Pierce Brosnan: The Hollywood Interview

Actor Pierce Brosnan.


BONDING WITH BROSNAN
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the November 1999 issue of Venice Magazine.

There are several dangers in becoming a cultural icon, not the least of which is the stigma that your public will forever keep you imprisoned in the mold of your iconography, allowing the recipient a privileged, if imprisoned, existence, particularly if that person is an artist. Sean Connery faced just such a dilemma during the height of James Bond-mania in the mid-60's. A serious actor, Connery desperately wanted to break out of the action hero mold that was author Ian Fleming's British Superspy James Bond, agent 007, and tackle more "serious" roles, finding it an uphill and bloody battle the whole way. Since Connery's day, the torch of James Bond has been passed to four different men, the latest being Irishman Pierce Brosnan. Brosnan, also a serious actor with roots in the British theater, has also begun his own attempt at breaking the Bond mold, forming his own production company, Irish Dream Time, with partner Beau St. Clair, and producing small, personal projects such as The Nephew (1998) as well as commercial blockbusters such as last summer's The Thomas Crown Affair. Brosnan carries himself onscreen with the debonair flair of an Oxbridge gentleman, but in fact, like his predecessor Sean Connery, his roots are the antithesis of the iconography which has been imposed upon him.

Pierce Brendan Brosnan was born May 16, 1953 in Drogheda, County Louth, Ireland. Shortly after his birth, his father walked out on he and his mother. Soon thereafter, his mother went to London to work as a nurse, leaving her only child in the care of various relatives. Being the only lad in the tiny community without either parent at home, Brosnan found himself in the position of an outsider, and did his best to fit in by being an altar boy in his local parish. At the age of 11, Brosnan was sent to London to live with his mother in the city's tough south side. Again an outsider, he was labeled "Paddy," and "the Mick" by his classmates, and turned to humor to defend himself from harm's way, not always with success. Brosnan cites a life-changing moment at this period, when his mother and stepfather took him to see the James Bond classic Goldfinger (1964) in a swank London cinema. At 16, he left school, aspiring to be a commercial artist, but was soon diverted after tagging along to an audition with a friend, and was bitten by the acting bug. Needless to say, the bite never healed.

Brosnan spent the next ten years doing both experimental and legitimate theater, working with the likes of Tennessee Williams and Joan Plowright on the London stage. It was here Brosnan met his late wife, the actress Cassandra Harris (Bond fans will remember her as "Countess Lisl" in For Your Eyes Only (1981)), who succumbed to ovarian cancer in 1991. Brosnan credits Harris with pushing and encouraging him in his craft, saying "Without her, I would most likely still be back in London doing plays."

After some bit roles in British TV, Brosnan's first movie role came in the gangster classic The Long Good Friday (1981), in a terrifying turn as an IRA hitman. Brosnan had no dialogue and only two scenes, but the juxtaposition of his cheerfully boyish looks and his deadly behavior made an impression on everyone who saw the film. This led to his being offered the lead in the epic American mini-series The Manions of America (1981). The ratings hit prompted Brosnan and Harris to relocate their family to the U.S. Almost immediately, Brosnan was cast as the lead in the hit NBC series Remington Steele (1982-87), solidifying his fame as a sex symbol and a debonair leading man. Many fans hailed him as a modern day Cary Grant, prompting James Bond producer Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli to pursue him as the new James Bond, following the retirement of Roger Moore, in 1986. Just hours away from signing his Bond contract, Remington Steele was renewed on NBC, forcing Brosnan to abandon the lucrative franchise to finish his commitment to the network. Timothy Dalton donned the Aston-Martin for two Bond films: The Living Daylights (1987) and License to Kill (1989). After Steele ended its run in 1987, Brosnan did a variety of TV and film work, most notably the spy thriller The Fourth Protocol (1987) in a terrifying turn as a cold-blooded Russian agent, the miniseries James Clavell's Noble House (1988), Bruce Beresford's acclaimed drama of culture clash in colonial Africa Mr. Johnson (1991), a comic foil to Robin Williams' Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), and the other object of Annette Benning's affections in Love Affair (1994). 1995 finally brought Brosnan back to the role he was born to play. Many Bond scholars (for lack of a better word) consider Brosnan's debut as Bond in GoldenEye, the move that saved the series from extinction. A box office smash world wide, it was followed by appearances in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996, again as the "other man"), the spoof Mars Attacks! (1996), the volcanic thriller Dante's Peak (1997), then Brosnan Bond #2, Tomorrow Never Dies (also 1997). In 1998, Brosnan and St. Clair formed Irish Dream Time, producing the charming The Nephew (1998) in which Brosnan had a small part, and John McTiernan's (See Venice, August 1999) dynamite remake of the Steve McQueen classic The Thomas Crown Affair. Brosnan's latest release is Bond #3, The World is Not Enough, directed by veteran helmer Michael Apted. In this latest high octane adventure, Bond must guard the life of a woman (the excellent Sophie Marceau) against that of her former kidnapper (The Full Monty's Robert Carlyle, also wonderful), a psychotic terrorist, who is slowly dying from a bullet that didn't kill him enough. The World is not only the best Brosnan Bond, but one of the best films of the series, hearkening back to the earliest Bond adventures, Dr. No (1962) and From Russia With Love (1963), with its hard-edges and wonderfully drawn characterizations. This is a thriller about real people that never stops moving, the best of both worlds. Fine support is given by Denise Richards, the marvelous Dame Judi Dench, the venerable Desmond Llewelyn, and former Monty Python (himself an icon) John Cleese.

Something of a renaissance man, Brosnan is active in many philanthropies in addition to his film work. A tireless campaigner for environmental issues, he is also a champion of women's health issues (particularly the fight against ovarian cancer), and even made the bold move of boycotting the French premiere of GoldenEye to protest nuclear testing in the Pacific. Brosnan spoke to us from his home in Malibu, where he lives with fiancee Keely Shaye Smith and their young son, about these, and other topics. Needless to say, the conversation left us stirred, but never shaken...

We felt that The World is Not Enough is your best Bond, and one of the best of the series.
Pierce Brosnan: Yeah, I think it's pretty damn good, actually. It's found a certain stride to itself. From my perspective, I was very comfortable with it. When it's your third one, you'd better know what you're doing, and enjoy what you're doing. Having Michael Apted there was great, too, because he paid attention to character and to story, not that the other guys didn't, but Michael just listened. So we had a good time with it.

I liked the moral ambiguity that was brought back to Bond's character.
When (Michael and I) met and talked about it, our conversations were about that exactly. Who is this man? What's at stake for him? Seeing behind the curtain of who he is a little bit more, making it so the writing has some meaning, some emotional cornerstone so the character has a motivation and can have more of a relationship with someone like 'M' (Judi Dench), for example. So you end up caring about them.

I felt like it was a throwback to the first two Bond films, which were more straightforward spy films rather than live action cartoons.
Good, because that's what we were going for. If anything, the bells and whistles around (Bond) have gotten so big, it was a challenge to make it a real drama within the context of a Bond movie. I was really impressed with the final result, especially the fact that Michael really paid attention to the casting of it, and used his cinematic flair. He's not the obvious choice, maybe, for a Bond film, but he's a wonderful filmmaker and has a touch with the camera and story. And he was clever enough to let the guys who do all the technical wizardry get on with it. He used them without interfering with what they did, and used them as a theatrical director should use them.

Sean Connery had to really fight for non-action hero roles during the height of Bondmania. Has it been difficult for you, as well?
No, not really. The last three Bond movies have come fast and furious. I deliberately when I did GoldenEye said to my representatives 'Don't go seeking the obvious action roles. I want to just work quietly on things like Mars Attacks! or The Mirror Has Two Faces. I just wanted to be tucked away in a film where I didn't have too much responsibility. I just wanted to see what else was going on out there...so there has been a game plan in there, especially since forming my own company. I'm aware of the vast kind of impact that Bond creates not only on my own career, but on the rest of the world. He travels well, this character, and he proceeds me. You have to live with this character and I kind of made peace with that at the beginning because I had the knowledge of what Connery had gone through. I grew up with Connery as James Bond, and contrary to what you might have read, I never dreamt of, or wanted to play, this character, until '86 when they offered me the role the first time.

How does your interpretation of Bond differ from your predecessors?
Well, that's a tough question, and I can't really give a good answer without shooting myself in the foot...but I guess if I had to say one thing, it would be that I try to make him human. Making him real for myself. When you come to play the role, you have so much fucking baggage, so much mythology. How do you make him real for yourself?

Your Bond seems to have the most heart of any previous interpretation.
He probably does. There's only one man that you want to take the belt from, and that's Connery. So you go into the ring to win. It's a challenge. Connery had a sadistic side to him. The killings in this film...I don't know. I live with more heart.

What accounts for the longevity of the Bond films?
There's so many...the music, Monty Norman. "The name's Bond, James Bond." The whole mystique. The women. The locations. The tongue-in-cheek humor. The stunts. The gadgets. There are so many different elements. It's really hard to pinpoint exactly why.

What you're really saying is that, politics aside, the elements that make it work are timeless.
Yeah, they are timeless. People say, "The cold war is over, who's he going to fight?" Well, you're always going to have bad guys. You don't need a cold war to make James Bond fly. They kind of met on the landscape back in the 60's, and that was the shit that was going on. But he was a spy. Spies still exist. MI6 and the CIA still exist. Countries still have secrets. Hopefully I'll do another one after this one. We'll see about a fifth after that, but at some point I'll have to give it up. But (the Broccolis) are still a young family, and it's a family enterprise, so they'll find someone else. But it's all those elements that make it work. It's family entertainment, that's been passed on for generations. People loved Roger Moore. Roger did a great job, did seven films and it was entertaining. His Bond was what it was. I think you've got to respect the role. You've got to really pay attention to that. You can't just walk through it and play it flippantly. You've got to have an aside to the audience and take those moments when they come. It's a very loved role. When you read the books, the guy was human. He was hard man, but he had fear, he had doubts. He was pretty brutal. I don't know, the next time out, it would be nice to get a little more dark. But, you've got a 'PG,' so I don't know how you do that. I know that Michael would like to do one again, and I'd love to go out the door with Michael because what we set down here is a foundation, I think, certainly for another Bond film, and I think it'll whet people's appetites who liked Connery. They'll say "Ah, this is good. It goes back to the old days, but we're still in a 1990's movie." Besides, Bond is universal now. I think if you tried to go back and play him as Ian Fleming wrote it (in the 1950's and early 60's) I don't know that it would work today.

Let's talk about your background. You spent your early childhood in Ireland.
It was a very tiny farming town called Navan, about 30 miles north of Dublin. I'm actually going back there next week, and they're giving me the keys to the town, which is pretty cool. (laughs) I go back there every other year, sometimes twice a year. I have a company called Irish Dream Time, and my intention is to go back there and work with young Irish writers and do Irish films to put back into my own country what I've garnered from living and being educated in England and having a career in Hollywood. Those are the intentions, those are the dreams, the desires. So far I've done it with one film, and we'll see where it leads us.

Up until the time you moved to England in 1964, you led a pretty solitary childhood, living with various relatives and so forth. Did that sense of isolation and loneliness help you develop your creative side?
I would say it played a big part in being a creative person and living within the imagination, and surviving within a community where you're the odd man out. In the 50's in southern Ireland in a tiny country town ruled by religion, to have your father leave and be the only kid without parents, yeah, that impacts your life in a very profound way. You do have to survive it, and you keep your own council, and consequently keep your own dreams. The first theatrical performance of being in front of an audience for me was being an altar boy. I didn't want to be an actor then, but thinking back on it, serving mass is a very theatrical experience. But it wasn't until I went to London, music is what pulled me into the arts. Music still plays a very important part in my life. Actually making movies and doing something like Thomas Crown has given me the opportunity to say 'Okay, we've made this movie, now let's put music on it.' So I guess living the life I've led has brought me to being an actor, yeah.

What are some of your favorite music and musicians?
The Who. I actually had dinner with Roger Daltrey the other night, and it was just amazing. The Who colored a lot of my life at that time with the mods. Pink Floyd is another band. (English) West coast music was very influential for me. Ska and bluebeat, with Desmond Dekker and the Israelites and all that. When I discovered Floyd, a lot of doors opened up (laughs) because of what it came with. Not that I was an acid head. Never done it, never will. But there was a consciousness and a freedom there where the doors just burst off their hinges. I discovered theater at the same time in this art lab. John Mayall was someone that I really dug, also. Then you have Buffalo Springfield, Love, Spirit, and then it moves on to Springsteen, The Clash...I was living in south London and the punk movement was happening. The apartment I was living in was full of punks. But then you drop the ball, and you don't know what's going on. Right now is one of those times for me. I don't know what the heck's going on in music because I don't listen to enough. My mind's somewhere else now and that kind of freaks me out because you think 'Shit, I'm not connected and I don't know what the sound is.' But you have to let that go and you find yourself listening to John Coltrane, or someone else you've read about for a long time, but never really paid attention to. Or Chopin, who reinvented the piano for himself.

London must've been incredible culture shock for a little kid from a small Irish town.
I was back to surviving again, surviving in the sense that now I was Irish. It's 1964 and you're a "mick," you're a "paddy." I was in a huge school with over 2,000 kids, whereas two days before I was in a classroom of maybe 20 kids in school with seven classrooms. It was a good time. The education was shit, but the survival instincts kick in, and you end up fighting, which is kind of a miserable thing to have to do, and so I turned to comedy. I survived through mimicking and finding the funny side of the situation. Plus, I was good at art. So I came out and became a commercial artist, which was going nowhere because I realized I wasn't that great, that I'd be sitting in a studio with guys who'd been there for many years, griping about the boss, their wages, their wives, and just generally griping.

I understand seeing Goldfinger was a life-changing event for you.
It was the first film I saw in London. I wish I could remember more of the story, but I think Pink Floyd sort of got in the way, there! (laughs) I saw Goldfinger one weekend and Lawrence of Arabia the next. So the seed was sown for the movies, because I'd never seen anything like either one. I was just blown away. I was used to two little cinemas that showed black and white movies. Suddenly, you're seeing this unbelievable character. Actually, it was Oddjob that captured my imagination in that film, he and Shirley Eaton, covered in gold paint. And the fight sequence at the end in Fort Knox, where all the money in the world was. The gold bars. The music. It was just kind of visceral. You could feel it. I was hooked on movies ever since. And that was the start of my movie education, so to speak, and I started going to the movies every weekend. The films of Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen were big influences, as well.

It must've been a thrill for you to re-interpret Thomas Crown.
I didn't know much about McQueen as a person until I was working on the movie, and on the plane they showed a documentary called Steve McQueen: King of Cool. And that always scared the shit out of me, because he was the coolest dude. How do you out-cool the king of cool? Well, you don't! (laughs) But when I watched that film, I was blown away by the similarities of our childhoods. But when I was making the movie it was just a lovely affirmation that maybe he would have dug what I was doing. He had an influence on me, without question, the way he moved, his style. At the same time, when I discovered acting, I wanted to do theater, I wanted to do Shakespeare. When I discovered the theater, I finally got an education in literature and life.

Tell us about some of your favorite theatrical work.
I did a play with Tennessee Williams called The Red Devil Battery Site. It wasn't one of his most famous pieces, theatrically...Tennessee was near the end at that point. He didn't know that. No man does, but he was very gracious and always this twinkle in his eye. He was captivating. Brando was a mighty influence on me when I started as an actor, but he wasn't accessible, because he was so gifted. Whereas McQueen I always felt was accessible. By the time I discovered Brando, he had a complexity and a spirit of nature that was from another planet! So here I am working with Tennessee Williams, who'd worked with Brando. And Tennessee was very gracious to me. I was understudying the second male lead in the play. I had two lines in the end, as a member of a gang. About eight days into rehearsal, the guy I was understudying, I could see he was in trouble. They called me into the office and said "Do you know this role?" I said 'I know it inside out.' So I went out to Tennessee's house to audition. And I knew then that a door to an opportunity had opened. You just know that shit when you're young, and you've got to know it when you're older, too. So I went round to his place in Sloan Square, and there was Tennessee. I did the scene and I got the role, and it was a huge break. Franco Zeffirelli saw me and cast me in a play that he did. Tennessee was there for me, so to speak. He sent me a telegram opening night which said "Thank God for you, dear boy. Tennessee Williams." (laughs) I still have (the telegram)." When I worked with Joan Plowright, I got to have lunch with her and the great Laurence Olivier. I did workshops with La Mama, which was an amazing American company that opened my eyes to a whole new learning experience...You find the people that you can learn from, sit at their feet, and learn. I've been very lucky.

Your first film was the gangster classic The Long Good Friday.
My agent called me up and said "You've got a job." That was it. I didn't get a script. They told me I was an IRA hitman...I had no idea what I was in. I knew Bob Hoskins was great. I knew the guy who wrote it, Barrie Keeffe, had written some good plays. I knew it had violence to it, that it took place in south London. That's as much as I knew. Nobody invited me to the premiere. I went to a regular screening, and it turned out to be a killer movie, a classic.

Then you did The Manions of America, moved to the U.S., and did Remington Steele.
Yes, it was the happiest, wildest, greatest time of my life. It had endless opportunities, possibilities and it also came with the disillusionment that I wasn't quite there yet. I came here with the idea that I'd work with Scorsese. Taxi Driver, one of my all-time favorite films, I saw it 12 times during my days at drama school. I had dreams of doing films. I came and they offered me a TV series. And I was very happy, very proud. I owe a lot to my late wife, Cassandra, because she was the one who spurred me on to do it. If she'd listened to me, we'd still be back in south London, doing theater work. But coming to America was mighty. I'd always dreamt about America. When I was a little boy and came to England from Ireland, I looked for all the big cars and high rises, thinking England was America. I confused it. It wasn't. (laughs) But The Manions of America was my ticket to America and the performance had a rawness and an energy to it that I haven't had onscreen since then, irony of ironies, which I'd like to get back to.

Losing the chance to play Bond in '86 because of the contractual obligation to Steele must have been devastating.
It was. It was a knife in the heart. And not just for me, for my family, because we moved our children back to England and got fucked over by very short people. You get over it. It's just being an actor. Shit happens like that. But Remington Steele, fond memories. It was scary, too, because I'd never worked so fast before. Bob Butler, who created Hill Street Blues, let me play with a lot of pace, and move dialogue around a lot, and consequently they wrote more dialogue for me. It was a wonderful learning experience, but I also learned bad habits that didn't translate to movies. But I created a character that I loved, and I hope that others loved as well.

Your Thomas Crown Affair is the only remake I can think of that's better than the original.
Yeah, I've gotta say, thank you. It is. (laughs) It was a glorious finding of each other, John McTiernan and myself. We had a good script and I came bearing gifts to this guy, and he's someone that I really respect and admire as a filmmaker. Once he signed on, it went to another elevation of story. We made it our own, and I tried to make it my own, and not be too fearful of "the king of cool." Somewhere I think he was looking over us going "Way to go."...but now it's time to shake that sort of cinematic confidence up and get down and be mean, or do a romantic comedy. It's an exciting time. It's been a great ride.

I know you're very concerned about environmental and women's health issues.
I think they go hand-in-hand. First of all, I've got a great woman in my life right now and lucky me that I found someone that can make me feel strong and want to stand up and face the world together. I've stood up for woman's health care because it pissed off and angered me to see my children go through the loss of their mother. It was one of the most devastating things that any person can go through, to lose their partner and the parent to their child. So cancer I would love to see eradicated. The environmental work I've done stems from that. The people I've met and the journey I've been on has taught me that we've got a small planet and we're growing very fast. I love the forests. I love the oceans. So I've lent my name to certain causes and issues and it's all come about at a time when I've become a little more famous than I was.

Do you think a lot of that environmental concern stems from your childhood in Ireland?
Sure. I grew up in the countryside in one of the tiniest islands on the planet. One of the lushest, one of the greenest, one of the cleanest. I love nature, but if we carry on the way we've been going, we won't have a lot of it left. I have children, and for my children's children, I'd like to leave something behind. I travel the world and see a lot of negligence. Negligence from corporations and people trying to make a fast buck by pulling the guts out of a forest, or down in Baja, Mexico at St. Ignacio lagoon, Mitsubishi wants to go down there and make it into a salt mine. It's where the gray whales go, their breeding ground. That's one of my things. You have to choose one or two things, otherwise you spread yourself too thin, and can't be effective.

I heard that you and Keely had an interesting meeting with Newt Gingrich not long ago.
Yeah, a couple years ago. We went to talk to him about the dolphin bill. We met up with him after we saw him on the Jay Leno show. We got to him through his mom, who's a big Remington Steele fan. So there you go. You use it anyway you can...Our meeting helped things for a while, but the dolphin issue bill is still pending, and they're still going out there, trying to kill dolphins.

Is there an address or website people can contact who'd like to get involved with these causes?
There are. You can go to the NRDC, the National Resources for Defense, for which I'm a board member. You can go to the American Oceans Campaign, for which I'm also on the board. They're both brilliant. Planet Ark, an Australian outfit, is also wonderful. They're non-confrontational, and just deal with information, and education for young people. If this planet is gonna survive, it's gonna be through the kids. Our forefathers really botched it up here, and didn't pay attention.

What's next on your slate?
I've got a film called Grey Owl that I did last year for Richard Attenborough. It's a true story. Grey Owl was an Ojibwa Indian who later became a well-known conservationist, wrote a great deal about the environment. It was a wonderful experience because I got to spend time in the Indian community and had a wonderful educational experience. I think it's a good film. It's a film that's close to my heart. I think it will find an audience, and already has up in Canada, where it's been released. It's a quiet piece, and I think it has resonance at the story's end. Grey Owl was a character I related to a great deal. His background was similar to mine. He was abandoned by his parents and brought up by his aunts. He left Hastings, England in the 1930's and dreamt about becoming an Indian, and did it. We portrayed the nice side of his life, but he was an alcoholic, a bigamist, a scalawag at heart. But he became an Indian, became an amazing trapper, then a young woman turned his life around and he began to write. She was a full-blooded Pawnee. She got him to stop trapping and start writing. He became a sensation and toured the world. In England, he was like a rock star. Then on his deathbed, they discovered he was a white Englishman! I think they're waiting to release it here until Bond and Thomas Crown die down. That's the wonderful thing about having a character like Bond in my back pocket: I can do these small films, big films, or anything I damn well please, really. It's a sweet time.

Read More

Michael Apted: The Hollywood Interview

Director Michael Apted.


APTEDTUDE:
Michael Apted on film, politics, and a man named Bond
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the November 1999 issue of Venice Magazine.

Michael Apted has one of the most diverse filmographies of any director in the history of cinema. Equally adept at directing ground-breaking documentaries (the 7 Up-42 Up series) or slick commercial entertainment (the latest James Bond film, The World is Not Enough), Apted could rightfully be classified as a cinematic sociologist/anthropologist who happens to love making entertaining movies. Born February 10, 1941 in Aylesbury, England, Apted studied law and history at Cambridge, where his classmates included the troupe that would go on to be Monty Python, then went to work for Granada Television in 1963. There Apted directed many series, teleplays and documentaries. He assisted Canadian director Paul Almond on the documentary short 7 Up (1963), a presentation of the lives and aspirations of a group of seven year-old children from a variety of social classes. Apted went on to check on these individuals at ages 14, 21, 28, 35, and last year, at 42, with the documentary 42 Up.

Apted went turned to feature films in the early 70's with Triple Echo in 1973, followed by the sequel to the rock and roll fable That'll Be the Day (1974), entitled Stardust (1975), which chronicled the rise to fame of a hard-edged, blue collar rocker (David Essex), who bared more than a passing resemblance to the late John Lennon. Agatha (1979) was a speculative mystery about author Agatha Chrisite starring Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman that marked Apted's first big commercial success in the States. He followed this with the Oscar-winning blockbuster Coal Miner's Daughter in 1980, the story of country-western superstar Loretta Lynn and her tempestuous relationship with her husband, played by a fresh face named Tommy Lee Jones. Apted followed this with the comedy Continental Divide (1981) starring John Belushi, then the autobiographical gem Kipperbang (1982) about adolescent rites of passage in postwar England. Gorky Park (1983) was the riveting adaptation of Martin Cruz Smith's novel about murder most foul in Communist Russia, and boasts one of the great Lee Marvin's best performances. Firstborn (1984) was an overlooked drama about a teenage boy attempting to protect his mother (Teri Garr, in her best performance) from her loutish boyfriend (equally fine Peter Weller). Apted turned documentarian again for Bring on the Night in 1985, profiling rock legend Sting and his band as they plan their latest tour and cut a new record. Apted received major critical and commercial kudos again for Gorillas in the Mist in 1988, the story of wildlife activist Dian Fossey (Sigourney Weaver). He followed the hit Class Action (1991), a legal drama starring Gene Hackman, with two back-to-back films about Native Americans: the documentary Incident at Oglala which dealt with the alleged framing of Native American activist Leonard Peltier and the superior thriller Thunderheart (Both 1992) starring Val Kilmer as a Native American FBI agent investigating a murder on an Indian reservation. Apted followed this with the thriller Blink, starring Madeline Stowe, and the hit Nell, both 1994, starring Jodie Foster as a woman raised outside civilization. Moving the Mountain (also 1994) was Apted's brilliant documentary about the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in China. Next was the feature Extreme Measures (1996), a medical thriller starring Hugh Grant and Gene Hackman.

Apted's latest would seem to be a major departure for him, but isn't if you look closely. The World is Not Enough is the 19th film in the James Bond series, and the third starring Pierce Brosnan as the legendary superspy. More than any other Bond film since 1963's From Russia With Love, The World goes deeper into Bond's character, clearly defining him as a man who thrives on danger and is equally as deadly as the evil men and women whom he tries to bring down. In addition, this Bond goes deeper into the politics of the regions that it deals with, particularly the oil-rich regions of the Middle East. At the same time, the film is one hell of a ride that never stops. Apted's touch is clearly visible, with these qualities in mind. It's one of the best Bonds yet, guaranteed to shake and stir you. Michael Apted sat down recently over coffee in a quiet Brentwood courtyard to reflect on his diverse career.

Is it fair to call you a cinematic sociologist and anthropologist?
Michael Apted: I suppose, yeah. You're speaking to the kind of documentary soul that I have that informs everything that I do. The very first thing I did for the Bond film when I saw that the film was about Caspian oil was to schlep everyone out (to that area) to have a look at it, to see what it was all really like. My instinct is always to start it as a documentarian, whatever it is. It's not just about exotic locations. It's what the locations are about.

How long a shoot was it?
Interminable. (laughs) I shot for 109 days, the second unit shot for 104 days, then the model units, underwater units, helicopter units probably shot for about 70 days between them.

The amazing thing about it was that it never stopped moving, but it was also about people.
Right, that's really what I wanted. I wanted to deliver a Bond film, an action movie, but also wanted to make the characters interesting. That's what Pierce wanted, that's what the (producers) Broccoli's wanted. That's why they hired me, I think. I think they felt that there hadn't been interesting enough characters in the last couple films.

In many ways it reminded me of the first two Bond films (Dr. No (1962) and From Russian With Love (1963)) as those were pretty straightforward spy films with interesting characters. Bond was also a lot more hard-edged in this one.
I'm always curious as to how people will react to that. The studio didn't want us making him that hard-edged. They said "You can't do that." Then when we previewed the film, the comments we got back never mentioned that as an issue. But I took heat from the studio up to the last minute about it.

That's the thing about Ian Fleming's creation: there's a very fine line between Bond and the evil he's trying to destroy.
I think that's right. That's what makes him interesting and morally acceptable. He doesn't live on some different planet from everyone else. He doesn't occupy the moral high ground, which I think is kind of boring.

I also felt that Brosnan had really grown comfortable in the skin of Bond with this film.
I think he got a sense of that. When we first met, he'd ask me to give him things to do, meaning scenes to play, so it would be more than just him shooting at villains and blowing things up. He'd say "We have Judi Dench. Give me things to do with Judi." I mean, Judi is probably the best actress in the world, use her! So it was built around trying to get the most out of the people and their characters.

You really get a sense of Pierce Brosnan's intelligence in this film. There haven't been too many other directors that have utilized the intelligence that he obviously has. There's a lot more to him than just his looks.
He's a very interesting man because he's come to stardom late, which I think is always interesting. I think it makes people much more compassionate, much more workable, much more humane, and I think much better because I don't think actors, like directors, can work in a vacuum. If you're full of yourself and behave like an asshole, I don't see how your work can be good. It's not a medium that people can function in being in isolation. But when you come to stardom later, and you've been through it all, then I think it enables people to handle that sort of thing better, because they can take that power and put it into their work, rather than make it a narcissistic thing. So I think Pierce is an interesting actor for a director to work with because he's so interested in the work. He doesn't see his fame as entitlement, as some kid might who hits it big overnight. He was just very, very keen to make it as good as it gets. I found the same thing working with someone like Dustin. He'd done a lot of things before he became a movie star.

And now Bond really feels like it's his character.
Right. I think one of the keys to the longevity of the series is that you have five actors with five completely different interpretations of the role. That's interesting. Pierce doesn't feel that he has to live up to Connery's Bond or Moore's Bond, because he's grown into the character and made it his own. In many ways, I think his Bond is the nearest to Fleming that has been done so far.

Let's talk about your background.
I grew up in the suburbs of London, but went to school right in the middle of the city, so I was very influenced by the metropolis.

How did you first fall in love with film?
I had a moment. I was at school in the middle of London and went to an art house cinema at the age of 16 and saw Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957). It's a very clear moment in my life. I had been to the movies before, of course, but it had been to chase girls or just to go out, things like that. Suddenly movies became completely different and I fell in love. You have these moments when you fall in love with a person, or a sport or an idea and it changes your life. And that moment remains clear forever.

You then went to Cambridge, where you studied history and law.
Yes, I went to college with John Cleese, among others. He read law. I read history. We were on the same football team. I was in the dramatic society. Cambridge was heaven. It was wonderful to be with the best people of your generation for three years. It was a fishbowl, and by the time I had reached my senior year, I was ready to get out. I knew that this was just another moment, and that there was a world outside that was a lot tougher. The number of people who were there that were contemporaries of mine that went on to become successful in the media is astounding. There were no politicians at all in that group. I don't think there's been one cabinet minister to come out of my generation. And in America, you went from Bush to Clinton. And we went from Thatcher, to John Major, who's a good bit older than me, to Tony Blair. So my generation missed out on politics, but in terms of culture, we were incredibly rich. There was a very strong, professional sense going on in the theater and revue work that was happening. I don't know why our generation, that lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, wasn't more political, but we weren't.

I think your generation put its politics into their creations.
Yes, in the early 60's all over the world it was like that. The politics, of course, didn't come 'til later: Paris in '68, and so forth. The early 60's for young people was really just a sort of wonderful gasping of air. You had Look Back in Anger, and all that kind of wonderful, tough material that was political in a broader sense, but it wasn't about politics. It was about the state of the nation. It was anarchic, very left wing, and expressed in terms of plays, music and film.

That was also the first time, especially in England, where you had the working class, like the Beatles, John Osborne and Joe Orton, getting together with the middle class to create.
It was a democratization of the arts. It was no longer the province of the idle rich. It became available to everybody. There was a wonderful creative energy between the classes. I think we felt disillusioned about politics. There was a feeling too, in America, that everything was money-based and corrupt. There was a great feeling of a society waking up from the 50's.

Then you went to work at Granada Television after graduating Cambridge.
Granada was a very left wing, very active company that specialized in drama. They were one of the commercial companies, as opposed to the BBC, and had only been in business six or seven years when I got there. They survived by sort of poaching people from the BBC, newspapers and the theater. They were trying to create a whole new generation of raw material and took people out of universities to shape raw talent. It was elitist in that time because it was all Oxbridge. That changed as the 60's went on. So we went in, six of us, and just watched and learned and trained on the job. After six months of this, I became a researcher for World in Action. Because it was a small company, I could move around and do a bit of everything. Had I been at the BBC, which is a gigantic organization, I wouldn't have had that sort of freedom. At Granada I did everything from rock and roll concerts to sporting events to soap operas. It was a wonderful way to figure out what you could and couldn't do.

And out of that was born 7 Up.
Right. I was a researcher for World in Action, and it was my job to find the kids that would be interviewed. I worked with a Canadian director named Paul Almond. It was an interesting relationship because I was interested in the class system and he was a filmmaker with a big 'F'. (laughs) There was a friendly kind of tension between us, and out of that the film was born. It's a rather elegantly-made film, not just a piece of social diatribe. We were lucky there that we got a kind of interesting balance out of it.

I think it's one of the most important social documents ever put on film.
I agree, and I can say that because it was never intended to be that. It just happened by chance. It was originally just going to be one film, to look at this sort of fast moving society that was England, this apparent cultural revolution going on. What did it represent politically? Was the social system changing? It wasn't our idea, it was the guy's who was running World in Action, an Australian, who said "Why don't we ask that question to a group of kids, instead of adults?" This was incredibly clever because you got some real horrifying truths about society in a very ingenious way. Since it was so successful, it stayed in people's minds, so we went back to see what had happened to them and we did 14. At that point we could see that there was a very interesting idea at work. It's taken me a year to get distribution for the latest one, 42 Up, and I think I got it largely due to Bond.

You continued working in TV through the 60's, right?
Yeah, and through the 70's, when I went freelance. I was doing television stuff and trying to get film projects going. I did four movies in the 70's, and a bit of theater. Then in '79, I came here to do about Coal Miner's Daughter. And I never went back, really.

Let's talk about Coal Miner's Daughter.
I had an interesting experience making that film. After making Agatha, which was American-financed but shot in England, I really wanted to be in America, which at that time is where all the exciting films were coming from. We shot much of Coal Miner's Daughter in Hazard Country, Kentucky, which is on the West Virginia boarder. The people there are very suspicious of outsiders, but American outsiders. Being English, I sounded more like they did, and in many ways got on better with them than the New York and Hollywood elements did. I also had no baggage about the (locals in Kentucky), while many of the Americans there would call them "white trash" and so on, so that's another reason I got on well with them. So there are times when it's a tremendous advantage to be an outsider.

You also cast a newcomer named Tommy Lee Jones in that film.
I loved him. He was difficult. On day nine he didn't show up because he was under arrest. He'd had a fight with a highway patrolman and we had to go bail him out. He showed up with a big scar on his head and it took about fifteen minutes to cover it with a hairpiece. But he's also a Harvard graduate who's highly intelligent. I just thought that he and Sissy (Spacek) were incredibly inventive together. I'd suggest something and they'd just take off with it. They'd hardly socialize off the set, but when they worked together, it was magic.

Gorky Park was a terrific thriller. What was it like working with Lee Marvin?
Lee was great, but he was always ill. He arrived in Helsinki and had to go straight to hospital. It sounds very "lovey-lovey" to say this, but I really did love him. He loved doing the film because he was given lines to do. He wanted to do dialogue stuff, and was tired of shooting up people in all his films. I just thought he was terrific. It was an interesting shoot because Bill Hurt is a very difficult actor. The English actors who were a majority of the supporting cast had no trunk for this sort of (method) acting style that Bill had. But Lee and Brian Dennehy were great to him, and very protective of him. Lee was just very humane and nurturing with him, no matter how annoying and irritating it might be. Like Steve McQueen, he was one of the legendary, great actors, and he really loved to act. I just wonder why he didn't do more material like that, since I assume he had a good deal of power at one time.

Gorillas in the Mist is an amazing film and must've been difficult to shoot logistically.
Incredibly so! I don't know what I was doing, actually. (laughs) I was trying to build a film about the relationship between a Hollywood movie star and wild animals. I had this script that had all these scenes between Dian and the gorillas that were meaningless. Not that they didn't work, but I just didn't know how they we were going to shoot them. It was made very clear to me early on, which is why I got the job, there was none of this Greystoke stuff with actors in ape suits or animatronics. This was going to have to be based on wildlife material. When you think about it now, but I didn't at the time, I can come up with nothing! So we spent eight weeks shooting Sigourney with wild animals, then without her. We weren't allowed to do anything to these animals, like prod them, or manipulate them in any way. If they decided to attack us, they attacked us, you know. Sometimes we never even found them! We just had to chance to luck. If we got some key shots, then we built the scenes around those shots. We also had two actors in suits that we used for the more difficult shots. But for most of it, I was flying blind. I never saw anything I shot for the eight weeks we were in Rawanda. The footage had to be sent back to London to be processed, then back to me in the field. Once we did all our wildlife shots, then we went to Kenya, where we did all the animatronics and started tidying things up. I shot the rest of the film incredibly quickly. But it was a pure act of faith that we got the shots of her with these frighteningly huge animals and could then assemble them into a story that would be coherent. I often do classes on the film, where I talk about how I use my documentary experience in features. One of the reasons it all worked was Sigourney. She was just terrific.

Let's talk about Incident at Oglala and Thunderheart.
I was doing Oglala when the script for Thunderheart arrived from Mike Medavoy, then at TriStar. I read it and said, 'My God, I've just done a documentary about this!' Both Redford and Oliver Stone had the rights to the book In The Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen, which was the source material for everything, and neither had done anything with it. Redford asked if I would do a documentary about the incident, and that's how that started. Then John Fusco, who knew a lot about Native American culture, had written this script that Robert de Niro had bought, Medavoy got the script to me, and then the documentary wound up working its way into the film. It all worked out rather beautifully.

Oglala must've been a tough shoot. There seemed to be several times when you had to have felt in danger.
There were. There were some very ugly incidents during the shoot. It was very tricky. It was difficult having a crew there. You can't go in surrounded by security, because you have to gain people's trust. They were very distrustful of me for a long, long time. When I finally showed them the documentary at the time I was making the film, they began to trust me. It was amazing to me when I was making the film, how few Americans knew the history of the country's treatment of Native Americans. Oddly enough, like Coalminer's, it leveled the playing field because I didn't feel like I was having to constantly catch up on stuff.

Any advice for first-time directors?
Get the best people around you and listen to them. Don't pretend that you know how to do it. Know what you want out of the material, but listen. Have a vision of what you want to do, then the hardest thing in the world to do is collaborate with people, and then not let them run off with it. I think the mistake that first-time directors make is thinking they can do it all. Even the most experienced directors can't do it all. Keep a central vision of what you want, then listen to what people have to say.

Read More

Ioan Gruffudd: The Hollywood Interview

Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd.





IOAN GRUFFUDD TAKES A FANTASTIC JOURNEY
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the July 2005 issue of Venice Magazine.

Ioan Gruffudd (pronounced YO-an GRIFF-ith) was born in Cardiff, Wales October 6, 1973, the firstborn of three children to school teachers. At 18 he enrolled at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and upon graduation, began working almost immediately in the United Kingdom. It was his title role in the Emmy Award-winning miniseries, Horatio Hornblower, that earned him international acclaim with both fans and critics, on both sides of the pond.
Not long after graduating RADA, Ioan landed a supporting role in James Cameron’s blockbuster Titanic (1997), and has also appeared in such diverse titles as Wilde (1997), Solomon and Gaenor (1999), 102 Dalmatians (2000), Blackhawk Down (2001), and most recently in Antoine Fuqua’s revisionist take on King Arthur (2004), in which Ioan made many a fair maiden’s heart a-flutter with his brooking turn as Sir Lancelot.
Ioan’s latest big screen venture is sure to make him a household name, playing the leader of Marvel Comics legendary dysfunctional crime fighters, The Fantastic Four. Ioan plays a youthful variation of F4 leader Dr. Reed Richards, who is a lethal combination of dizzying intellect and physical action. Directed by Tim Story, the 20th Century Fox release hits screens July 8, and also stars Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis, and Chris Evans.
Ioan Gruffudd sat down with us recently in a local Italian bistro for some good pasta and good conversation. Here’s what transpired:

One thing I thought was interesting when they cast you as Dr. Fantastic was that they decided to go so young. In the comic, Reed Richards was definitely middle-aged, with these gray sideburns, so I always pictured someone like Kevin Kline playing the part.
Ioan Gruffudd: Yes, yes. I agree. I think with the hope of making it a franchise for the next ten years, they decided to make us younger in the beginning. If that’s the case, it would be a real luxury, wouldn’t it? (laughs)

What’s your take on Reed Richards?
He’s the biggest and best scientific brain ever, I suppose. It’s nice to play a very intelligent, thoughtful man. I’ve been lucky in that respect to have been cast as that type several times now. What I like about his ark is that he is sort of the dork, the guy who lives in his head, lives in his work, so much so that he doesn’t really notice that gorgeous, amazing Sue Storm is madly in love with him and he should be with her. Especially in that blue, lycra suit Jessica wears, she just looks sensational! (laughs)

When I saw pictures of her, I kept thinking of Diana Rigg as Mrs. Peel in The Avengers. I think I had my very first impure thoughts about her when I was a kid.
Me too! (laughs) I was very impressed with Jessica. I didn’t really know her prior to this, and I think she’s always been sort of typecast as the sort of blonde, kick-ass girl. But in reality, she’s incredibly maternal, in addition to being very beautiful. I think her talent will really be evident in this film. Actually, the backstory of the whole film is quite interesting, with Dr. Doom being Reed’s rival going back to college, and both sort of vying for Sue’s affections. But overall, the movie is a very entertaining, fun piece. It’s a fantasy, after all, and we’re not going for gritty realism. It’s a really wonderful “popcorn movie.” I think it’s something parents will be happy to take the kids to see.

I was very happy when I saw Michael Chiklis was cast as The Thing. He’s always struck me as an old school actor of the Lee Marvin mold.
Yeah, he’s just brilliant in it. From the moment the accident happens to him, he really just breaks your heart, sort of like The Elephant Man: you see the torture, the pain, the anxiety, the humor, and just when you think he’s lost all hope, he comes round to save the day again. I give the producers a lot of credit for casting great actors, like Michael, in these roles. It just gives you a three dimensional character for free, without even having to coax a performance out of them.

Chris Evans, who plays The Human Torch, I’ve only seen in Cellular prior to this. What was he like?
I think Chris is the best thing in it, really. He’s terrific and really made the part his own. Most of the one-liners he improvised, and they kept virtually all of them in. He’s a sort of Tom Cruise in Top Gun sort of character in this.

Prior to this, I was very impressed with your work in Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur. The Director’s Cut of that film is such an impressive piece of work, and a testament to the fact that a director’s vision should be left alone by the suits who sign the checks.
I was so impressed by Antoine. He really wanted to make a tough, R-rated movie, and suddenly they announced that they wanted it to be an audience-friendly PG-13 film. And you could just see how that devastated him, and it’s just like he was crumbling all summer long. But he stuck it out like a real professional and as you said, his cut of the film that’s on DVD now is a testament to his vision, and all the critics, many of whom hated the theatrical version, have responded just as you have to it—it’s a brilliant piece of work.

You worked with an amazing cast on that.
Oh God, it was amazing! Clive Owen was remarkable to work with. If Pierce Brosnan doesn’t come back as Bond, Clive would be my first choice as 007. He’s just got that brooding intensity that Bond needs. Clive has that air of danger about him, like Connery had, but can also be incredibly charming.

Tell us about your take on Lancelot.
It was a real challenge for me to play someone who was a hard, brooding killer, a mercenary basically. We were all sort of going about the set being hard men, brooding and so forth, and that carried over onto the screen. When they tried to cut that feeling down to a PG-13, it just didn’t work. But I loved playing Lancelot and working with actors like Clive and Ray Winstone, it just raises your game, just looking into their eyes brings your performance up. Also, Antoine was on my back all summer: “C’mon Ioan, you’re a fuckin’ knight! You’re a badass!” (laughs) So that helped, as well.

Have you ever seen Ray’s earlier work, like Scum (1980) and Quadrophenia (1979)?
Of course. I love those films, but I think my favorite film of his is Nil By Mouth (1997). I’m a huge fan of Gary Oldman (who directed) and I’ve even got a signed 10 x 8 photo of Gary at home that his sister, Laila Morse, got for me. She’s an actress, and we worked together in a BBC production of Great Expectations. She played a maid, and looks nothing like him, so I had no idea who she was initially. Gary’s always been one of my heroes, he’s just brilliant, so that picture means a lot to me.

Let’s talk about your background.
I was born and raised in Cardiff, Wales, so I’m a city boy, really. My grandfather was a miner in West Wales. My parents are both teachers. My father was deputy principal at my high school, actually.

Oh, that must’ve been fun for you.
(laughs) The fact of the matter is that he’s such a lovely, likable, revered man that all the kids loved him, and that helped me enormously. Nobody wanted to be told off by him or get caught doing something naughty by him. He was a tough disciplinarian, so I benefited from that.

When did you know you were an actor?
When I did my first ever job as a child actor at the age of eleven, on this Welsh soap opera called Pobol y Cwn (People of the Valley) that I did for about seven or eight years. From then on, I was bitten.

There’s a rich tradition of great actors that have come from Wales, Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins among them. Do you think there’s something inherent in the culture that fosters that kind of creativity?
During that era there was a lot of hardship and poverty and tough lives. I know it sounds cliché, but it’s true. The whole of south Wales was the biggest mining community in the world, and these people were born out of that. Then there’s the religious element: the chapel-going, God-fearing people. Then there’s the musicality of it, when you sing in chapel or down in the mines. So I think it’s all born from that. My upbringing though, when I describe it, is that I never had a want. We weren’t rich, but my parents have lived their whole lives in the red, so they could give their children the lives and opportunities that we have now. I never wanted for anything material, we never went on holidays abroad, but we had unlimited supplies of love and encouragement from our parents. I was given everything a child would need to enter this world with confidence, and I think that’s where my confidence comes from for acting. It’s sort of the opposite of a lot of actors’ stories, who had very hard-luck backgrounds.

What was your time at RADA like?
Absolutely the toughest period of my life. While I did learn a great deal there, I felt a lot of the instruction was a bit destructive: “You’re not doing it right.” “You’ve got bad habits.” “This isn’t how you approach acting.” And I remember thinking, where’s the instinct? They’re ramming this method into us. So I almost lost all hope for acting and nearly left into the second year, but my father said “Look, just finish the course, then you can decide you don’t want to act.” It wasn’t until I did a play toward the end of the third year, that I met this director who just brought the confidence back to me. So I’ll be eternally grateful for my father’s wise words to stick it out. But prior to that, I’d get up every morning, eat breakfast, and immediately throw it all up because I’d be so nervous about working with whatever tyrannical director they were throwing at us that day. But to be fair, I also had a hard time I think because I had no real life experience to draw from at that point. Playing a guy whose girlfriend or wife had just died and was pregnant with his kid, or something, at that point, I’d never had a girlfriend, and never even had sex! (laughs) It was a very strange thing, having to draw everything from pure imagination. But all that training has now filtered through into the work I do now, so I’m glad I went. Not a happy time, but I’d not be here now if I hadn’t had that training.

How was it working on Titanic?
What can I say, I mean, I was on it for five months, for what was basically a small, supporting role, and I was just in heaven. Here I was, a young actor, 21 years-old, had only done one feature previously which I’d just finished (Wilde, 1998), and I fly down to San Diego, to be driven down to Mexico, to work on Titanic. Again, I went in with open arms and couldn’t believe my luck. We all knew when we were shooting that it was going to be something extraordinary. Cameron, all the stories that you heard, they’re all true. He’s just an obsessive character, a real perfectionist and strict task master. Some days you’d be crying in the makeup chair, not because of things he’d said, but just the atmosphere was so intense. People were just exhausted, drinking, smoking, partying through the night just to get through it. It felt like real old school Hollywood, like a shoot out of the Easy Riders and Raging Bulls era. We all bonded, cast and crew, very intensely. I will say, the catering was absolutely tremendous, which is what got us all through it, I think. Somebody was very smart in making sure the food was good! (laughs)

Read More