 00:04:2.880 But when you're my age, you're allowed to say, If you ask me the question, how much research did I do for this part. 00:04:2.880 --> 00:04:13.780 The answer is absolutely none whatsoever, because I work at a level of writing where anything I need to know any of the information usually is in the script, that there's something specific you go ask.

But it's very rare on also, they say, How did you get into character?

Well, I'm also old enough to say that I've never knowingly bean in character in my life.

I've heard great things about it, but it's just outside of my experience.

I don't actually know what they're talking about.

I was approached in the street recently by a young woman who said that she'd seen me in a play and she very much to enjoy it very much.

Enjoyed it.

And I said, Well, thank you And she said, I'm trying to be an actor and I said, How's that going?

She said.

But I'm having a little trouble with my drama teacher.

I said, What kind of trouble you're having with your drama teacher?

She said, Well, I'm having difficulty with the feelings.

I said feelings. 00:04:54.200 --> 00:05:5.340 She said, like I would you know, she said, You know the feelings like I would know I said, You saw me in a play, she said, Yeah, you thought it was good, She said. 00:05:5.350 --> 00:05:6.450 It was absolutely what I said. 00:05:6.450 --> 00:05:10.110 Well, I can absolutely guarantee you that I'm not feeling anything.

I'm at work.

You know me.

I'm a bit busy.

I'm a bit pushed.

I have to Do I have to achieve about 1500 things over a period of two and 1/2 hours, or whatever the plate length might be.

I have to make love to a woman.

Smoke cigarettes, breach the door handle, hit the door handle when that verbal cue comes because otherwise the lights will go funny.

I have to get semi naked, Andy chili con carne e.

You know I'm occupied.

I can't be feeling stuff, You know that I do in my own time.

And you can't phone up on a wet Wednesday and say, You know what?

I'm not feeling it, so I don't think I'll come into you know, their challenges in every single day.

The biggest one. 00:05:49.860 --> 00:06:5.980 To be honest with you, I think he's being able to stay focused because you can rehearse and you can plan everything and you can think you have a you know, a framework that you want to stick with or a few ideas that you want to remember to keep in your back pocket. 00:06:5.980 --> 00:06:26.530 And sometimes the craziness of an onset environment can be so intense that you confine yourself, forgetting all of those things that you plan to actually really, really staying focused and knowing that it's okay to kind of take yourself off into a quiet corner and just remember what it was he had set out to do and also just being very accepting off everyone.

Really, because actors can be quite weird on, you know, they all have their sort of Texan ways, and it's such a privilege to see how odd everyone is.

But at the same time, it can really affect your day and how you're playing a role if you allow yourself to be caught up in someone else's stuff for someone else's process and so just being accepting and sort of enjoying them for everything that they are.

One thing that's always helped me is really never judging other people. 00:06:54.110 --> 00:07:2.320 There's always going to be something that their land on in the end, and often we all just have to go through a bunch of silly stuff first in order to get to that place. 00:07:2.320 --> 00:07:5.010 And, you know, that doesn't happen unless you just let it. 00:07:5.020 --> 00:07:13.300 You know, I think it's very difficult to kind of have been brought up with actors and writers and directors and that kind of creativity and not be fascinated by it.

You know, it always feels like you can change the world.

Or it did when I was small and I was I was watching my parents.

So I think it was always something that I want to be apart.

Remember the first time?

You kind of sense this is what you wanted to do.

I never remember wanting to do anything else.

I wish that I did, because I think it would be so much more interesting if I could say yes.

I wanted to be a fireman.

I wanted to be something, but it was always I mean, apparently, And obviously I don't remember.

But apparently I asked for an agent of the age of three.

Did they get you one?

No, they didn't.

And I was really angry, and they finally got me one when I was six.

Well, they're all challenger.

Every job has been on.

I'm racked with anxiety. 00:07:52.900 --> 00:08:3.810 But I have to say, having signed up to do Florence Foster Jenkins in the knowledge that I was going to be playing opposite Meryl Streep, you can't get much more frightening than that on. 00:08:3.810 --> 00:08:6.950 Also, there was a long delay between signing up and actually starting. 00:08:6.950 --> 00:08:8.650 I think it was like 12 months or something. 00:08:9.190 --> 00:08:10.450 That's a long time to be frightened.

So that was That was extremely frightening.

Day one of that, you know, the technology of filmmaking is haven't changed very much in 100 years on DDE.

It's still damn slow.

So you know, as you know, you film maybe two pages of script today a little bit more of its television, but that's basically you're making two minutes of the film in 12 or 14 hour day, so there's an incredible element of tedium, and this is what people always find when they visit the set.

You know, so well, can I come visit you on the set?

You so I don't You're gonna want to say I want I want it and they come and they practically faint with boredom.

Uh, because it's just, you know, this 16 different angles and so many takes order the same thing. 00:08:56.440 --> 00:09:5.050 So you're fighting boredom and fear because in that 12 our day, you might be in close up once or twice. 00:09:5.640 --> 00:09:9.410 And, uh, you know, that's the key moment for you as an actor. 00:09:9.680 --> 00:09:13.930 And it's just awful when they say, and now he we're gonna set up for your close up will be about an hour.

Then you go back to your trailer and you just sit there sweating and you come back on the set.

It's a ll pointing at you.

Everyone's pointing at you, and especially when I was making those big Hollywood films, all the money is pointing at you, and it's just the pressure's unbearable.

One thing I did, I'm glad I've made some American films because it was interesting watching American actors.

They're much less, uh, reverent in terms of the script.

British actors, they, especially in common, is they endlessly improvising, doing different things.

They don't really care too much what was in the script.

They don't care too much about where they've been told to stand on Dhe. 00:09:55.060 --> 00:10:3.810 I think that's very useful on people who should should do more of that in British films because it comes back to my thing about freshness, Really. 00:10:4.380 --> 00:10:6.560 The camera loves fresh anything new. 00:10:6.900 --> 00:10:8.450 It hasn't been pre rehearsed. 00:10:8.460 --> 00:10:11.250 Don't assume that you have to take off your clothes.

It's bullshit.

There is no plot to which it's essential.

It's usually, uh, broadly speaking, by extension.

It's a budgetary concern from the producers.

Like it.

It's got very little to do with art.

It's got nothing to do with out, and it has nothing to do with truth.

I don't know if there is a secret to collaboration with other actors.

I've never been asked this question before.

It's a good question.

Um, usually, it's if I think what is exciting is when you realize that you're fellow actor is entirely prepared on that. 00:10:59.010 --> 00:11:5.650 Whatever preparation it has been required has taken place elsewhere. 00:11:6.800 --> 00:11:13.180 And then if everybody's prepared, then you can start to rook and the first roll your agent got you.

Waas was in something called um, Royal Celebration when I was six, and I think my whole character involved running in and getting Mummy Daddy and running out again.

I thought I was brilliant even when you were this young and there were actors and playwrights hanging around where their particular actors that you remembered that you wanted to be like it was always Emma Thompson.

I was completely obsessed by much ado about nothing, Andi.

I watched it so many times that the video broke, and I think my mom bought it for me about three times.

I used to know the whole thing off by heart.

I don't anymore might be quite useful if I did now, but I don't on.

Then Sense and Sensibility was complete and in fact, all her work I was completely obsessed by just because I've had a lot of experience. 00:11:57.570 --> 00:12:2.020 It certainly doesn't mean that there are certain things that I'm really getting right or or nailing. 00:12:2.020 --> 00:12:14.700 I would almost hope the opposite because I want to always be finding new ways of being able to collaborate in being able to be included and involved and excited and passionate the experience of making a film.

Um, you know, can often be really very, very hard And it can you no can leave one sort of feeling.

Okay, I'm okay with the fact that that's over.

Now on, then.

Lo and behold, you know the thing will come out, and it'll be incredibly fantastic, even more than you could possibly have expected.

So throughout my life, that has always been the case.

Every filming experience is very, very different to the finished product, with possibly with the exception of Sense and Sensibility, which was just absolutely glorious and every respect to make on completely glorious tow watch and still is for me to this day.

Another question that I'm often asked is, you know, could you help me in any way?

Or could you?

And it's a funny thing cause actors can't really help other actors. 00:12:56.460 --> 00:13:7.700 Andi, I find that quite frustrating because I wish I could do, you know, because I'm sure there are so many actors out there who would give their right arm just to be in one scene of a film with no lines. 00:13:7.940 --> 00:13:13.740 I think what I would honestly say to people starting out, you know, it is difficult.

It is definitely a hard job to do, and you do have to keep working at it.

You do have to keep practising things.

You have to allow yourself to make mistakes, you know, make them rehearse in your bedroom.

Trying not to look in the mirror too much because then you can rehearse a scene in front of a mirror, and you like the way you've said something or done something.

And all you will do is keep picturing yourself doing it the way you liked, rather than being completely present in the moment.

No looking in mirrors.

That's not good.

You have to keep at it.

You do.

And if it is the thing that you really believe you want to do with your life, you will get there.

You just have to keep going and keep going and get going and keep yourself busy. 00:13:50.330 --> 00:14:4.780 You know, don't wait for the phone to ring in a fill your life in other areas because the more you enrich your life, the Maur enriched your beers as an actor and as a person, and you'll be able to bring much more to each role that you hopefully we'll get the chance to play well, directors, I don't know. 00:14:4.780 --> 00:14:5.120 I mean this. 00:14:6.230 --> 00:14:8.470 I've worked with every kind of extreme. 00:14:8.470 --> 00:14:16.650 I've worked with incredibly hands on micro managing directors like Roman Polanski, you know?

My God, you got to say like this, you got to pick up the coffee cup like this.

I want you to hold it like that on.

Duh.

I've worked with, you know, Stephen Frears, Not twice who very rarely says anything but seemed very good to me, huh?

Well, let's move on, E Suppose you just have to adapt.

I personally quite like a minimal approach.

Just just a lot of praise.

That was five minutes, darling.

That all I need is or is it all gets confidence, Really.

People who teach acting, they have to talk for a very long time.