Latest / Half the Picture / #27 - EDDIE MARSAN

Transcript

#27 - EDDIE MARSAN · Half the Picture

• 0:00
  There's me and Will Smith, I was about to kill him and they said,
• 0:02
  I'll kick up, we're going to go to lunch and the afternoon we're going to do the reverse on me.
• 0:06
  He went straight back in the puddle of water and did the same thing, got wet again, everything,
• 0:10
  but no one's sorry, it was just for me, and that's how General C. Was incidental.
• 0:14
  The world's end, Simon was going through recovery, so it's an incredibly
• 0:19
  great thing for him to do. You hear stories of actors turning up two hours late,
• 0:23
  and it just drives me mad, and then they go on and grind Norton's sofa and that's when I do
• 0:28
  their best acting. I've never played a part of someone who's been built fast before,
• 0:32
  it's inspired by true events, brilliant story, the connection we had together was wonderful.
• 0:45
  Welcome to Half the Picture, Eddie, how are you doing, sir?
• 0:47
  I was lovely to be here, I'm really impressed by your note pad.
• 0:50
  Really? Yeah. It's an order.
• 0:54
  With the old school. Old school, you're the first person who's ever said that,
• 0:57
  I'll just have you know. Thank you very much, it's an offspray book, I got it from, I think,
• 1:02
  Decaflon. It's lovely. Does the trick.
• 1:06
  Well, what can I say, I mean, I'm a huge fan of yours, have been for years, and I think most
• 1:11
  of us here could say the same thing. I mean, you've been on our screens for so many years now,
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  I've been doing so much great stuff, so it's just such a pleasure to have you on the pod,
• 1:18
  and I guess to kick off with, when I was going back for your extraordinary back catalogue,
• 1:23
  I mean, you've done so much amazing work on, you know, screens big and small with so many great
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  directors, stuff, you know, people like Scorsese, Terence Malik, Mike Lee, you know, Paul McGuigan,
• 1:32
  so many great people, Steven Spielberg, you've worked with so many of the greats, and when I was,
• 1:37
  sort of, diving into your back catalogue and into your career, I came across a quote that you
• 1:41
  had said, which was the best acting advice you'd ever been given back when you were a student,
• 1:45
  which was from your drama teacher who said, if I've got this right, you said,
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  a great actor should have an ordinary life and an extraordinary career, and not the other way
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  around, because if you have an extraordinary life, you'll have an ordinary career, yeah, and I guess
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  is that something that you still subscribe to and is that something that someone forms what you do?
• 2:03
  It's something I've got no choice in really. I think if you live just takes over, you have,
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  you know, you've been married for 25 years, I have four kids, and any normal person life just
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  takes, you know, you become a parent, you know, you worry about GCSEs and universities and children
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  have, you know, mental health problems or whatever they have, and everybody has them, and if you don't
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  have an ordinary life, then you're running away from something, and it makes your acting worse,
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  I think, so anyone who's, and I've seen actors who have avoided having an ordinary life,
• 2:48
  avoided the ordinary things in life, and their tragic figures, they really are, because success,
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  fame, acting will never give you the fulfilment there, an ordinary life will give you.
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  And do you think it's all grist for your meal as an actor as well, having your feet sort of
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  firmly in the clay of ordinary life, as I guess, those experiences that I guess that come to us all,
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  you know, family, you know, hopefully like family and friends and the people around us, do you
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  think that is all feeding into what you do? I think if you don't run away from that, you accept it,
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  then you life, there's so much about life that you don't understand in your learning every day,
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  so life always will make you humble, and humility and courage are two really essential parts
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  of being any artist of any kind, a writer, actor, musician. So I think, I think, by not running
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  away from life and getting on with life, make sure better artists, you make sure better person.
• 3:47
  And why do you think people, I guess, specifically actors, want to run away from the ordinary,
• 3:52
  do you have a fear of it, do you think, is it something about it that?
• 3:55
  Yeah, I think a good friend of mine described it to me once, if you consider, most,
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  if you consider a straight line to be a self-image, a healthy self-image, most human beings have
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  slightly negative self-image. So we will go home and think, what have we said, what do we do,
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  you know, we think that we're a bit idiots or you know, we have a slight self-negative self-image,
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  quite a lot of successful people have a massive negative self-image.
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  And so the way they compensate for that negative self-image is in the exterior world,
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  the outside world, they achieve standing, they achieve fame, they achieve success, and that
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  means that in the outside world they're treated like that, but internally they believe they're that,
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  and that gap between the two is really, really painful. So the trick is just to have as close to a
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  kind of healthy self-image as possible and not need success to fill in the whole, sorry, I think,
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  that's what I try to do. Yeah, and you say, because of course you're a family man, you have a,
• 5:02
  you know, your life of four kids, and they, the people who help keep you grounded and have a
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  around 100%. They just take the piss out of me all day long. It's very good, very healthy.
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  Well, that'll definitely keep you humble. Oh, 100%. 14 ages, nothing, there's nothing more to keep
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  you humble than 14 ages, and keep your skin as well. Yeah, it's guilty. I'm the youngest of four,
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  so I'm guilty of that, for sure. Something else I found going back for your back catalogue and
• 5:32
  diving into your work, is that I remember you saying that you were taught by Sam Kogan,
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  the drama teacher. That was, yeah. An incredible drama teacher. And I remember you saying once
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  that he gave you, some other great advice he gave you was, he, because when you went to drama school,
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  I don't know, so the first year, you had a friend of yours from the local Beffa Green community.
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  He paid for me to go drama school, yes, Mr Bennett, yes. Yeah, so a bookmaker, right?
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  He was a bookmaker, he ran a menswrested store in Beffa Green Road, and I worked for him,
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  so I never worked for him as a, when he was a bookie, I worked for him, but he used to do his book in
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  a shop, and he paid for me to go to drama school, right? Yeah. And was that, and that was just,
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  that, because we're in British Lane here. Yeah, I was literally about half a mile down the road,
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  yeah. Wow, wow, so these streets have got his area. Yeah, this is my hometown.
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  Well, he, yeah, so he's sort of paid for you to go for that first year, and then you got a
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  scholarship, and then I'm all right in thinking that Sam Kogan, who sort of took you under his wing,
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  he said, he taught you, when he taught you, sort of, he was teaching about the craft of acting,
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  and he said that there was a, a method, because acting, there were so many different methods and
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  approaches, every actor as their own approach, and he said there was an approach that he instilled in
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  you, which was, he likened it to a mechanic, am I understanding that? Is that right? Yeah, he likened
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  it, he knew that I wasn't, he knew that I had no academic points of reference, because I,
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  because I left school so early, and so what he said to me was that he was going to teach me to
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  be an actor the way a mechanic learns to fix a car. When you break down and whether it's raining,
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  snowing, sunny weather, whatever, a mechanic will open up his toolbox and fix your car,
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  and there's an actor, he said, with a director, scream that you are telling you you're wonderful,
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  whether the leading actor is a lovely or a narcissist, whatever, I'm going to teach you to act
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  regardless of the circumstances you're in, and he was good to his word, and he taught me an
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  I'm a great believer in the craft of acting, because it means that you have a, a means by which
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  you can be consistent, which is the most important. The reason, the reason people pay me to do what I do
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  is because I can, I can do it regardless of any circumstances, regardless of what director I'm
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  working with or anything, and someone taught me that, and I, and I hopefully I'll teach someone
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  else to do it, it's not me, I'm not, you know, it's like for me it's like being a carpenter or
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  being a, being a plumber, it's the same thing, I just know how to do my job. And very well, and
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  you just mentioned that it's something that you'd teach at a writer, I mean, is that something that
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  you've ever thought about doing teaching at? I go, I mean, I'm vice president of Melvue now,
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  and I go back, I often go and, I give a few times a year, I go to different institutions,
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  and I talk to you on students, and I give them a sort of advice on, well, not only
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  acting students, but people who want, want to be behind or on the father of the camera,
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  and I give them some kind of advice as best as I can, although the world is changing so much,
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  they're facing challenges that I never faced, so there is a limit to what I can tell them really,
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  but I give them as much advice as possible. Because you've spoken so much over the years about
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  how the importance of also working class voices in your arts, working class actors, directors,
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  filmmakers, and we have to foster and nurture that talent and give it the opportunity to flourish.
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  Yes. You know, because there's lots of different guests we've had on the podcast over the years,
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  not just Mike Lee, but also writers like Grant Morrison have talked about voices from the regions
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  and working class voices. Yes. Just aren't being given the opportunity to come out and see
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  open, and because sometimes they might just, the stuff they have to say is a bit too shocking for
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  people who are sort of, I guess, from the upper echelons to here, because it's not their experience.
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  Yes. Do you think there's something in that?
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  Maybe. I mean, what I think is not shocking the life is challenging.
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  Challenging. My perspective, for my experience of 34 or 35 years now,
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  is the most filmmakers are quite left-wing. They're quite progressive,
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  and so they're very well-meaning. They want to highlight inequality or highlight suffering.
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  They want to champion the underdog. But the problem is that they come from
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  backgrounds where they have no experience of living amongst those communities.
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  And invariably, what happens is they see the world in a very binary way of capitalist villains
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  and working class victims, and that the filmmaker is the hero of the story, the camera,
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  not even the main protagonist, the character, the filmmaker. They always find
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  a character, a person in a state which is invariably deborched, filthy or full of drunks or
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  no one's working. And they find that person in the camera rescue them. And that's a very
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  insidious, narcissistic and unjust portrayal of our communities, because our communities really
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  are amazing. It's full of amazing people who love each other and care for each other.
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  And there is a bit of kind of poverty porn where they've, and the reason they do that is to highlight
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  to highlight injustice in order to provoke change. But in doing so, they'd never really show
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  our own volition, our own intelligence, our own dignity, the love and the help of community.
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  I came from these streets and my community was amazing. And I very rarely see the amazing
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  attributes of my community portrayed. And the kind of vibrancy, it's how it's easier.
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  Yes, what I see is I see a middle-class filmmaker rescuing someone in my community from a sea of
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  debauchery. And it wasn't like that. And it becomes almost, you could say, I mean, I guess, to use
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  the, the pilots of our times like virtue signaling, it becomes about to filmmaker like, oh, look at me,
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  I'm looking, I'm doing, I'm doing so much good stuff. Yes, they will go and sit at
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  dinner in the bathroom and tell everyone how wonderful they are. And they will make a film and
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  you can't even think, well, don't a minute. I mean, as an actor, one of the clearest things you
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  realize is an actor. If I'm ever asked to play somebody for a working class background,
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  invariably my clothes are dirty and the house is filthy. My house is spotless when I was a kid.
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  I love my clothes. One of the things about what they don't realize about working class people is
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  we have great pride in the way we dress and our appearance. It's one of the only possessions
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  we have really, our own dignity. And they deny that. And the reason they deny that is because they
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  want to see us as being victims that they can rescue. It's probably not a very, it probably won't
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  get me much work in the industry, but it's the way I see it. Well, it's refreshing to hear that.
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  I do think there is a certain kind of people who are maybe a little bit nervous about
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  just being honest about, you know, and because there's the political sort of side to the industry
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  and the business. So it's refreshing to hear that. David Herwood gave a brilliant talk of the
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  Jonathan Dimble, but he's not a Richard Dimblebee lecture for the BBC a few years ago.
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  And he spoke about in 1958, the BBC wanted to do a live broadcast about the Windrush Genre
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  and so they were about to go live and and they got this young actress from Jamaica to play a
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  path and 15 minutes before the cameras were going to roll. They showed her her bedroom and she
• 13:05
  should have been learning her lines of parents to play the part. And for 15 minutes before the
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  camera rolled, she tidied her bedroom because it was a mess because she thought she didn't want
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  anyone to think that she lives in, she lives like that. But they wanted to show her living in
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  absolute decennity and poverty and she was like, no, I wouldn't live like that. I don't live like
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  that. And that's what I'm describing. So going into some of the, like I say, the myriad of films
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  that you've made over the years, so much incredible work, so many incredible directors. I mean,
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  one of my favorite films of yours, which is actually quite an early one, is Ganks Number One.
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  The character you play is also called Eddie, Eddie The Thief. And there's a particular scene in that
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  film between you and Paul Bettany, which I guess has kind of become maybe the scene from that film,
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  which is Paul kind of sits you down and in your kitchen and your flat and basically sort of
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  interrogates you. And we actually had the director of that film, Paul McGwiggan on the podcast
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  of a few years back and he talked a lot about that scene. What are your memories now looking back
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  on it, you know, making that film in that scene, I guess, with Paul? Well, first of all, it was
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  brilliantly written because it was originally a play that was not as they were made. So it was
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  already a well-written theme. And me and Paul had known each other for a few years before we did
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  that. We were young actors, as young actors on the circuit, you kind of get to know each other.
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  So we both kind of, I mean, he's, you know, he's a movie star and I'm an actor, you know,
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  he's a brilliant actor. But we both got to do it together and we both trusted each other. So it
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  was like two people who were connecting like musicians really. We both liked each other and
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  admired each other, respect each other. And so the cooperation between the scene is acting as
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  a collaborative art form. So I was terrified because he was so good and he was terrified.
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  And he was so, and he was so terrifying because I gave him an authority. It's a symbiotic thing,
• 15:02
  really, you know. And the trick is, I mean, I grew up in the East End and there's a glamorization
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  of gangsters. I have a rule where I try to avoid making films about gangsters as much as possible
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  because I don't like the, I don't like what the way they, the kind of Robin Hood vibe that I
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  get from them, you know, I don't like the romanticizing of it at all. But when I was playing that,
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  I realized that if you can't be gang, if you do the movie called gangster number one,
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  don't be gangster number two. Be the coward. It's a bit apart. So, you know, when Paul
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  often be that part, I took it. I want to be gangster number two.
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  It's a great way of putting it because that's seen that the fear that is in the air,
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  like the audience, coming off of your character in sort of the staring in the face of Paul,
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  it's just extraordinary. And having Paul McGwiggand, I was saying the director, when he came on,
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  we talked a lot about that scene and he said that when you guys, because he was operating
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  the camera, very few people in the room. Yes. It was like, let's keep this small and intimate
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  and as possible. He said, you guys are almost sort of trying to not, not, not the opposite of
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  overacting. Let's underact. Let's make it quiet and intense. Was that your recollection?
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  I don't know. I never think about those terms of overacting or underacting because they're,
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  the self-conscious term, the terms where you're observing yourself. I just think acting is about
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  being free. If you're free, then you're not trying to impress the audience. You're not trying
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  to manipulate the audience. Terms like overacting and underacting, all about me trying to affect the
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  way you, the audience, think of me. You don't exist. I'm in that scene with Paul Bettany. That's it.
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  And I'm going to just do what I wanted. I'm just going to be free and authentic. And that's
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  it. Then leave it there. Go and have a cup of tea afterwards and talk about it. But it's not
• 16:54
  on my business about overacting or underacting. I don't really understand those terms.
• 16:59
  Fair enough. Yeah. I mean, something else that Paul said about scene was that it completely changed
• 17:06
  permanently how he directed because that's been, yeah. He said that scene specifically completely
• 17:12
  changed. He rewired how he directed because he realised because he's such a visual director.
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  Obviously, I mean, like if people haven't seen it, I mean, people I'm sure I've
• 17:19
  seen this work and may not know that he made it be like Sherlock, the Ben Yorapath series,
• 17:24
  film stars at Dynable Paul, looking number 11, Victor Frankenstein. I mean, he's such a brilliant
• 17:28
  visual director. Yes, yes. But he also understands actors. And he said that that scene was the scene
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  where he realised, and he's changed my approach. And this is about the actors. This is not about
• 17:37
  making a world be kind of shot, like, you know, an incredible shot. This is just like,
• 17:41
  because in that scene, it's literally like shot reverse shot, you and Paul. And it's being
• 17:46
  up close with personal actors. And it completely changed how he directed. He taught me when he came
• 17:51
  on the part. That's very kind. It's very generous, I mean, but he can be generous because he had already
• 18:00
  he already achieved a level of expertise on the other side. So I think what's one of the
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  one of the great things about gangster number one is visually the world that Paul created.
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  So me and Paul Bettany exist in the world where we can create it. So he can be generous of that.
• 18:17
  See, confidence and expertise can create generosity. You can let it go. Because once I think,
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  are there anybody who's skillful like Paul McGriggand is a skillful director, anyone who's
• 18:28
  good at their job? When you become good at something, you realise there's nothing to it. And when
• 18:33
  you realise there's nothing to it, you can't claim it. So you're like, okay, you can let it go,
• 18:37
  because it's always there. And as I say, you know, it kind of changed how he approached what he
• 18:43
  did. I mean, being a young actor at the time and that movie, you know, like people saw that movie
• 18:47
  and it got out there. I mean, did it change? I mean, I guess that's seen, but also more broadly,
• 18:51
  the movie changed how you worked in any way, do you think? No, no, that was, I've worked with Sam
• 18:56
  Cogan and other drama producers. So when I left drama school, I wanted to continue studying
• 19:00
  for like six or seven years. So that was the fruition of six or seven years of learning to act.
• 19:08
  But I learned to act anonymity. Nobody saw me. And I made some terrible mistakes. I was awful.
• 19:15
  But by the time it got to do gangster number one, I'd kind of learned how to do it. But if you've
• 19:20
  been doing for something for seven years, learn, you've got to be an idiot if you don't know how to do it.
• 19:26
  So I kind of knew what I was doing. Yeah. The other thing to my advantage in playing that part was
• 19:32
  when anybody, because I, because they come from Bethnal Green, which is where, you know,
• 19:37
  the cray twins come from and everybody thinks they're glamorous and they want to, everybody wants
• 19:41
  to make movies about them. I grew up with people who were families who were terrorised by them,
• 19:47
  you know, whose lives were destroyed by them. And shops that had to give 50% of their income to them,
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  you know, they were nice people. So I, in my career, I've played, I've played terrifying
• 20:05
  people and people who were scared of them. Because when I grew up, there were some terrifying people
• 20:10
  and I was scared of them. Yeah. So yeah. For what you said there about, you know, being an actor,
• 20:18
  you would be working, even before gangster number one, you would have time to iron out the kinks,
• 20:22
  I guess, in what you did. I still am. I'm still, I'm still learning now. Yeah. But it
• 20:27
  reminds me of what Jack Nichols has said about, you know, because he obviously worked at the very
• 20:30
  start of his career. He was, you know, a, a Roger Corman type of movie actor. And then he,
• 20:34
  then he got easy ride and everything changed. And but he had the time to, he wasn't, I guess,
• 20:39
  he had the time to work out the kinks with his approach first and at the time to fail
• 20:44
  before learning how to do what he was doing the best he could. Yeah. And that's important.
• 20:48
  Oh, yeah, because Lao Tzu, who's the Chinese philosopher, said the ignorance is human condition.
• 20:56
  It is. We don't know. And, and, and once you admit you don't know, then you learn, you know,
• 21:03
  I've made, I still make mistakes now every day in every aspect of my life, in my career,
• 21:08
  in my, my being of parent, you know, being a businessman, whatever I do. And, and that's fine.
• 21:13
  That's just impossible. You know, we, we, we, at the moment, we live in a world we're not allowed
• 21:18
  to make mistakes. And that's very dangerous. Yeah. Trading on eggshells is not sure where to put,
• 21:24
  you know, put, put, put wrong. Shortly after gangster number one, then, I mean, a, a movie that,
• 21:29
  I guess, like a huge scale movie, I guess it's always the opposite of gangster number one that you
• 21:32
  were a part of was, Mark Zucker says these gangs in New York, which, you know, you had a small part
• 21:37
  in there with another Rose gallery of actors. And that was like a nine month shoot, something
• 21:41
  it was a nine month shoot. Yeah. And I had, and I had a nice part, I had a nice part as Jim's
• 21:46
  sidekick. And we had Stephen Gray in there as well. I spent, I spent nine months in Rome,
• 21:51
  Stephen. And, and, and we're out of great part, but the movie was four hours long. So,
• 21:57
  by the time the cut came in, I had two lines. So it was actually, personally, it was a great
• 22:04
  experience. I, I proposed to my wife in Rome and we had a wonderful time. But for my career,
• 22:09
  it was a terrible thing for my career because it's been nine months on a movie and ended up with
• 22:13
  only two lines. You almost had to start again. Oh, wow. But even, you could say, I've worked with
• 22:18
  Scorsese, right? Yeah. And it was wonderful. And to watch him work and to be amongst those actors
• 22:23
  and to spend nine months on a set standing next to Jim Bourbon was, you know, no drama school could
• 22:30
  teach you that. To be, to be with somebody like that who can, who's a brilliant, not only a brilliant
• 22:35
  actor, but a brilliant human being and knows how to, people, there's a great skill in learning how
• 22:41
  to behave on set because it's such a collaborative art form. And I learned how to act on a film set,
• 22:48
  how to be because of the way Jim Bourbon was, you know. And you can see young actors now and you
• 22:54
  hear stories of, of actors turning up two hours late and, and, and it just drives me mad. I just
• 23:01
  think, how can you behave like that? You know, it means the crew's going to go home two hours late
• 23:08
  and they've got kids they want to reach bedtime stories to and things. So you're destroying their
• 23:12
  family life because you're, you're turning up two hours late and then they go on grand nought and
• 23:17
  sofa and that's when they do their best acting because they're the only thing I'm not fucking
• 23:24
  Well, it's like you said earlier, like, you know, they're having the extraordinary life and the kind of
• 23:27
  art but, you know, the ordinary, so I find it offensive, I find it, you know, turn up on time. It's
• 23:33
  not the golden rule of acting, it's not fair and don't be late. So what Tom Hanks said, he said,
• 23:39
  you know, turn up on time, know the text and have an idea. That's it. That's what he has to do. Yeah,
• 23:43
  yeah, yeah, that's it. If you can get, hit those free markers, yes, you, yes, you're golden, yeah.
• 23:48
  And the more you prepare for something, what people don't understand is the more that you, you
• 23:53
  learn this with Mike Lee because you spend six months preparing to build a character and you
• 23:58
  boot, researching a character. The more prepared you are, the more flexible you are because everything,
• 24:04
  everything that happens you can deal with because invariably in, in researching a character,
• 24:09
  every question that's asked on set, you've asked over the period of time, researching. So you
• 24:15
  say, yeah, I thought about that this, this, this, this, this and you can be flexible. It's when
• 24:19
  you come unprepared and you're insecure that you become rigid and eager to stick. Well,
• 24:24
  we'll come back to Mike because I want to dive deep into your working relationship with Mike
• 24:27
  because you guys have done, you know, so much great stuff together. But I had Richard Lee Grant say,
• 24:31
  you know, another great sort of British character actor, he said, because he did age of innocence
• 24:35
  with Scorsese, it's coincidentally with Daniel Day Lewis as well. And he said that on a Scorsese,
• 24:40
  he said it's just absolutely almost monastically quiet when he did it. Anyway, it was just, it was
• 24:45
  absolute like quiet and silenced. Was that what it was like on Gangs in New York?
• 24:48
  No, it's too funny. There were massive sets and, and you know, every time you, you did a take,
• 24:54
  there was a load of pigs being, we was in Chinachita, but it was supposed to be New York in the early
• 25:00
  19th century. So, you know, every scene, Leonardo DiCaprio is doing a speech and there's a load of
• 25:05
  pigs walking behind him in a horse and car. You couldn't be quiet. You know, after every, every
• 25:10
  take, you have to go, it took 15 minutes to re, rejig everything to get back to normal again.
• 25:15
  I had no memory of it being silent when I was there. I remember being admiring Daniel on his
• 25:21
  work, I think. Well, that was one of those things that I really admired. And I couldn't look,
• 25:26
  whenever I'd do the film with Stephen Graham, we couldn't look each other in the eye.
• 25:30
  Because we started laughing. How come? Because he just makes me laugh. We had that kind of
• 25:36
  relationship. Yeah. Yeah. And what was it about Daniels? Because obviously, there's so many
• 25:40
  stories we've been told about his process and how seriously he takes it. I mean, what's interesting
• 25:44
  is that Mike, as said, Mike Lee, he has said, I mean, he hasn't worked with Daniel on a film, but he
• 25:49
  has said that, I guess you could call it a pot theory, but that Daniel sort of, one of the reasons
• 25:52
  he stays in character is because it's easier just to remain in character rather than having to,
• 25:56
  I guess, on a film you can have to turn it on and off as it happens. Yeah, when I did Ray Donovan
• 26:02
  for nine years and played someone with Parkinson's. So I would have the symptoms of Parkinson's all day
• 26:08
  long when I had lunch, when I would talk to people when the camera wasn't rolling. And it's not
• 26:13
  indulgent. It's not me being, look at me. What it is is when the camera's rolling, I don't want to
• 26:18
  think about the shaking. I don't want to think about the symptoms because a person with Parkinson's
• 26:23
  doesn't think about it. It's spontaneous. And the way you create spontaneity is through frequent
• 26:30
  repetitive thinking. So you think, you know, the more you think it is like driving, the more you
• 26:34
  think, when you first start driving a car, a partial test, all you can do is think about driving the
• 26:40
  car. It takes up so much of your brain, the more and more you think about it, the more the smaller
• 26:46
  and more compact the thought process gets to the point where it almost becomes subconscious.
• 26:52
  And then you can hold a conversation while you're driving a car or you can think about something
• 26:57
  else. Actions exactly the same. When Daniel played Bill the butcher, he was holding the physicality
• 27:03
  of Bill the butcher, the accent, everything. So it becomes subconscious. So when he's doing a scene,
• 27:09
  he doesn't have to think about it. And it's the same when I played Terry Darwin. The reason I keep
• 27:14
  shaking is so that the shaking is spontaneous. And therefore authentic. It's not people misunderstand
• 27:22
  it. It's not artifarty or it's just work. It's like having a clarinet and practicing. It's
• 27:28
  the same principle. But on Mike's films then, on Mike Lee's films, in relation to that, he was
• 27:32
  saying that on his sets, him and his actors, there's a policy, not a policy, there's a process of
• 27:39
  warm up or warming up, where everyone gets into character. Getting into character. Yeah,
• 27:43
  getting into character. And he says that's how he navigates. That sort of thing of having to just
• 27:47
  turn it on and off or on a film set, you know, okay, I'm now in character. I'm now not in character.
• 27:52
  He was describing it almost as if it's, but it depends on what you think character is. So if you
• 27:57
  think character is, like, I played him, right? And when I played him, I had the German accent.
• 28:02
  Now, if I'm playing the character, if I mean characters, him, then you can't have anybody
• 28:09
  around me who's Jewish, who's a person of color, because I want to kill him. That's not,
• 28:15
  you know, when I'm playing him, I don't have those thoughts, but I hold the physicality,
• 28:20
  the physicality of him that I hold. And then I bring the psychological thoughts in, because the
• 28:26
  psychological thoughts are always based on not only a long-term thinking, which is like
• 28:34
  over a character's psychology that comes over many years. It's also an immediate thing, like
• 28:41
  today, it's just Tuesday or Wednesday or then we're going to talk about this. And so,
• 28:46
  so the reason you, you have to be very careful what you say character is. Character is both
• 28:52
  physical, a physical given situation that a character exists in and an immediate psychological
• 29:02
  situation. So, when might, when might would say come out of character? He would say come out of
• 29:09
  character. And then if you did bad acting, he would say come out of caricature. And what you do
• 29:17
  is, but even that is frequent repetitive thinking, because you're doing it. You create, when I
• 29:23
  did happy go lucky, I've worked in it for a year. So that character was in, I've been doing that
• 29:28
  for a year and created every thought that Scott had and studied the internet from and the dark
• 29:34
  web and conspiracy theories for a year. So what I'm saying to you is you have to be very careful
• 29:40
  what you say character is. If you're playing a psychopath, you don't walk around being a feeling
• 29:45
  like a psychopath. That's not what it is. It's to do with more to do with the physical given
• 29:51
  situation of the character. I hope that's clear. I don't know if it is. Yeah, no it is. And when
• 29:56
  you're building that character, because I know that you're an actor who loves research. You love
• 30:00
  the rhythms and the processes of the details of the character, even to stow down to the clothes
• 30:06
  and the shoes. And then with bringing full time into the conversation Mike, who you did
• 30:11
  via Drake with and happy go lucky with and running jump with. And Mike is a director who's
• 30:15
  all about detail. As you say, you go away, you worked in that character for a year. And I know
• 30:20
  that often what he'll do at the start of developing a film, because there's for anyone who doesn't
• 30:25
  know. I mean, there's no script. He works out the films with his actors and you know,
• 30:29
  developing those characters and then graduating through improvisations and rehearsals. And
• 30:33
  gradually the film takes shape. It's a very disciplined process. It's not, it's not, you're not
• 30:39
  free-wheeling in any moment. You're always not exactly what you're doing. It's a very patient,
• 30:44
  meticulous process. Sorry. Yeah, no, no, yeah, but it's a very vigorous process. It is.
• 30:49
  And with developing Scots, so you know, you play that in that film, the character Scots,
• 30:53
  this sort of driving instructor from hell, who, as you say, is immersed in the sort of,
• 30:57
  in conspiracy theories and the dark web. And he's got all this stuff going on in his head. And
• 31:01
  these days, I guess you could say, insert. He's an insert, yeah.
• 31:04
  It would be a very atmospheric issue. He was what that was. We didn't know. He wasn't
• 31:07
  given a name, but that's exactly what it was. Yeah. And it's funny, because
• 31:11
  go mentioning Scots, as he actually said recently that Travis Bickle, you know, the
• 31:15
  taxi driver, that character is almost like, is almost become a bit of a norm now. Like a lot of
• 31:20
  people, he feels, have things in common with that character. Yes. And I think Scott is,
• 31:24
  it's always, you don't mind. Actually, when I was playing Scots, I thought I was playing
• 31:28
  the version of Travis Bickle until, until I got in the car, I was Sally, and I realised that it was
• 31:33
  a, a kneeling comedy. And with that character Scots, so as I say, Mike,
• 31:38
  might tell you, am I right in thinking that he might tell you, or Sally Hawkins,
• 31:42
  or another actor, be like, okay, at the very start, go away and, and think up a few people.
• 31:47
  Yes. And then bring them in, and we'll go through them, and we'll start putting together the
• 31:51
  characters. Is that what it was like for us? Yes. You come to him with like 150 people,
• 31:55
  and then he, where it was, it down to 50, then he was, it down to 10, and in the end he was,
• 31:59
  it down to one or two. And you base a character roughly based on those two people. Right. So,
• 32:05
  and then, and then from that, it's a very little germ of a character. You don't really,
• 32:09
  is it, there's a slight essence there, and then you build it from there. Where were, where did they
• 32:13
  live? Who was their mother? Who was their grandmother? Where did they go to school? Where did they
• 32:17
  have their first kiss? All that. And then you gradually build from there. So, Scott came from,
• 32:23
  from those discussions with Mike. But I'm not, what you, when you talk about research and things,
• 32:31
  I, I'm not really, I suppose you can see it within me. I'm not really a very performative person.
• 32:38
  I'm not, I'm not naturally, what you would call a green more actor. You know, some actors are
• 32:43
  just natural performers. I'm not a natural performer. Acting as, acting was more to do with,
• 32:51
  um, it's, it's more to do with me understanding the world for my own needs. And then I'll,
• 32:59
  and then I'll explore that. And hopefully, it's not, it's not expressive. It can be expressive.
• 33:05
  But it's not a performer. I'm not, I'm not a natural performer by any means. So the so research and,
• 33:12
  and, and, um, the kind of exact things of grain of character are the means by which I can
• 33:23
  lose myself in that more, you know. I remember hearing that some actors, they, they find it much easier
• 33:29
  going on stages, so on else because they feel it sort of self-conscious in themselves. Like David
• 33:34
  Bowie said that, like, you know, going on stages, Ziggy Stardust was easier than going on stage
• 33:38
  just as himself. Is that kind of similar to what you mean? Or is it kind of being, what's
• 33:42
  slipping into those shoes is kind of sometimes easier? Or is it, is that not it? I don't know,
• 33:48
  I don't know who I am. I'm not a fixed thing. You're not a fixed thing. None of us are. We're all,
• 33:55
  I don't believe that any of us are fixed, unchanging things. So therefore, when I become somebody else,
• 34:07
  I just bring my own consciousness and, and give it that information. And that's how what my life
• 34:14
  is like, you know, when, when you live life, you wake up in the morning and it's raining,
• 34:18
  you're a different person than if it's sunny because you're affected, human beings are subject
• 34:22
  to the environment. But what is, what is the thing that is subject to? What is, what is that?
• 34:28
  That space where all these things come into? That's, doesn't, that is universal. That may even be
• 34:36
  the same thing that you are. We make consciousness, may even have no division. Really. It may be
• 34:43
  the same thing. And we, like John Paul Sartre said that the universe, consciousness is just the
• 34:48
  universe looking back on itself. That's kind of where I come from with it. So it's not that I hide
• 34:54
  myself. It's just that I don't really understand when people try to tell me to be me or to be an
• 35:00
  idea of me or to be, can you be this kind of person from Bethlehem Green or can you be this? And
• 35:06
  I just think, what the fuck are you talking about? What do you think I am? I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a unique
• 35:14
  expression of, we all are just unique expressions of the universe. That's one of the reasons why I,
• 35:20
  I don't like this ideology that, that actors have to have to have lived in experience. When I can,
• 35:27
  when I champion the cause of underprivileged people from underprivileged backgrounds,
• 35:33
  having more access to the arts, having more writing more, acting more, directing more. I don't
• 35:40
  mean that they, they, they can only make movies about council flats or council estates or being a
• 35:46
  mine or whatever. There are artists. So I, I want like, we're on Brick Lane now, you know, you've
• 35:52
  got two streets alone, you've got, you've got a massive Bengali community. I want some young
• 35:58
  kid of Bengal, of Bengali descent just to stop Brick Lane. If he wants to be an actor, I want
• 36:03
  him to play Hamlet. I want him to play Richard III. I want him to do George Bernard Shaw,
• 36:09
  but I also wanted to make a movie about what it's like to live within his community,
• 36:14
  because that movie, invariably 10 minutes in, will become a universal story. That's the great,
• 36:19
  that's the kind of, the great paradox of the beautiful paradox of it really. So I, I don't,
• 36:30
  I think that we are all unique expressions of consciousness. So if you're, if you're a gay actor,
• 36:36
  you're not the same as an actor. If you're okay, you're not, not every gay person is the same,
• 36:41
  not every Jewish person is the same. Not every person of African descent is the same or Caribbean
• 36:46
  descent. It's only a part of them. They are, they are human beings. They are, they are artists and
• 36:51
  let them, acting is an, is an exercise in empathy. And you learn what it's like to be another human
• 36:59
  being. And it's a wonderful thing. Yeah. What you're saying almost reminds you of the idea of
• 37:03
  the collective unconsciousness, collective consciousness. It is, you know, because I know,
• 37:06
  I understand that you meditate. Yes. Meditation is important to you in the process. Cause I need to,
• 37:11
  I'm, cause I suffer, I suffer from anxiety. So I, I don't meditate because I'm a great guru.
• 37:16
  I meditate because I need, it's a, it's a very, it's a necessity for me because of anxiety.
• 37:22
  I've found sex, I meditate as well. I do TM Transcendental Meditation. Oh, wonderful. Yeah.
• 37:26
  It really helps. It really helps. It really helps. I did it this morning. It does. Yeah.
• 37:31
  Because what it does is you realize that you sit there and you realize
• 37:37
  by relaxing and concentrating on one thing and you see all these thoughts come in and out,
• 37:43
  that you realize you are not the thoughts. You are the space where the thoughts come into.
• 37:47
  Yeah. Yeah. And that's really it. Then you can have a choice whether to
• 37:54
  give, how much power you want to give those thoughts. And then that's when you really have
• 37:59
  control over your life. Totally. And, and I find it helps as well with energy, like TM. Yeah.
• 38:04
  They took something that gets taught about a lot of it. Is that it? It, it, it, it, you meditate
• 38:08
  twice a day, once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and then like, and, and just being in that
• 38:12
  state of, of relaxation and kind of consciousness, it, you, when you come out of it, really,
• 38:18
  you feel it, you feel that calm, but also that energy because your body's been resting.
• 38:23
  Well, I, I realized within me, it reduces my quarters of levels, you know, my stress.
• 38:30
  I can feel it a bit and those came from my upbringing. So when I meditate, I can, I can feel
• 38:38
  in my veins, I can feel the, the stress levels and I can feel them dissipate, you know. And I
• 38:44
  realized when I went to drama school, they told me that I, I, I literally lived with my fists
• 38:51
  clenched. I wanted to fight everybody, you know, and, and it was true meditation that I
• 38:55
  gradually began to let go of that. The anger. Not only anger, but anxiety and fear and, and
• 39:01
  I'm feeling, you know, because anger is just fear. Yeah. And, and is that sort of a Buddhist
• 39:08
  meditation? I'm not Buddhist. I mean, I, no, I, I do mindfulness of breathing, which is a
• 39:12
  Buddhist technique. It's the same, it's, it's, it's the form of meditation that the Buddha
• 39:17
  was, when he was under the Bodhi tree, he achieved enlightenment. But it's not. I'm a humanist,
• 39:22
  so I'm not a Buddhist. I feel very uncomfortable being considered spiritual. I don't understand
• 39:28
  what a word spiritual means. I, I find it, I find it just, I don't, well, I just personally don't
• 39:36
  understand the concept. But the mindfulness of breathing is a means by which I can just
• 39:41
  concentrate on one thing, separate myself from my thoughts and then have a choice over
• 39:46
  whether I want to give my thoughts value or not. Yeah. Yeah. I find that the same with me when
• 39:51
  I meditate. Is that, yeah, you know, just allowing you to just up step back and just the stop as
• 39:56
  well and just sit and, and go into that space. It's a blessing. You can't be something and see it
• 40:01
  at the same time. If you see something, you're not it. You're watching it. And then if you're
• 40:07
  watching it, you can go, well, do I want to, do I want to hold that thought? Does that thought,
• 40:12
  is that full skillful? If it's skillful, go with it. It's not skillful, don't go with it.
• 40:16
  But if you don't see it, you are it. That's the thing. And linking that then to your acting,
• 40:22
  do you find that again, grist to the middle, that all just fees into your approach to the actor
• 40:26
  acting and, and be able to step back and be more aware and mindful? Yes. Yeah. Very much so. And
• 40:32
  that's making it less, I think, I think people make acting to be a great kind of complex,
• 40:40
  artistic mystery. It's not. It's not at all. You could teach anyone to act. I think, I think,
• 40:46
  when I look at people, they just don't know what it is. They think it's one thing and it's
• 40:50
  completely different. That's all. And so going back then to happy go lucky, because as we say,
• 40:56
  Mike's films arise and arrive through this process of rehearsal and improvisation before you
• 41:01
  get on camera. And then, and, and when you're hashing out those, the stories of the films,
• 41:06
  there might be really extended improvisations like 15 hours. Yes. And with happy go lucky then,
• 41:10
  because obviously most of the scenes you have are with Sally in the car, doing these hilarious
• 41:15
  driving, instructor scenes. I mean, and then which of gradually builds up this big, so that's
• 41:20
  blow up. Was that a, was that like a big, were those big improvisations like long extended
• 41:25
  ones? Yeah, very long. We would every weekend, Sally and I would do driving lessons every weekend.
• 41:31
  I think it was every Saturday and Sunday. We would go and do these, do these driving lessons.
• 41:36
  And when we first improvise the scene without cameras or anything, it would be six, seven hours long.
• 41:42
  And then, gradually, when you're going to film it, Mike would say, you remember that you said,
• 41:46
  that's there, and three hours later, you said that, we'll go from that to that, come all that out.
• 41:52
  And so a scene that way you explored things for six hours was suddenly cut down to a two-minute scene.
• 41:59
  But within that two-minute scene, it managed to incorporate all that you had within the six hours.
• 42:05
  Right. It's a wonderful. And he's a genius of the way he's created that.
• 42:09
  You know, he is. Because he really puts the actors, there's so much the center of the film.
• 42:14
  I mean, like, people talk about actors' directors and what makes good actors' directors.
• 42:18
  I feel like Mike just, just by nature, virtue of his process, it's just something, something
• 42:23
  that is unique. And the films that he makes and that you guys are made together and the characters
• 42:27
  you've made together are so organic. It's, you know, it's like nothing else.
• 42:30
  Yeah, it's what we were talking earlier about. He's films aren't bi-dactic.
• 42:34
  And one of the reasons they aren't bi-dactic is because he has an incredible integrity and
• 42:40
  discipline in allowing their characters to be what they are. He will never make a character fit
• 42:46
  an ideology. He will never make a character purely a function of something else. He will say,
• 42:52
  and that that person exists as they are. And that's what I love about it.
• 42:56
  Yeah. And what's amazing to me, pulling out and going more broadly on your career,
• 42:59
  and the extent of the work you've done, how you oscillate between these different genres
• 43:04
  and different scales and movie, I mean, like, in 2008, so the year happy-go-lucky came out,
• 43:08
  you know, that was also the same year that Hancock came out, you know, just to give an example,
• 43:12
  like, you know, huge American blockbuster, Will Smith, Alistar, you know, you as the baddie,
• 43:17
  and then the same year you've got this quintessential British independent film happy-go-lucky coming out.
• 43:21
  Like, what was it like going from something as intimate as happy-go-lucky in some ways to,
• 43:25
  like, Hancock, Peter Berg, Will Smith, huge Hollywood, you know, no difference. No difference.
• 43:31
  No difference. Because there's me and Will Smith. When Will Smith is talking there's a camera behind
• 43:35
  him, and when I'm talking there's a camera, and it's just like that, it's just the way there's no
• 43:42
  difference in it at all. Not at all. No, no. He's acting, he's acting. It's like asking a musician
• 43:47
  when you're playing in a small jazz venue, or you're playing a big stadium, is it any different?
• 43:53
  You know, I just play the notes. That's the exact same. Anyone who tells you it's doing that,
• 43:58
  they're getting their heads getting spun by the size of it all. The size of it all doesn't matter.
• 44:03
  It's all that's, you've got to be the calm in the eye of the storm. I mean, what was Will
• 44:08
  like to work with in that sense before? Yeah, it's lovely. I just seen with him in Hancock where
• 44:13
  the camera was on him, so I wasn't in shock, but he was lying in a pool of water, and the camera
• 44:18
  was over my shoulder, and he was lying there, and I was about to kill him, and he had to do this scene
• 44:25
  and he was drenched, and then he said, I'll kick up, we're going to go to lunch. Went to lunch,
• 44:29
  he went and got dried off, you know, great. And the afternoon they were going to do the reverse
• 44:35
  on me, so the camera's on, the camera's going to be on me now. He went back, we went straight
• 44:41
  back in that puddle of water and did exactly the same thing, got wet again, everything, but it
• 44:45
  was no one's sorry, it was just for me. It was just to make my job easier. Those are your shots.
• 44:50
  Yeah, and that's how Genoa C wasn't an actor. That's amazing. I mean, because as you say, like,
• 44:55
  you know, actors, Genoa C is important. Yeah, it's a collaborative art form. Yeah, you know,
• 45:00
  it's a collaborative art form, and it's an element of trust. I mean, I played lots of violent
• 45:07
  characters. I had physical fights with people. You know, you can have sex scenes, love scenes,
• 45:12
  so it's all about trust and respect, and it's collaboration. Yeah. And then around that time,
• 45:19
  also, you started your working on a ship of Guy Richie, you know, you did the Sherlock Holmes
• 45:22
  movies, you played in the strad. What was Guy like to work with? I guess, again, like, you know,
• 45:26
  quintessential sort of British London director, you know, making, you know, this period action film
• 45:31
  of the Sherlock Holmes movies, I mean, what was that process like with him? Well, within Guy's films,
• 45:37
  what I learned from doing Guy's films is he, as an actor, you realize what your function is
• 45:45
  within his films. They're very, very mapped out, and I knew what my function is as a strad,
• 45:51
  as the character in the gentleman or whatever. So you as an actor, you work out what your
• 45:56
  function is, and then you hide the function. So you hide the function in character. So you create
• 46:03
  characters to hide. So the audience, everything should be seen, but nothing should be shown,
• 46:10
  and and and and go, go, go, do in Guy's films are a great discipline for that, because I often
• 46:17
  play characters who give exposition. The way you give exposition is you create character,
• 46:22
  you hide in character. So people think they're watching a fascinating character,
• 46:26
  but actually they're not, they just get exposition. So that'll be like in a scene, so
• 46:31
  of Downey Jr's Sherlock Holmes, and you have to basically like basically get him and the audience
• 46:35
  up on what's been going on. Yeah, so he can sit in a room and think, and the audience kind of
• 46:40
  know what he's thinking, they're with him, you know. And what was he like to talk about
• 46:44
  interest? Because obviously he is, his energy is so specific, and it's kind of, and I know it's
• 46:49
  quite, from what I hear, it's, you know, there is a, there's a discipline, but also there is
• 46:53
  great energy, you know, and I understand, you know, there's kind of almost improvisational quality
• 46:58
  sometimes. I mean, was that the experience like working with him? Yeah, I mean, you know,
• 47:02
  as an actor, it goes back to what Sam Togun told me really, if you do all your work,
• 47:07
  you can deal with anything, you know, acting, creating a character is you dig a hole and you're sitting
• 47:13
  there. Whenever happens, he goes, okay, I'll do it, I'll do it. Yeah, and that's what it is.
• 47:19
  How do you mean like dig a hole in life? You dig a hole with the prejudices of the characters,
• 47:24
  so the character, every, but every human being has prejudices. When we came here today,
• 47:29
  we expected to, what the day was going to be like, were you expected? I was going to be like,
• 47:34
  you have probably an idea of what I might be wearing, but rough idea in your head,
• 47:38
  and I can't mean it's not like that. So you have a preconceived idea of what it's going to be.
• 47:43
  You have a prejudice, you prejudge a situation. All human beings are prejudicial creatures,
• 47:48
  so you create the prejudices of a character based on what they want, and then based on what they
• 47:53
  consider to be the obstacles to what they want. You create that, think it, and then sit in it,
• 47:58
  and let whatever happens happen, and go with it. And I know you guy, because obviously his films are
• 48:02
  sort of charged with energy and style and sort of kineticism, but then I remember hearing this
• 48:08
  actually on set is pretty sanguine. It's pretty, it's very, quite surreal. Yeah, it plays chess a lot.
• 48:12
  It plays chess. I read a cube of chess. Yeah, very chess, very calm.
• 48:15
  I really, it's very, very capable and knows exactly what he's doing.
• 48:19
  So completely opposite tonally though, from I guess the energy and films, the actual
• 48:23
  the making of the films is very, yeah, but it's all mapped out. He knows exactly what he's doing.
• 48:27
  He's, he's similar to Edgar Wright. Edgar Wright is very similar. They have a,
• 48:30
  they know exactly visually what it's going to be. Well, I was so, it's funny you mentioned
• 48:34
  Edgar, because I wanted to mention him next because obviously, you know, another great film of yours
• 48:39
  that I absolutely love is The World's End, that you play Peter Page, you know, one of the central
• 48:44
  troopers, you know, actors, some peg, Nick Frost, Patti Constantine, and Martin Freeman. I mean,
• 48:49
  that's an incredible film. And I mean, what are your memories of working on that now? Because
• 48:52
  it's been 13 years since it came out. I mean, great fun because we all knew each other.
• 48:57
  I knew Martin, I knew Patti, I knew Nick. At first I remember what was Simon on that job.
• 49:03
  So that was great fun to all make a movie together. But what was really interesting about that was
• 49:09
  people don't realize how well structured those films are. How really the amount of work that
• 49:15
  goes in before you make them. If you look at the dialogues, the Americans had a spate of films.
• 49:21
  There was one called The Worlds, The End of the World, or something similar thing. But the
• 49:25
  Americans had this thing where they just put the camera and they improvise and they, you know,
• 49:30
  and they think, yeah, something fun is going to happen because I'm brilliant. But what's great
• 49:37
  about Edgar and Simon is that they wrote the scenes in The World's End where you realize it's
• 49:43
  like an Alan Lake Ball play. The position of the dialogue and the actors as very competent actors
• 49:51
  to do it together, having grown up with them as actors. And to suddenly know we all reached the
• 49:57
  level where we could do it was a wonderful thing. Yeah, and I completely agree. I feel like
• 50:02
  that movie especially doesn't get the credit that it deserves all the time. I think certainly from
• 50:06
  some of the fans and the sort of, I guess, wider sort of the viewership because obviously Sean The Dead
• 50:10
  and Hot Fuzz are so beloved. The Worlds End is a different, it's like, it's darker. It's also
• 50:15
  Simon. They are very, very autobiographical. Sean The Dead is somebody who drinks too much,
• 50:25
  really. You know, Simon. And then Hot Fuzz is about going back to your, you know, Edgar talks
• 50:33
  about going back to his home. And The World's End is Simon's character. Simon was recovering himself
• 50:42
  at the time and going through recovery. And he put that, made that creative, he made a creative
• 50:49
  choice with that. So it's an incredibly brave thing for him to do and a very generous thing for him
• 50:56
  to do. So the film is, in many ways, it's a bit more mature, but it's more because he's
• 51:03
  sort of biographical, but he's at a different stage in his life. Absolutely. I totally agree.
• 51:07
  There is a real bravery to that film. And it really connects emotionally like every time I watch it.
• 51:11
  I mean, because that movie meant a lot to me, especially when I was sort of, when I was about sort of
• 51:16
  19 and actually having a lot of questions and anxieties about a lot of the things that the movie
• 51:21
  is about growing up, how do you let go of the past? Yes. Should you let go of the past? How do we do
• 51:26
  that? The movie packs such a punch. And I think some people maybe weren't ready for that. Like it was
• 51:31
  like, because they thought, oh, we're going to get another belly laugh romp, you know, and it is
• 51:34
  got those elements. It does have those elements, but there's a deeper message in it, do you?
• 51:39
  Yeah. And it's quite, for me, it's quite a provocative film because it's asking these questions
• 51:42
  about, you know, they, you call it star-bucking in the movie, but like, you know, the gentrification
• 51:46
  of small towns and, and, and, of course, you know, the alcoholism and, and, and, yeah, that.
• 51:52
  And the bullying, like, Peter Page. Yeah, you're character. He's, he's, he's, he's bullying.
• 51:57
  That's really, I mean, so many people, I was bullied when I was younger, so many people see it,
• 52:02
  are really affected by that, you know, you kind of wish you could do that to your body.
• 52:05
  Yeah. And even though he's a black, you know, I still get to it. And then, yeah. And then you go
• 52:09
  and get, like, basil for you, get the branches. I mean, I mean, because it's funny, because we,
• 52:14
  we spoke to Paul McClure, who edited that, the world's end. He's moved it over a lot. And he said,
• 52:18
  his main memory of that shoot was how cold it was. It was freezing. Oh, freezing. Absolutely,
• 52:23
  freezing. Like, let's work. Oh, it was so cold. Yeah. And that scene you're outside, you
• 52:28
  obviously haven't a punch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Very cold. Filming's always cold. You
• 52:33
  always film the summer in the winter and the winter in the summer. It's always. It's crazy.
• 52:39
  Because they always think, yeah, we've got movies, the summer movie, but it's out, they get the
• 52:43
  money together to make it. It's the winter. Yeah. And you're freezing your ballets off.
• 52:49
  And how technical the movie is. Well, like, you know, even the beats of you guys when you walk into
• 52:53
  the pub, the Alabama whiskey bar song, you have to direct neck that pine on the beat. All
• 52:58
  the fight scenes are amazing. The choreography, the fight scenes. See, that's what I mean.
• 53:03
  The amount of prep and the Edgar and Simon point into that movie before it goes is wonderful.
• 53:09
  Absolutely. And what's this weird to early just realise this, but like, you're making that movie
• 53:14
  obviously of Edgar and Simon and Nick and the others, but then also Paddy, who would only,
• 53:17
  quite recently, that point directed you into a renaissance, another incredible film,
• 53:21
  probably like your darkest role, I would say, or one of them. And then a couple of a year later,
• 53:26
  see that you're in lecture shooting. Well done, Paddy. Paddy is a very good friend of mine.
• 53:30
  And Olivia is as well. And what you do, when you film something that's as dark as Tarana saw,
• 53:41
  it's a very, it's that you really connect with the people you're working with. Because there
• 53:47
  has to be so much trust. Olivia had to be very, very safe with me because of the abusive nature
• 53:53
  of the relationship. And also, we had to research the dynamics of those relationships together.
• 54:00
  So when we did that, it was a journey that both we were on together.
• 54:04
  Yeah. And so then, I guess, going from that, I mean, it obviously wasn't immediately after,
• 54:07
  but at all, but like then going with Paddy from that journey to then going into the world's end.
• 54:12
  Yes. Completely different. And obviously, he being the director of Tarana saw now as your
• 54:16
  co-star. I mean, I love him. I love Paddy. He's a very good friend of mine. He's an artist.
• 54:21
  He's a filmmaker, photographer, musician. And he's good looking and makes me sick.
• 54:27
  He's amazing. I mean, it's funny because back in an old, my old job when I was up in
• 54:31
  Sheffield, he came to, I worked at a cinema and he came to do a Q&A for Journey Man, his film.
• 54:36
  And he was so lovely. And I remember I was sort of wrangling mics for that. And he was just on
• 54:40
  stage cracking jokes. And I'm saying, oh, this lad, he points at me like this lad. He'll come and,
• 54:44
  you know, give him the mic. It was so funny. He's lovely. And it's a shame, though, because he's
• 54:49
  such a brilliant director, like Tarana saw, but also, yeah, Journey Man. And yeah, I think it's
• 54:54
  hard for, you know, because it's only, I don't know what, for what reasons, but like, I feel like
• 54:58
  he's only been able to make two films. I don't know if he may be if he's trying to get a third one
• 55:01
  made or maybe if he's having difficulties with maybe financing. But like, it does, when I went
• 55:06
  back and watched Tarana saw again, it made me think that a lot of British directors, like up and
• 55:11
  coming, really promising directors, struggle with getting more than a couple of movies made.
• 55:15
  And if in the UK, it's very hard. It's very hard. It's very hard. It's very hard.
• 55:18
  Especially if you don't make a commercial movie. Yes.
• 55:21
  You make a movie that's more to do with what you need to express. It's very hard.
• 55:25
  Yeah. Because I know that, Einstein, you're interested in potentially directing your work.
• 55:29
  Yeah, I get asked all the time, man, because I had four young children there that I was doing
• 55:32
  long show in Ray Donovan for nine years. Of course. It wasn't conducive, but now my youngest is now
• 55:39
  doing his A-levels, and I've got three university. I kind of feel like I can see it now coming.
• 55:46
  I never rushed to do it. I would love to do it, but I had to put family first.
• 55:52
  Of course. Of course.
• 55:53
  And what do you think you'd bring to it? Do you feel like you had, I remember at one point,
• 55:57
  you said that a film about meditation would almost be something that would interest you.
• 56:01
  Do you have stories inside of it? I don't know.
• 56:04
  Anything about where people transcend themselves, where they go beyond what they consider to be
• 56:09
  their own limitations, things like that, interest me. I think we live in a world at the moment
• 56:14
  where people are being defined and separated. I think you have to categorize people to measure
• 56:22
  inequality, but don't limit people to those categories. That's one of the problems, I think.
• 56:27
  They should be able to transcend, because they're not only those things.
• 56:33
  Absolutely. Well, in some ways, I guess, quite some of that's your journey.
• 56:36
  Like, you know, going from Beth McQueen to America and 21 grams and all the other journey
• 56:41
  you've been on is extraordinary. But I was thinking about it the other day when I was,
• 56:45
  I still very, very close to my friends in Beth McQueen. And one of the few of the guys taught me to
• 56:51
  dance when I was younger. I got into acting through dancing. And I was thinking the other day about
• 56:58
  when I danced when I was 15, 16 and I danced in clubs. I realized that even then it wasn't
• 57:04
  performative. It was me. It was the safe space. I wasn't taking drugs. I wasn't drinking. I was
• 57:10
  losing myself in the music. I liked what we call rare groove or James Brown or funk. And I would
• 57:17
  just dance to that and forget everything else. And I've basically been doing that as an actor
• 57:24
  for the last 34 years, really. It's the same process. Keeping that sort of express in this and
• 57:29
  about it's not about you thinking that I'm brilliant. You know, your opinion of me will be,
• 57:37
  if you've had, if you come and see a film of mine and you've had an argument with your girlfriend
• 57:42
  and you both see what was the film, when I'm up on that screen, you're going to think I'm terrible.
• 57:46
  If you, if you, if you, if you meet up with your girlfriend and she tells you she loves you or she's
• 57:51
  pregnant, you sit there and you hold her hand. You're going to think my performance is fucking
• 57:55
  wonderful. Really? My, your opinion of me is more informed by what's going on in your life
• 58:01
  than it is in mine. Context. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, bringing it up to the present. I mean,
• 58:06
  like the work you've got coming out very soon, your next movie is No On Me, On Me Heist.
• 58:11
  No On Me Heist, yeah. Based off the very famous Belfast Bank, Royal Booth, 2004, Northern Bank.
• 58:16
  That's got, I've seen it. It's, you know, it's great. You know, I really, I mean, again,
• 58:20
  like that's sort of white knuckle energy. You know, we've talked about having this film quite a lot
• 58:24
  of the films you made. That white knuckle energy is really there. What was the experience like
• 58:28
  making that film? I mean, because you were working over in Belfast, presumably. Yeah, we had, we had
• 58:33
  half the movie was Belfast and half was doubling. I would take that, that, that, that Belfast crew
• 58:39
  with me anywhere. They were, they were amazing to work with. Anor was lovely. I think Anor's
• 58:44
  a brilliant young actor. I think he's, he's got so much integrity and honesty. He doesn't show off.
• 58:50
  It's not about him. He's not, there's no vanity to him. I think he's a wonderful actor.
• 58:55
  I think Colin McGyver wrote, brilliant scripted. It's, it's inspired by true events. But the,
• 59:00
  the story itself, the way he structured the story, it's, it's, it's these bank robbers of,
• 59:05
  have kidnapped the wife of the bank manager and the mother of the security guard and they will
• 59:11
  kill them unless the bank manager and the security guard rob the bank for them. Yeah. But the
• 59:16
  bank manager and the security guard have history to get hate each other because of what happened
• 59:22
  in the troubles. So it's a brilliant story. The premise is amazing. I love doing it. I've never played
• 59:28
  a part of someone from Belfast before. So it's all, I always want to do new things. And I just loved,
• 59:34
  I know, I just loved work and we've, we've ended the, the connection we had together was wonderful.
• 59:39
  Yeah. You guys are great chemistry together. And as you say, like it, it's, it's, it's,
• 59:43
  it's a challenging role because as I say, you're also, if you're just on a technical level,
• 59:46
  like the Belfast accent, so specific and you remain in that so brilliantly throughout the
• 59:51
  course of that film, it was so, I mean, genuinely, like, you know, hands up, so convincing.
• 59:54
  I'll say, good. I mean, because I, because as you say, it's based off true events, you know,
• 59:59
  the 2004 robbery was at the time, the biggest bank robbery in the UK. It was, yes. I mean,
• 1:00:03
  were you in touch with the people like, I know Kevin Mullen is the guy, the real guy who you play,
• 1:00:07
  the bank manager. Yeah, I wasn't in touch with any, no, I, it was written and I, I served the
• 1:00:12
  script, so I never met those people. Oh, okay. But which is surprising to me, because the,
• 1:00:16
  the, you could feel that the ring of truth, the detail is, oh, yeah, we had, I mean, I,
• 1:00:21
  I mean, I, basically, the information is on the script and I build a character based on what
• 1:00:25
  is conducive to, to, to, to what they've written and then I create a backstory.
• 1:00:29
  Hmm. Well, because I had no idea of the real life story, amazing story. Yeah.
• 1:00:34
  Whoever robbed that bank never went in the bank. No, they never once went in the bank manager
• 1:00:39
  and the security guard had to, had to rob their own bank. Yeah. And it's like, I mean, not to
• 1:00:44
  spoil it for anyone, because obviously it's not coming out yet. But like, even the yet, how it ends
• 1:00:48
  is like, you know, yeah, Michelle is fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. She's a wonder if I'm either there.
• 1:00:52
  It was a great cast, great writing, great true. I loved it. I loved it. I loved, I loved doing
• 1:00:58
  films. I'm, I love doing films because it's like 120 minutes of pure artistry, you know, I
• 1:01:06
  loved that. I love it. I love a good film. I love the beginning, middle and the end. It's
• 1:01:10
  wonderful. Yeah. The film experience is that something that you're more, you're closer to?
• 1:01:15
  Yes. Yeah. I love it. I love working on something and then we will sit down and watch it and
• 1:01:19
  yeah, it's lovely. I mean, out of interest. What, what were the kind of films, when you were growing
• 1:01:24
  up? Was there like specific films that were birthing you, that love of, I guess, cinema
• 1:01:31
  and acting as well? I mean, were there like touchstones for you like, or actors?
• 1:01:35
  This is what I want to do. Well, maybe when I was a kid watching The Night of the Hunter,
• 1:01:39
  which was directed by Charles Lawton and Robert Mitchell, that was an amazing film,
• 1:01:46
  terrified me when I was a kid. Absolutely terrified me. The Godfather was a big film for me.
• 1:01:53
  Alfie, I loved. I loved Alfie. John Hurt in Naked Civil Servant. That was an incredible film.
• 1:02:02
  Bob Hoskins in Penny's from Heaven. That was an amazing thing for me. Actually,
• 1:02:08
  Bob Hoskins here in Bob Hoskins talk on screen and he will fenticity of his voice the way he swore
• 1:02:15
  like my father swore. He sounded like me. That was a big thing because before that, you know,
• 1:02:21
  and even now, right often, you have, we now make gangster movies and they're kind of wishful
• 1:02:28
  for them and characters because the people making them, I think, they're cool, you know. When Bob Hoskins
• 1:02:34
  did Longot Friday or Mona Lisa, the characters were vulnerable and you didn't want to be a gangster,
• 1:02:40
  you just basically learned something about yourself. Now we make movies where everyone wants to be
• 1:02:45
  a gangster. I think it's ridiculous. The romanticisation of it. It's like, I mean, going all the way
• 1:02:50
  back to the beginning of gangster number one. I mean, one of the great things about that film, I think,
• 1:02:53
  is that you have that sheen of the surface of the suits and the shirts like all the 60s gangster
• 1:02:58
  image, you know, which again, kind of, for some, was kind of aspirational. Like, you know,
• 1:03:03
  that I could say the craze, the image of it, the feel, but then actually the great thing about
• 1:03:07
  that film and like, you know, other films that those writers did like sexy beasts and for it for
• 1:03:11
  its chest, that you unpick that and you actually go underneath into the vulnerability. You know,
• 1:03:16
  whenever somebody makes a movie about gangsters, for an area where gang were they actually lived
• 1:03:23
  amongst gangsters, Scorsese, gangsta number one, sexy beast, Ray Wom Ray played that part character.
• 1:03:33
  We grew up around people who, I mean, who were villains. There were lots of villains in
• 1:03:41
  Eastern, nasty people. And when you're young, you admire them and then when you get older, you
• 1:03:48
  realize the era of those ways. Every great movie, Scorsese, gangsta number one, sexy beast,
• 1:03:57
  for the first half, you want to be a gangster and the second half, you think, oh, you're not a gangster.
• 1:04:04
  When people make movies about gangsters now and they don't come from those areas,
• 1:04:09
  they will man to size gangsters. That's a difference.
• 1:04:13
  Yeah. Well, along with no ordinary high stop, so you're coming out in a couple of weeks.
• 1:04:17
  You've also, I mean, what can you tell us about the other upcoming projects you've got?
• 1:04:20
  There's a campaign on Gabbacho or in English, the English translation of that is going to go
• 1:04:25
  a camp champion, which is directed by John S. Croix and produced by his father, a sponsor.
• 1:04:33
  And it's premier in South by Southwest Festival. And it's a beautiful film about a young boy
• 1:04:40
  who comes from Mexico, comes into America and goes an incredible journey. I play a bookkeeper who
• 1:04:49
  employs him and kind of gives him a home and champions him in some way. It's a wonderful story.
• 1:04:56
  It's a real beautiful kind of story about an immigrant, but the visual makeup of it,
• 1:05:06
  the magic in it is wonderful. And then I've got Prisoner coming out, which is a drama for Sky,
• 1:05:11
  which is coming out at the end of April. And it's a very exciting project. They seem to be
• 1:05:18
  very excited about it. Anything you can tell us about Prisoner? Is there any?
• 1:05:21
  There's a story about a young Prisoner who's going to be like a witness in a court case and
• 1:05:28
  the criminal organisation that he could give evidence against. They hijack the police vans as
• 1:05:36
  they're taken to the court and it's about him and the young woman who's the prison guard and
• 1:05:41
  they're trying to survive to be and being killed, trying to be killed by the criminal organisation.
• 1:05:46
  And where do you fit in? I play the guy who runs the investigation and I'm trying to keep him alive.
• 1:05:53
  It's a great character. It sounds like a real white knuckle. It's a real white knuckle ride, yeah.
• 1:05:59
  And then with the Gringo champion, that kind of story of transcendence. It's just when you were
• 1:06:04
  describing that, it reminded me of what you said before that. Yeah, it is wonderful. And also,
• 1:06:07
  it's a great movie at the moment because of what's going on in the US with eyes and everything.
• 1:06:13
  It's just wonderful to make that kind of movie, which kind of champions the immigrant narrative,
• 1:06:21
  really. Yeah, I mean, just very quickly, I have interest. I mean, what's it like working in the US
• 1:06:24
  at the moment with all what's it like? Well, I would recently shot, I'm doing a series for FX
• 1:06:34
  disinherited, which I'm going to shoot later this year, I believe. So we shot the pilot
• 1:06:38
  last year in New York, but New York is a very different part of America. I mean, I was there,
• 1:06:46
  I think I left two days before they elected mandami. So it's not like shooting in Ohio or something.
• 1:06:55
  It's a very, the part of America I worked and lived in was Brooklyn and it was really progressive
• 1:07:01
  and stuff. New York kind of is its own, it's kind of world. And then the US is like the rest of
• 1:07:07
  the year. And a question we asked on half the picture to all, I guess, is there anyone out there
• 1:07:11
  currently working now be they director at who you're a big fan of who maybe haven't worked with
• 1:07:16
  before, who if you could get a chance to work with them, you'd be like, oh, that would be great.
• 1:07:20
  Todd still ends. I love happiness is one of my favourite films. Wow, I love to work with Todd's
• 1:07:28
  that would be interesting. That would be interesting because happiness, that's a
• 1:07:31
  amazing film. I mean, completely off the wall. I mean, I don't think that's one you could get
• 1:07:36
  made today. I just think it's amazing. And I think Magnolia was the commercial version of happiness.
• 1:07:41
  Oh, really? Because we mentioned Magnolia before we said rolling. But I think happiness is a
• 1:07:45
  far better film. It's a lot darker. Oh, amazing. Well, I mean, hey, you know, you heard it
• 1:07:51
  for Todd someone that he must have. Let's make it happen people. Brilliant. Well, thank you so
• 1:07:56
  much for coming. Thank you very much. Thank you. Such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, guys.
• 1:08:09
  Hey, everyone. Thanks so much for listening to my chat with Eddie Marza.
• 1:08:13
  Remember to like and subscribe to the podcast. See you in the next episode.
• 1:08:17
  And stay tuned for more exciting interviews and guests coming soon on half the picture.