Actor Eddie Marsan.EDDIE MARSAN KEEPS IT REAL
By
Alex Simon
Editor's Note: This article appears in the December/January issue of Venice Magazine.
Actor Eddie Marsan is a true “Cockney,” born in London’s East End in 1968. After initially training as a printer’s apprentice, Marsan attended London’s Mountview Academy of Theater Arts, making his debut on British television in 1992 after years of stage work and paying his dues as a struggling actor. Since then, Eddie Marsan has appeared in over 60 film and television productions, including Gangster No. 1, Gangs of New York, 21 Grams, Vera Drake, The Secret Life of Words, V for Vendetta, Mission: Impossible III, The New World, Miami Vice and British “kitchen sink” icon Mike Leigh’s latest, Happy-Go-Lucky, playing the most abrasive, neurotic driving instructor in cinematic history who tries to get the best of perpetually peppy Sally Hawkins.
Eddie sat down during a brief stopover in the colonies for a chat about his career. Here’s what transpired:
This is your second film with Mike Leigh.
Eddie Marsan: When you work with Mike, you adjust to his method of making a film, so the first time out, in Vera Drake, I had to kind of orient myself to his ways, but the second time I felt much more accustomed to it, and hit the ground running.
The scenes between you and Sally Hawkins in the car were shot with lipstick cameras, so it must felt like the two of you were really alone.
Yeah, Mike using the lipstick cameras was a really brilliant touch, because if those scenes had been shot on a low-loader it would have died. One of the things about the movie is that the characters express their frustrations with each other through the car, and through the interaction with the outside world. So we had to be able to really drive, and be in real traffic while we were interacting with each other. So that really helped, and freed us a lot.
Marsan and Sally Hawkins in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky.Your character was so wonderfully neurotic, almost right out of a Woody Allen film. Tell us a bit about Scott.
Well, Scott is a misogynist, and Mike liked the idea of him being someone who used the Internet a lot, and in his case, a little bit of information is a bad thing. So he’s a conspiracy theory nut because he feels powerless in life and he looks for someone to blame. So he’s made a habit of blaming immigrants, the government, and then has all these conspiracy theories to back everything up. He feels powerless against women, so every time he falls in love with a woman he feels that they’re going to trap him, trick him and finally reject him. So he ends up turning violent against them and stalks them, as well.
Mike Leigh is very brave as a filmmaker since many of his characters are extremely unlikable, which is also risky for you as an actor.
Very rarely have I played likable characters. Because I’m a character actor, I’m rarely the character the audience identifies with. I’m usually the best friend or the enemy of the protagonist. So that was of no worry to me. My whole career I’ve gone from playing psychopaths to people who are utterly impotent.
Is that more fun in some ways?
They’re both the same, really. One expresses himself through violence, and the other does so through repressing it.
I know that Mike Leigh is known for his use of improvisation and a long rehearsal period.
Yeah, I sat in a room with Mike for three months before I met anybody else, just building the character of Scott, the different aspects of his life, the different jobs he would’ve worked in, what his parents would’ve been like, his grandparents, his early relationships. Then one morning Mike said “You’ve got to go pick up this girl for a driving lesson.” I had no idea that I was picking up Sally Hawkins! (laughs) Mike had been working with her for a year, and I was kept completely in the dark about all of it. I thought the character I was creating was going to be the next Travis Bickle, and if you look at Scott, he could be that. So then Mike put me in the car with Sally, who I’ve known for eight years, in the character of Poppy, suddenly you’ve got a comedy. I mean, if you put Travis Bickle in a car with Goldie Hawn, and said “Have a driving lesson,” that’s a Woody Allen movie instead of a Martin Scorsese movie. So that’s what it was like.
When you were building Scott’s backstory, did you come up with a specific presenting cause for his neurosis?
It was just a matter of being unsuccessful in life, and bitter because of it. I never worked out specifically that it was his parents, as such. He just didn’t fit in anywhere. Also, he’d always look for people to control, and as he got older, and people around him matured, they became less and less able to be controlled. So he felt more and more powerless. If you watch the film, he begins thinking he can control Poppy, and she winds up controlling him, and that’s been the pattern of his life.
Marsan as Scott in Happy-Go-Lucky.Well, I absolutely wanted to strangle you throughout the entire film!
(laughs) That’s the highest compliment you could pay me. Thanks very much!
You mentioned that you’ve known Sally for eight years.
Yeah, we did Vera Drake together and also a short film, plus being London stage actors our paths always crossed.
That brings up an interesting point: most of the actors from Europe that I’ve interviewed always emphasize that film and theater is a community on the other side of the pond, where as here, it’s much more of a business.
Yes, I agree with that absolutely. We all know each other and you have a different system in Europe because you have drama schools, so you all come out together, go through unemployment and rejection at the same time, and then start finding your feet about the same time. So it’s a very small world. It’s not like here, where you have people coming from all over who find each other in Hollywood. We’ve known each other from the beginning.
And even when someone reaches superstardom, the most recent example from the UK being Daniel Craig, they seem to stay humble and never forget their roots, unlike here, where many people, when they reach that level of stardom, forget where they came from.
Yeah, I think Britain has this quality where the good side of it helps people keep their feet on the ground. The bad side of it, we have this thing called “tall poppy syndrome,” where if the poppy grows too tall, we chop its head off. I’m doing a movie with Mark Strong at the moment, who’s a good friend of Daniel Craig and he said it’s fascinating being at a function with Daniel, where everyone looks at him as James Bond, but to Mark, he’s still just Daniel, and always will be. He’s actually a very lovely, gentle guy. My wife, who’s a make-up artist, did his make-up on The Golden Compass.
You attended the Mountview Academy of Theater Arts, quite a prestigious drama school.
It was a good school, then I studied with a Russian guy for about five years after I left school.
Did he teach Stanislavski?
Yeah, he trained at The Moscow Arts Theater. Then he came to London and started a school. He died about four years ago, but I’ve remained a patron of the school. He gave me some great advice that an actor should be like a mechanic. When a mechanic turns up, he can just open his box and work on any car. That’s what an actor should do, regardless of them different techniques of the director, the different environment on-set, the different characters. He said “I’m going to teach you how to be a professional.” And he did. It took me years to get a job. (laughs) I was unemployed for years. With a face like mine, nobody knew what to do with me, until I turned about 35, then it just took off. I’ve been chasing my face for ten years, really. (laughs) He told me “In ten years time, women are gonna love you, and you’re gonna work,” and he was right on both counts, because my wife loves me.
You were born and raised in East London.
Yeah, and I’ve no history of anything dramatic or traumatic with my family. My dad was a truck driver. My mum was a school dinner lady. Just solidly working class across the board. I served an apprenticeship as a printer, and then when I passed my apprenticeship my boss, who was an alcoholic, said “In twenty years time, you can be where I am.” (laughs) I always knew I was interested in acting and would watch a lot of movies with my dad, who had very good taste in actors: Robert Duvall, Rod Steiger, Gene Hackman, I used to watch all these guys, all the Method guys, and really somehow connect with what they were doing. When I was a kid, a lot of young actors I knew would watch On the Waterfront and study Marlon Brando’s performance, but I was always watching Rod Steiger, thinking that this guy is the real deal. So I decided that I wanted to be an actor, but I had no knowledge of how to make it happen.
Was On the Waterfront the movie that clinched it for you?
Partially, but it was really more British movies, like Ray Winstone in Scum, Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday. These guys came from where I did, spoke like I did, and played it for real. And I thought that was amazing. These people used to drink with my dad, villains like that, in the area where we lived, and that was fascinating to me. So for the first ten years of my career, I was a professional Cockney. Then I did a movie called Gangster No. 1 which is a nice movie, but I knew when we were doing it that this whole Cockney gangster movie genre was eventually going to go out of fashion, and when that happened, all these Cockney actors were suddenly going to find themselves out of work. I decided then to try and be like Rod Steiger, and Alec Guinness and just disappear into parts, not limit myself to playing Cockneys, and work with voice coaches on different accents and dialects so I could expand my range, just to guarantee work, and so many people have helped me do it.
You’ve worked with some amazing directors over the course of your career. Let’s start with Martin Scorsese on Gangs of New York.
That was a fantastic experience, but it almost destroyed my career. I did nine months on it, and had a great storyline with Jim Broadbent, which ended up being cut and I only had one line in the final cut. So at the end of all that, I had no work to show for it and was unemployed for a while. But I loved it. I learned a lot from working with Jim Broadbent, just in terms of how to handle yourself on a film set, a really great example. Daniel Day-Lewis was really fantastic to watch. And Martin was just…one thing I realized watching Scorsese is that he has the enthusiasm of a first-year film student. He never lost that. I realized that a lot of actors fall by the wayside because they’re influenced by under-achieving, unhappy, bitter people. They stop giving 100% because they figure it’s not worth it. But people like Martin Scorsese and Michael Mann, and Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu give 110% constantly. They’re as dedicated as they were when they did their first film.
Daniel Craig comes to mind again: when Paul Newman died, he paid tribute to Mr. Newman by saying that when they worked on Road to Perdition, Newman was so dedicated to getting everything absolutely perfect, at a point in his life (late 70s) and career (a legend) when he could’ve phoned the whole thing in. And he remarked about what an inspiration that was.
I think you have to take refuge in it, because this business is so weird. It’s so not like real life, the business side of it. But what is like real life is if you take refuge in the work. It’s very reassuring. If I go home at night, and I work on my script, I’m going to be alright. It allows me to go into work the next day and not be fazed by the fact that it’s Martin Scorsese. As long as I’m doing my work, I’m going to be alright. And if you take refuge in the work, everyone else does as well. It’s a very interesting thing. People who don’t take refuge, who don’t knuckle down, they’re the ones who are fazed by it all.
And they’re usually the ones who are flashes in the pan.
Exactly.
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