Sam Mendes--The Hollywood Interview

Director Sam Mendes.


SAM MENDES HITS THE ROAD WITH AWAY WE GO
By
Alex Simon


Sam Mendes is one of the rare hyphenates who remains active directing on the stage and in film, in a time when the two worlds have become largely segregated from one another. Having been lauded with virtually every prestigious award for stage and screen by time he was in his mid-30s, Sam Medes was a wunderkind almost from the start.

Born August 1, 1965 in Reading, Berkshire, England to a university lecturer father and a mother who authored children’s books, Mendes’ parents divorced when he was five. Upon reaching Cambridge University, he quickly fell in love with theater and film, joining the Chichester Festival Theater after graduation in 1987. Soon, he was directing Dame Judi Dench in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, winning the Critics Circle Award for Best Newcomer. Following work with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Mendes became artistic director of the reopened Donmar Warehouse in London, and later directed the Broadway revival of Cabaret, which won four Tony Awards, including Best Actress for the late Natasha Richardson.

Sam Mendes hit pay dirt with his first feature film, American Beauty, which swept the 1999 Academy Awards, taking home five statuettes, including Best Director for Mendes who, at the tender age of 34, was now a major player in Hollywood. Mendes followed Beauty with a stellar body of work: the Depression-era drama Road to Perdition, the Gulf War epic Jarhead, and last year’s adaptation of Richard Yates’ iconic novel Revolutionary Road, which starred Mendes’ wife, 2008’s Oscar-winner for The Reader, Kate Winslet.

Sam Mendes’ latest feature film is a departure for the director, whose previous cinematic efforts have been painted on broad canvases. Away We Go tells the story of a happily married couple (Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski) who, upon discovering their first child is on the way, travel cross-country to find the perfect place to settle down, encountering friends, family and some new perspective on the way. Reminiscent of some of the ‘70s’ greatest road pictures, Away We Go was written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, and features stellar support from a dream cast, including Allison Janney, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jeff Daniels, Catherine O’Hara, Chris Messina and Melanie Lynskey, to name but a few. The Focus Features release hits theaters June 5.

Sam Mendes sat down with us recently during an LA stopover to discuss his latest film and remarkable career. Here’s what followed:

This film reminded me of some of my favorite road pictures from the ‘70s, like Harry & Tonto and The Last Detail. Is that what struck you when you initially read the script?
No, what struck me was the script itself, and it actually felt very contemporary to me, as opposed to something that was a throwback. It’s a very “generation Y” story. It reminded me of the period, in our thirties, when my friends and I really made the decisions that informed the rest of our lives: we got married, had kids. Very few of us got married in our twenties and started families. That doesn’t happen as much anymore. So I thought it captured that very well, and I love the road movie genre and the road movie format. I like the simplicity of it: Start at A. Got to get to B. And the audience knows where you’re heading because they’ve got the itinerary. It’s like chapters in a book. The other thing I loved about this movie is that people keep trying to label it a “romantic comedy,” which it isn’t. A romantic comedy is “boy meets girl, boy loses girl,” and so on. This is not that at all. This establishes very quickly that this couple is in love and they’re going to remain in love. There’s no crisis in their relationship like there would be in a classic romantic comedy. Throughout the movie they’re like a unit, almost like one character. The movie is about what they see, and what they learn. So I saw it much more as a road movie, first and foremost.

John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph in Away We Go.

What movies did you study before you shot it?
I immediately thought of all the great Hal Ashby movies, The Last Detail being the primary one. There was a simplicity in his work stylistically, and also the way he used music, was years ahead of its time. His films are almost more inspiring now than they were when they came out, or even 10-15 years ago. Now you’ve got all these great directors like Spike Jonze, Judd Apatow, Cameron Crowe, all saying that one of their biggest influences was “the master, Hal Ashby.” So I watched The Last Detail several times, and thought ‘It’s so simple in its presentation, yet so complex in the way the characters are presented, and the people that they meet,’ and how unafraid he is to meet someone and move on. There’s no tying up “loose ends” and having the characters come back in the end for some kind of payoff. The whole idea of an “arc” that every character has to have is just absurd. The Last Detail presented human encounters as they usually happen in life: you meet someone, you have the encounter, and you move on.

Like The Last Detail, Away We Go also has the characters encountering very specific cultural archetypes, that could only exist in the time and place that the film takes place. There are very contemporary characters in this film, as you said, just as there are characters in The Last Detail that you would only meet in 1973.
Right, right, and yet they stay with you, don’t they? And the sign of a great writer is to make all the characters familiar to you, archetypes as you said, but unique and sometimes strange in their own way. When I was reading the script, every character there reminded me of someone that I knew, yet they weren’t exactly like them because we’re all unique. That really was my way into the movie, and it didn’t change from that moment to now. I love the characters of that couple, and I feel that I really cast them right, and when that happens, two plus two equals five. When we did the first preview of the movie, there were about 25 people in the focus group, and literally everyone in the room loved the leading couple. If they hadn’t, I knew that we’d be in big trouble.

Mendes on the set of Away We Go.

The focus group experience must be like going for a dental checkup to the Laurence Olivier character in Marathon Man for any director. Is that true? Do you just dread it?
(laughs) That’s very good—like your teeth being pulled. You know, since I’ve done so much theater, I really like sitting with an audience watching my work. I like the feeling of being able to watch where they switch on, where they switch off, where they laugh, where they cry. The focus group, though, once you’ve gone through the first two or three questions and you’ve established that they like it, that’s when you want to leave, because then they’ll start trying to fish for all the reasons they don’t like it.

Kevin Spacey and Mena Suvari in American Beauty, 1999's Best Picture.

Wasn’t something like twenty minutes of American Beauty cut after a focus group screening—the sequence involving the back-story of Chris Cooper’s character?
No, that was me that cut that. It had nothing to do with a focus group. The movie never changed really after the first preview, aside from about a minute that I cut from the cheerleader sequence. The changes I made to that movie were long before an audience ever saw it. The only other person that ever saw it in a longer form was (screenwriter) Alan Ball, and the two producers.

And we’ll never see a “Director’s Cut” DVD release that restores that sequence?
No, the director’s cut is what’s out on DVD. I’d like to do a director’s cut of Jarhead, though.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard in Jarhead.

How was that film compromised?
I took the politics out of it.

Why?
I don’t know. Because it felt wrong at the time, I think. I was too close to it, and I couldn’t give it a context. We were in the middle of the height of the Gulf War, and people were determined to make the film into something that was political, and I felt that I wanted it to stand on its own, and be timeless. The thing I regret, which I didn’t have to do on Away We Go, was that I didn’t have a chance to be away from it for a while. I shot Away We Go, then did a play, then came back to the film and did post. So that gave me some objectivity with it, whereas with Jarhead, I was working on it right up until its release date. I had a strange experience during the premiere of Jarhead, I was watching it and thinking ‘Wait a minute, they’ve skipped a scene! Where did that scene go?’ Then I realized, I’d cut the fucking thing! (laughs) And that shouldn’t happen to you as a filmmaker. You should know the landscape of your movie intimately. That just shows you that sometimes when you don’t have the time, you can really compromise your own material without meaning to.

You were in post on Revolutionary Road when you started Away We Go, right?
Yes, I was. Revolutionary Road was long. We were supposed to release it the previous year, but we couldn’t get it together in time. In this case it was good for me to go from one to the other because I was able to work much more instinctively on this. Usually I’ve gone from movie-play-movie-play. And sometimes a year or two will go by between the play and the movie, which causes you to sort of lose your “movie muscles,” and you have to take a couple weeks to build them back up, so to speak. So I was really in the groove when I started this, and was making decisions very instinctively, from my gut. I think the movie really benefited from the fact that I didn’t over think, and over plan it.Revolutionary Road was threading a needle, whereas this was painting a canvas with warm colors.

This is a completely different kind of film for you. You usually paint on a huge canvas, whereas this was a small canvas, painted with what felt like watercolors. Was that your intention?
Yeah, absolutely. I’m glad you got that, and it was a great feeling to be working on a smaller canvas, so to speak.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road.

Speaking of Revolutionary Road, I was very happy to see one of Richard Yates’ stories finally adapted for the screen. Are you familiar with his short story anthology, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness?
Yeah, wonderful stories. John Frankenheimer actually had wanted to film Revolutionary Road in the early ‘60s, but wasn't able to, because the subject matter was a bit too frank to be filmable in that time. There’s a story in Eleven Kinds of Loneliness called “Saying Goodbye to Sally,” I think, which was about Yates going to Hollywood. It was nakedly autobiographical, and the character of the young director was based on Frankenheimer.

You mentioned the theater earlier. You’re one of the few directors today, Mike Nichols being the other, who goes back and forth between film and theater, whereas years ago, it was more commonplace. Talk to us about the different processes between working with actors in theater versus working with them in film.
Well, I used to think it was completely different, and when you’re shooting it is very different from doing a play. But I’m finding increasingly that the two are much closer together. I find that as I get more comfortable with film, I find myself working very much the same way and in the same atmosphere as when I’m in rehearsals for a play. The difference is that rehearsals for a play are everything, and rehearsals for a movie are not. You rehearse a play to the very end, and then when you put it up, it’s either going to work, or it’s not. With film, every day is a challenge which can make or break the film. Then you have to remake it again in the editing room. I’d say rehearsals for a play and the editing room for a movie are my favorite places to be.

Do you like to rehearse before you shoot?
Oh yeah. I like to rehearse every movie, sometimes for quite a long time. We rehearsed this for a total of about three weeks over a couple of months: five days here, three days there, just to keep the energy going and also because I knew the center of the film was John and Maya, and if they didn’t have an easy relationship with each other, and their chemistry wasn’t perfect by the time we shot, the film wouldn’t work.

Allison Janney and Maya Rudolph in Away We Go.

The other thing I noticed was you used different color palates for the different locations they traveled to.
Yeah, that was all intentional, and the other thing we did was allow a lot of improvisation in the movie. The scene with Allison Janney in Phoenix, where she’s calling her child over and over again, and he ignores her, that was all improvised. Allison did it during one take and I said ‘That’s great, just keep doing that.’ She thought I was being funny, and I said ‘No, I’m serious, just keep doing that.’ And then I told the kid to just ignore her. To be able to be that loose was great. I like to be able to get to the point with the actors where I can just throw stuff back and forth like that.

L to R: Maya Rudolph, John Krasinski and Maggie Gyllenhaal in Away We Go.

Maggie Gyllenhaal, I think, should be nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Living in Southern California you encounter so many pretentious, overbearing New Agers like her character.
(laughs) I know, wasn’t she great? She’s channeling something there, to be sure. That character is a great creation by David and Vendella, but taken to another level by a great actor.

Paul Newman and Tom Hanks in Road to Perdition.

My favorite film of yours is Road to Perdition. I was a fan of the graphic novel, but I loved the way you reinvented what was basically a John Woo Hong Kong film set during the Great Depression, and turned it into something completely different, basically an original work. We also need to talk about two people you worked with in the film: Paul Newman and Conrad Hall, two of my heroes.
They’re both very easy people to talk about. I suppose they were two of the biggest pleasures of my professional life, the more important relationship of the two being Conrad. We were really close friends, and he influenced everything about how I make movies. There isn’t a day that goes by on a set when I don’t think to myself ‘What would Connie do here?’ or just about the fact that I miss him. He was just a wonderful human being. They both were just great people who transcended their skills as artists and went into that very rare realm of just being great human beings. They were both able to keep their lives separate from their work. Conrad was the greatest lighting cameraman of the last 30-40 years, along with a handful of people like Gordon Willis, Haskell Wexler, Sven Nykvist, and just set the agenda for all the cinematographers that followed him.

They’re like a school of painters almost, aren’t they?
Yeah, they are. That’s exactly what you become a part of when you have that level of skill, and when you see the work, you realize what goes into it and that it’s very special. Newman was that way, too. I wrote an article about him after he died, and I knew him for such a small period of his life, but I think he influenced future generations of actors just as Connie did cinematographers. Plus, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who lived a better life than Paul did. He committed so much of himself to things outside of acting and set the standard in them all: charity, auto racing, entrepreneurship. Then, when he’d lost his leading man/movie star status, he was perfectly comfortable just being a great actor, doing character roles, and never lost his dignity. He wasn’t one of these people who clung onto fame with his fingertips, because I don’t think he cared.

Mendes and cinematographer Conrad L. Hall on the set of Road to Perdition.

Having Conrad Hall as your D.P. on your first feature must have been akin to being schooled by Yoda.
(laughs) Yes, it was. That’s exactly right. I was so in the dark as a filmmaker, I had to ask him ‘When do I say “action”?’ (laughs)

Was it less-daunting to have someone like that in your corner when you were starting out?
Yes, but on the other hand, it was also more daunting, because you’ve got someone who’s worked with John Huston, and shot Cool Hand Luke and In Cold Blood. It was like ‘Jesus Christ! What the fuck am I doing with this guy in the room with me?’ (laughs) And he also always wanted to direct, so I always had this voice in the back of my head with him saying ‘This kid’s got this job that I’d really like to be doing. Can he do it?’ And for the first couple weeks, he was probably wondering if I could, as I was finding my feet. But then we found a way of talking and being together that really worked. I miss him, still.

Let’s talk about your background. You were born and raised in and around London?
Yeah, London and Oxford.

Then you went to Cambridge.
Right, went from one university town to another.

Was your father a professor?
No, he was a lecturer at a university in London.

Did you discover the arts through him?
Both my parents, actually. I was always surrounded by books, so I’d say it was a combination of books and TV that fueled my interest, movies not so much then.

British TV was great then, with the Play of the Week series, and the like.
Yeah, exactly, plus the comedy was great: Monty Python, Fawlty Towers. So those were my major influences. Movies and theater didn’t really enter my life until university.

Was there one epiphanous moment where you knew that this was your calling?
Yeah, seeing Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas. It was a real epiphany. The further I get away from it, the bigger I think it was, actually. The main epiphany was the realization that you could make a movie in contemporary America that had a mythic scale, that dealt with big themes, and did so almost wordlessly. Everything about it was just perfect. I watched it three nights in succession. So that was a big moment for me, and might explain why I ended up making American films, as a Brit. And I still don’t quite know why I continue to do that. It’s just worked out that way.

Fate stepping in, perhaps.
Yeah, and now we live in New York because both Kate and myself are working so much in the States, we didn’t want to leave the kids behind in England. But we both love America, so it’s great.

Natasha Richardson as Sally Bowles in Mendes' Tony-winning production of Cabaret.

I interviewed Natasha Richardson five years ago and, like everyone who knew or got to meet her, was saddened by her passing. You directed her in her Tony-winning performance of the Cabaret revival. What are some of your memories of Natasha?
Yeah…you know it’s a terrible irony that so many of the things she wanted in her life were things that were given to her after she died, speaking professionally. Her fame rocketed after she died, and I remember thinking to myself ‘Why the fuck didn’t you all write these things about her while she was still alive?’ It was very frustrating in that respect, because she was such a wonderful person with a large, large heart and an amazing presence. She had a “force of nature” quality about her, and was just massively intelligent, as well. She had her dad’s theater instinct, with very precise taste and was very observant, which she also inherited from her mum. It’s just tragic that she won’t be here to contribute all that she was blessed with any longer, and worse, that she won’t be able to see her kids grow up.

Did you ever read her father, Tony Richardson’s, autobiography, The Long Distance Runner?
Yeah, great book, brilliant book. He was such an amazing, acerbic, intellectual man.

I saw your production of Cabaret in New York, and I imagine it must’ve been rather intimidating to step into the giant shoes that had interpreted it previously. But, as you did with Road to Perdition, you really reimagined and reinvented it to a large extent.
Yeah, someone said to me at the time “We’ve invented a new word for what you’ve done with Cabaret. We’re calling it ‘a revisal.’” (laughs) That is what it was, because it wasn’t really a revival of the original script. We included two songs from the movie, and one from the ’85 stage revival. It was a real patchwork of the different versions of the show. It was a very happy experience, that, and ran for a long time, for five years.

What are you working on now?
I’m doing two more plays with my company, The Bridge Project, and we’ll start rehearsing in the Fall, so I’ve got Summer off, which is great. And I’ll try to do a movie next year. I’m developing various things, so we’ll see what emerges. I’m always asked that, at this stage of the game after I’ve just finished a film. I always very foolishly say ‘Next I’m going to make this kind of movie,’ sounding very determined, and I always do the opposite. (laughs) I literally have no idea, and that’s part of the fun: flying blind for a while.

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Gabriel Byrne: The Hollywood Interview

Actor Gabriel Byrne.


GABRIEL BYRNE: TALK TO ME
By
Alex Simon

Editor's Note: The following article appears in the April issue of Venice Magazine.

Gabriel Byrne was born in Dublin May 12, 1950, the eldest of six children. After schooling under the stern tutelage of The Christian Brothers and five years in Catholic seminary, Byrne attended University College in Dublin, where he studied linguistics and archeology, as well as honing his love of soccer, playing with the renowned Stella Maris Football Club.

Byrne discovered acting late compared to most of his peers, spending his 20s working in a variety of professions including schoolteacher, where his students inadvertently helped him discover his true calling (see below for more details). Since then, he has starred in over 45 films for some of cinema's finest contemporary directors both in the US and Europe (John Boorman, Costa Gavras, Michael Mann, Ken Loach, David Cronenberg, and the Coen Brothers, to name a few). Byrne produced the controversial and Oscar-nominated drama In the Name of the Father, as well as the fantasy Into the West, in which he also starred. On Broadway, Byrne was nominated for a Tony Award for his portrayal of James Tyrone in the acclaimed revival of Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten. Also on Broadway in 2007, Byrne won the Outer Critics Cirlce Award for Best Actor for his work in A Touch of the Poet by O'Neill, and was awarded this year's Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Series, Drama for his work on HBO's In Treatment, where Gabriel Byrne takes on what he calls his most challenging role, as Paul Weston, a psychotherapist whose weekly sessions with a disparate group of patients provide the drama for the series. In Treatment has its second season premiere Sunday, April 5 on the venerable cable network.

I was originally scheduled to speak with Gabriel Byrne by phone from his home in New York on March 16, the day his close friend Natasha Richardson was fatally injured while skiing in Canada. Understandably not feeling up to chatting with a journalist, he rescheduled our talk for the following week. What followed were three different conversations over a period of three days. Gabriel Byrne proved himself to be a true man of letters and great intellectual curiosity during our talks, covering topics ranging from history, to religion, to politics, to film, and much more. In this case, words speak louder than action. And so…

I was thinking while watching In Treatment that it must be an interesting exercise for an actor to play a therapist since, as an actor, you have to be both a good listener and introspective.
Gabriel Byrne: That’s true. I think one of the challenges in the role for me is trying to find ways to deal with the different energies of the different characters that I work with. For example, it’s very difficult to let the audience know what you’re thinking, but not let the “patient” know what you’re thinking. You have to be constantly aware of that delicate balance between being a therapist and an actor. A lot of therapists have to act in a way, as do we all, in whatever job we do, we have to adopt a certain persona, even someone who checks you into a hotel. I’d say this is the most difficult role I’ve ever played since I did A Touch of the Poet and A Moon for the Misbegotten. It requires the same kind of stamina. It’s a very complex role, and is really much more a theater actor’s piece than it is a film. Essentially, it’s a one hour play every night.

That’s one thing I love about it. I find it very Bergmanesque.
It’s interesting that you should say that, because I remember years ago seeing Scenes from a Marriage, and he was really the one that starting the whole technique that blurred the line between reality and fiction.

And it’s such a refreshing experience to have that to watch nightly instead of things blowing up every five minutes or stories about horny teenagers trying to get laid.
Yeah, that’s very true. (laughs) I think we’re so used to action now and the language of plot that we’ve forgotten how to really listen. I think the challenge and the achievement of this program is that it makes people listen and watch a little closer, which allows you to get caught up in the complexity of human behavior. There’s nowhere to escape for these characters. There’s no liquor cabinet, no cigarettes you can light, no car you can escape in. You have to depend completely on the emotional connection between the characters.

Byrne and Melissa George in a scene from season 1 of In Treatment.

I never thought of it that way, but you’re absolutely correct: you’re literally a captive audience with Paul and his patient.
In fact, you’re in the room with those patients; therefore you have the notion of eavesdropping on something that’s very private. But what’s deceptive about it is, that if you were to film a real therapy session, for it to be compelling to eavesdrop on, it would have to be dramatic, but it would have to be acted in such a way to seem like a real therapy session, and most therapy sessions aren’t very dramatic in real life. They’re a bit more subdued and unstructured, and they’re certainly not framed with any sort of dramatic plotting.

Well, when we reach an emotional catharsis, we don’t explode, we implode, and this show captures that beautifully. It’s a show about implosion.
I think that’s very well-put. There are constant moments of revelation, both with the audience and the characters themselves. I think the role of the viewer is complicated in a good way, in that you can empathize with these people, but you can also judge them. You can say ‘Well, they should do this, and they should do that.’ But you can also say ‘Well, I’ve done this, and I’ve done that.’ To see all those experiences of the patients, we might not be able to relate to them all directly, but we still empathize with the feelings behind them.

It’s been interesting you mention judging the patients, because at first I found myself really judging them, and the things they did, for example the Hope Davis character. My gut reaction to her straight off was “This woman is nuts!”
(laughs) Yeah.

But then I tried to put myself in Paul’s shoes by listening to her without judgment, which was a very challenging exercise in trying to be empathetic with another human being, which we probably don’t do enough of.
One of the challenges that I like in playing this part, I never ask for the script before the day that we shoot, because I don’t want to know where the other character is going. I don’t want to know what the arc of the other character is. So there’s a part of me that wants to find out, meeting-by-meeting, what’s going on with this person. That’s deliberate on my part to keep removed, and to keep from knowing what’s going to happen, and that keeps me from judging the characters before we shoot the scene.

I also find it fascinating that your character uses his position to avoid any real intimacy with the people close to him in his life.
I think we have an expectation of people who are in the healing profession, a higher expectation of their behavior than we do our own. No therapist would deny that they’re not human beings, or that they’re a saint outside that room. I think what’s interesting about that character is that he is a human being and he is gullible to an extent in his own life so that when it comes to relating to his patients, he has an objectivity and an empathy and compassion, but doesn’t necessarily feel compassion for himself. He’s very hard on himself.

And given his back-story, that’s understandable.
Yeah, we really lay out the emotional roadmap of his life this season, where Paul asks himself “Am I a rescuer because I’m trying to repair something in my past because of my mother’s death, therefore I go through life now with a job where I attempt to rescue everybody, because I couldn’t rescue my mother?” A lot of his private world is tortured, whereas when he’s in that chair in front of people, I think he has a more defined existence.

There’s an amazing supporting cast on the series, most of whom have strong stage backgrounds: John Mahoney, Dianne Wiest, Hope Davis, Laila Robins.
Yeah, they’re terrific, aren’t they? Most of the writers and directors have strong stage backgrounds, as well, which is what I think the producers of the show really wanted because again, we’re really doing a series of short plays each week, as opposed to something more cinematic.

Byrne and Dianne Wiest in HBO's In Treatment.

The segments that have affected me the most are the sessions between your character and Dianne Wiest, who plays Paul’s therapist.
Yeah, what a good psychotherapist can do is help you to revisit the nerve center of your own experiences, of your own childhood, and try to make sense of them, because we all tend to distort and reimagine our childhood and our formative experiences. And what my character is trying to do, ultimately, is figure out why he is the way he is. So the room of the other psychotherapist becomes a sacred place for him, where he can communicate in all honesty and come to terms with his past.

Ultimately, I think that’s something we all try to do if we choose to live our lives with some semblance of self-awareness.
Right, I mean can you ever move forward until you’ve come to terms with the past? I don’t think so. You can only dwell in the past for so long, but you can’t look back on it without looking at how it helped form you into the person you are today. If you choose not to engage in that, then it seems to me to be a pretty empty exercise. If you’re open to it, it’s quite a rewarding path to discovering why you are the way you are.

I think the key is to come to terms with your past without living there.
It’s an ironic contradiction, if you think about it. We can’t really live in the past again, but we still have a need to make sense of it. So Paul’s journey into his emotional past is a brave one.

Let’s talk about your background a bit. You were born and raised in Dublin, the eldest of six children. What was life like for you as a child?
Both my parents worked. My father was a laborer and my mother was a hospital worker. We were a solidly working class family that was pretty typical of Dublin in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Who did you get the artistic side from?
I can’t say, really. There were never any actors in the family. Probably more from my mother.

A pre-teen Gabriel Byrne, circa early 1960s.

You were educated by The Christian Brothers, who are known as the Marine Corps of the Catholic Church. What was that like?
They were pretty hardcore. They were a combination of Catholic Victorian morality, which believed in eternal damnation, and a spare the rod, spoil the child kind of philosophy. So we got beaten around quite a lot. The result was I do not believe in corporal punishment, because I’ve suffered it. Corporal punishment degrades and humiliates. It teaches fear and radically affects self esteem. I think anyone who has been a victim of corporal punishment would be in a difficult position to put up a proposal for it. To be hit for something that you don’t understand is one of the great humiliations of life. I didn’t understand most of what they were talking about in terms of mathematics and language or whatever they were lecturing about. There were 35 of us in a class, and they could pick on you at any time. They could ask any comprehensible question about any comprehensible topic, and if you didn’t know the answer, you got beaten. Sometimes you got beaten anyway, just for sitting there. And when I say ‘beaten,’ I mean hit, really hard. So to me, corporal punishment is not an effective form of education.

It sounds like you were in a constant state of fear.
Yes, I think that most kids who went through that kind of schooling were.

I know you spent five years in seminary, so you spent a good portion of your early life training to be a Church-ordained therapist in many ways.
That may work in some advantage to the role I’m playing now, but I’m really just acting and I doubt whatever I learned anywhere else, outside of theater and film, has a great deal of bearing toward what I do in that chair when I’m playing Paul.

Byrne (second from right) graduates from college, circa 1973.

Still, the fact that you were so in touch with your humanistic side at an early age, I’m wondering if this quality led you to discover that you were an actor, rather than a priest.
I don’t think they were related. I didn’t become an actor until I was nearly 30 years old. I was a school teacher during most of my 20s, teaching Gaelic and Spanish literature, and I was always going to the theater, but I didn’t know that you could make a living at it. The students came to me one day and asked if we could start a drama club, and that’s how I got interesting in acting as a form of expression.

After that you got involved in the Abbey Theater.
Yeah, I got involved with the Abbey and Focus Theaters for a few years, did some theater in Dublin, and then I left and went to England.

Byrne as Uther Pendragon in John Boorman's Excalibur, his feature debut.

The first film I remember seeing you in is one of my favorites: John Boorman’s Excalibur. That was your big break, just as it was for people like Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, and many others.
There had been very few films made in Ireland of international standing up until then. None of us had any experience in making films. John Boorman found a bunch of us at the Focus Theater that he put into the film, along with a group of amazing actors from England like Helen Mirren, Nicol Williamson, Patrick Stewart, all these great Shakespearian actors. We had no idea what we were doing. It was a really bewildering experience for an actor from the theater. It was a very different technique and it took forever to get used to it. I couldn’t wait to get back to the theater, to tell you the truth. (laughs) But there was very little work at the time, and to be put on a big, international film like that, was a very big deal. But ultimately it was the theater that took me to London, to The Royal Court and National Theaters.

What was John Boorman like to work with?
John was an exotic ward of filmage as far as we were concerned. (laughs) He was really generous and kind to first-time actors, and knew what he wanted. But what he wanted and what we saw at the time we were shooting it was totally different. It was only after we saw the finished film that we realized what an amazing vision he had. Moment-to-moment, day-to-day we became more aware of how complex his vision really was. I think he wanted to capture some of the brutality and the primitive quality of myth in that film. So the combination of myth and magic that he infused the film with are really timeless things, and Boorman is someone who is obsessed with mythology and really understands the very close relationship between mythology and cinema.

Byrne in Defense of the Realm.

The next film I saw you in was Ken Russell’s Gothic, which was Natasha Richardson’s film debut. If you’re not comfortable talking about Natasha yet, let’s address Mr. Russell, who I understand is a force of nature.
Yeah, working with Ken was another huge break for me. I’d done a film in England just before that one called Defense of the Realm, which I think was one of the best films to come out of Britain in the ‘80s. Based on that film, I was offered Gothic. Ken was still, even at that time, the enfant terrible of British cinema. He was so controversial, that people would protest outside cinemas when Ken Russell films would show up during the ‘70s and ‘80s, that’s how incendiary some of his work was. He asked me to play Lord Byron and Natasha played Mary Shelley.

Julian Sands, Byrne and Natasha Richardson in Ken Russell's Gothic.

Are you comfortable talking about Natasha, or should we leave that?
(pause) I think everyone who knew her is obviously very sad. My memory of her is very personal, to me. I don’t think there’s anything to be gained with me commenting in a general way about her. It was a privilege for me to work with her in her first film. Her magnetism was incontestable, both as a person and as an actress. When you’re working with somebody you see them in a very different light. I just knew she was special. I think we’d better leave it at that.

Fair enough. I know that you and Liam Neeson go back to your theater days in Dublin.
We go back to ’76 together in The Project Theater. It was basically a tiny theater in the center of Dublin. Stephen Rea, Colm Meany, Liam Neeson, myself, Jim Sheridan, Neil Jordan, Ciaran Hinds, we were all working there together for about forty dollars a week. There was also a band of spotty kids who would practice there who were trying to hustle gigs around town at pubs and things. That band was U2.

My God, all that zeitgeist under one roof!
Yeah, pretty amazing, isn’t it? (laughs) When I look back it’s all bit surreal to think how well we all did and how lucky we all were. Why things happen that way every so often, I have no way of explaining.

Back to Gothic. Was Ken Russell’s reputation justified?
Oh yeah, he was very much a moment-to-moment guy. Looking back on it now, he was about taking risks. His notion, which was quite ingenious, was that Byron and Shelley were the Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of their day. He wasn’t comparing them as artists, but was saying that the milieu in which they existed was very much like the ‘60s, and that Frankenstein and a lot of their poetry was written under the influence of drugs. A lot of the poets of that time wrote under the influence of opium. So the film had the feel of a modern-day video, and I don’t know if that dates it, or not, but the idea was that the so-called counterculture of the ‘60s was nothing new. That environment had been around for a very long time.

The next film we have to discuss is Miller’s Crossing, another favorite of mine. Tell us about the Coen brothers and their universe.
Well, there was pre-universe, during it, and post-universe. (laughs) When I read that script, I was just like anybody I think who read it, just really impressed by how visual and literate and how complex those relationships in the story actually were. When you unravel what that movie is about, it’s even more audacious that someone could base a storyline on that single conversation between Steve Buscemi’s character and mine at the bottom of the staircase. All the twists and turns, the betrayals…

Byrne in the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing.

Everyone betrays everyone at the end of that film.
Yeah, they do. I think the film was really about the idea of who can you really trust.

And can you even trust yourself at the end of the day?
Exactly. Nobody ever really knows anybody.

I loved your character of Tom Reagan.
Yeah, he’s a watcher and a mover and shaker and really quite ruthless and deadly in the end.

I just finished college when the film came out, and had written a paper on Machiavelli, and it struck me that what the Coens did was to take Machiavelli, put him in a gangster picture in the 1930s, and make him an Irishman.
Well, yeah. (laughs) There were certainly Machiavellian traits in the character and as much as the film is about gangsters, it’s also a film about big business and about the nature of morality. I think when the film came out it was really underrated.

Original trailer for the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing.

The other element that defines it, as with all the Coens’ films, is its incredible sense of humor. It’s a very satirical film.
Oh, its humor is terrific. There’s laugh out loud moments in that movie, whereas on paper, it didn’t necessarily read that way. When Albert Finney turns around says “They took his hair, Tommy. They took his hair!” (laughs) And of course, we’d just seen the kid run off with the guy’s rug in the earlier scene. I asked the Coens what their inspiration was to write the film, and I forget whether it was Joel or Ethan who said to me: “You always see gangsters in the street, but you never see them in a forest.” I just thought that was so brilliant. Plus, there’s so much amazing imagery: the hat floating by the camera through the forest, which is one of the most original images in film history.

They also pay homage to some of my favorite films, especially the ending, which is a nod to The Third Man.
Yeah, there’s The Third Man, there’s also The Glass Key in there, the original Scarface with Paul Muni. I remember looking at those old gangster films and thinking ‘What can I steal out of here that won’t be too obvious. And I think it’s in Scarface where Paul Muni lights the match off the policeman’s badge. It’s just a throwaway bit, but in order to set up that shot in Miller’s Crossing, it was this really complicated process, where we had to fix the cop’s badge with sulfur and all kinds of props for that bit to work. And it was this wonderful, Coen-esque cop character: “I’m just speculatin’ about a hypothesis, Tom!” (laughs) It looked like a throwaway moment, but it really helped establish Tom’s disrespect for the law, and everything, really.

You got to work with the great Albert Finney in that film.
Yeah, we shot that in and around New Orleans, and I think if they’d had an election for Mayor that year, Albert would’ve won it, hands-down. He led the St. Patrick’s Day parade and was up and down Bourbon Street every night. The last thing you’d think of Albert after talking with him was that he was an actor, which is the greatest compliment I can give him. You’d talk with Albert about race horses, football, politics, what was going on down the road. I never heard him talk about acting, and I’m not someone who likes talking about acting, either, or talking about the business. We had many great conversations. I remember after we shot that scene in the park, we were two hours from New Orleans, and myself and Albert came back together in the van. We didn’t have separate cars in that film, everyone just went in the van together. It was great. Coming back, I just sat with Albert for two hours and he told me all about where he was born, and where he was brought up, what working in England was like in the 1950s and ‘60s…he told me how he turned down the lead in Lawrence of Arabia. I said ‘Did you regret it?’ He said “No Gabe, I didn’t regret it, because the next year I won the Oscar for Tom Jones.” (laughs)

He was part of that first group of working class Brits that made it as actors and artists: Finney, Michael Caine, Joe Orton, The Beatles. They were all real renaissance men, because they had to be.
Yeah, when you grew up in the UK in the ‘60s, as I did, those were the guys you watched. Of course I saw American films, but to me British films had more of an accessibility. I could recognize the people, the buildings, the world they lived in. It wasn’t America, which seemed very far away. You could take the boat or the train from Dublin and be in a place like Manchester. So they were making films about people I knew, who didn’t speak in American or British “toff” accents of the ‘40s. They were actually speaking with their own accents, which to me, was remarkable. Albert Finney, Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, Alan Bates, Richard Harris, all those guys didn’t let go of their working class credibility and they weren’t sort of precious actors, either. British films had been very staid and predictable, then suddenly people like Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz were making films about the people who I lived next door to. It was a revelation of sorts, hearing these people speak in their real accents, unashamed. And I don’t know that that’s happened with American actors yet, to tell you the truth. That would be a primary criticism I’d have of American cinema, actually: that it’s not representative of the diversity of American culture for the most part. It tends to still be a white man’s cinema, and with that a white man’s values and a white man’s perspective of the world.

Specifically a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant view.
Yeah, exactly. The truth about it is, until the leading actor in an American film happens to be a Korean simply because he’s a terrific actor and the best person for the part, and not because his last film made $800 million or that the part is specifically written for a Korean, American cinema will never be representative of how diverse the country really is. If you live outside of America, odds are that you will be inundated with American film and television. That’s just the way it is. And with that comes certain perceptions and viewpoints that will form as the result of being exposed to all this media from an early age. You ask people outside the U.S. what their perception of an American is, they’ll say things like “A cowboy,” or “One of the guys from Goodfellas.” (laughs) I think the reason certain societies thrive while others don’t is the society that is open to new ideas is going to thrive, while the ones that don’t, that oppose any outside or opposing cultural influences, those are in trouble, and I think America has done the latter over the past 20 or more years. The worse it is for America, the worse it is for the rest of us. That cultural isolation and political isolation that’s occurred over the last eight years has led to a separation from the rest of the world, not just culturally and politically. When American television and films don’t reflect complex ideas, and the theater scene is dying, where are the new ideas going to come from? I did a play by Eugene O’Neill called A Touch of the Poet on Broadway a few years ago. I remember looking out into the audience at one point, and the theater was packed with wealthy, white-haired people. After the curtain call I turned to one of the other actors and said ‘Theater is dead.’ He laughed and said “That’s a good one.” I said ‘No, seriously, theater as we’re doing it now is dead. There’s not audience. There’s no one under 60 out there. They’re all white. And they can all afford $300 for a night.

The point you raised earlier about accents and the homogenization of American media provides a perfect segueway to a question about In Treatment, which is that I found it a fascinating choice that you decided to play Paul with your own Irish brogue. Was his back-story that he emigrated in his early teens?
Yeah, the back-story I wanted to give him was that he emigrated to the States in his early teens and that he went back to Ireland to study at university. I find it interesting that there’s no reference to the fact that he’s Irish at all, but you still picked up on it, which is precisely why I did it that way. I wanted to make a point that you can be Irish and still have as valid an emotional viewpoint as someone with an American accent. At one point, a person who worked on the show asked me “Do you want to play this with a different accent?” I said ‘Why would I do that?’ He replied “Well, you might not be understood.” (laughs) I said ‘I don’t think so. And by the way, if you think I have an accent let me ask you: do you think you have an accent?’ He said “Well, no.” I said ‘You have what’s called an American accent.’ (laughs) I think nationalism can be a wonderful and instinctive thing but it can also be very isolating. As John Lennon said “Imagine there’s no countries.” The notion that nationalism is unequivocally and universally a good thing, I take to be something of a challenge. America is such a diversification of cultures; it can’t be defined as one particular thing. So that’s the point I’m trying to make, playing Paul that way.

Kevin Pollack, Stephen Baldwin, Benicio del Toro, Byrne, Kevin Spacey: The Usual Suspects.

We have to talk about The Usual Suspects. I remember seeing it premiere at Sundance in 1995, and also having it confirm what I always felt about Bryan Singer, who was a classmate of mine in college, that he would be a major filmmaker.
It’s interesting working with people like Bryan and the Coen brothers. As you got to know them, you knew what a unique cinematic vision they had. They have such a command of the language of cinema. It’s interesting to me that Bryan was not interested in becoming the next Fellini or Antonioni. He was interested in becoming the next Spielberg. He could’ve continued making sophisticated independent films, but that was never his ambition. His ambition was always to join the mainstream. The Usual Suspects was only his second film, but his total command of the medium was really inspiring to be around. Sometimes when you work on a film, around the middle of the shoot, your worst suspicions get confirmed. But on The Usual Suspects, I think we all knew right away that, at the very least, this was going to be a very interesting and powerful small film, but nobody had any idea of the impact that it would have, even though we knew we were a part of something very special. 1995 was an amazing year at Sundance, actually. Lots of great films came out that year.

You got to work with Wim Wenders on The End of Violence. What was that experience like?
Well, that’s a funny story, actually. I was at The Viper Room, watching this great big band play. I was standing next to this guy and we started chatting. He said he was from Germany and we started talking about German cinema and people like Fassbinder. And I said ‘And I love this film Wings of Desire by a guy named Wim Wenders. Have you ever heard of him?’ And he sort of paused and said “I am Wim Wenders.” (laughs) I had no idea! I had never seen anyone with a jacket on like the one he was wearing. It had so many zippers on it, you could’ve made it into a tent, or something. (laughs) Then I started listing off all his films that I loved, and said ‘If you’re ever stuck for anybody to cast in one of your projects, please give me a call.’ And he said “There’s a part in my new film that I think you’d be perfect for.” And that was The End of Violence, so there you are. And I got to have a scene with another one of my favorite directors, Sam Fuller. And Sam had just had a stroke, and couldn’t speak. So we just improvised the scene and Wim filmed it, and there it was in the final product. I learned from Wim Wenders that sometimes you just have to go with the moment, whereas filmmakers like the Coen brothers have everything storyboarded and planned months beforehand. But Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch were both very much about being in the moment.

Byrne in Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man.

Jarmusch is another favorite of mine. What was the experience of Dead Man like, with Johnny Depp and Robert Mitchum?
Working with Jim was a real pleasure. To be in a black & white western that was Robert Mitchum’s last film, there was something very cathartic about that for me, that took me back to my childhood watching Mitchum in black & white westerns, never imagining that I’d wind up acting in one with him. It was very sentimental for me, and also a really original take on the genre, and a very spiritual film, as well.

Did you get to know Mitchum at all?
A little bit. When we first met, he turned my head to the left, then to the right. Then he turned to Jim Jarmusch and said “He’ll do.” (laughs)

You worked with another original, David Cronenberg, on Spider.
Yeah, that was a very interesting film. 9/11 happened while we were shooting it. I remember walking onto the set and seeing people gathered around a TV, watching what I thought was a clip from the film, then what appeared to be a plane crash that just happened. Then we got the news of what had really happened. David arrived, took it all in, then said “Okay, let’s get to work.” I thought later about that mixture of not comprehending what was going on and his auto-practicality—it wasn’t callousness on his part, he just knew that we had to move on—and then the pain of what had just happened, we found the key to making the film. He’s absolutely fascinating, Cronenberg. There was one point where I was having some questions about my character, and I spoke with David about it. The first A.D. came up and said “We’re ready to go, Mr. Cronenberg,” to which David replied “Hold on, this is more important.” The A.D. gave him a rather quizzical look and David said “You’re fighting for the light, he’s fighting for his character.” He made the decision for my character, rather than the light. I’ll always remember that moment. Not every director will wait for the actor to be ready to go.

Byrne and Miranda Richardson in David Cronenberg's Spider.

You’ve just made an important distinction between the two types of directors working today: you have filmmakers, who are more geared toward the actors and the story, and you have shooters, who are all about the look and staying on-schedule.
Yeah, exactly. There are some directors who can never understand the acting process. You’re at an immediate disadvantage as a director if you don’t understand what it is an actor does. You’ve got to know more than the technical language of film to be an effective filmmaker, in my opinion. I think all directors should have the experience of being on stage or being in front of a camera, just take a scene study class or something similar. Cronenberg said to me once “Without a performance there is no film, and without the script, there is no performance.” They’re all interdependent, and it’s the job of the director to be like a great orchestra leader, and bring out the music that the writer wrote, through the instruments, which are the actors.

But as we spoke about earlier, studios aren’t making those kinds of films anymore. It’s not about story, it’s about product, which more often than not involves blowing things up and making action figures of the characters that do the blowing up.
Yes, and the question is, is it the chicken or the egg? Are the studios actually giving people what they want, or are people going to see these movies en masse because that’s all that’s being offered?

It’s like the film Soylent Green: if all you give the people to eat is Soylent Green, then that’s all they’ll demand. What else do they know?
And that raises a bigger question: if movies still have as big a power to influence as they do, what is the ultimate effect of redundant and unimaginative cinema on the public? That’s a question that probably can’t be answered in one sentence, but it’s certainly something I sometimes think about, because what we’ve become addicted to as an audience and what we’ve been given, is an addiction to action, an addiction to sensation. It’s also true of television, where something like Celebrity Big Brother and American Idol have been built to supply sensation after sensation after sensation. There’s nothing in between. There’s only people getting rejected or winning. When you’re addicted to action, there’s no room for any kind of subtlety. Action has affected the pacing of everything. I showed Dog Day Afternoon, which was made in 1975, to a group of 15 year-old kids, who said it felt dated to them. They said it dragged. I asked them why they felt that way and they said “Because everything happens too slow.” When I dug a little deeper, I realized what they were talking about was the way the film was edited: the takes, for their sensibilities, lasted too long before they cut to another shot. Editing and action go hand-in-hand. If you cut for emotion, which is something I always talk about during In Treatment, you’re cutting a different film than when you’re cutting for action, because when you’re cutting for action, you’re not asking the audience to feel and think for the most part, you’re asking them to react to a sensation.

The line-up scene from The Usual Suspects.

I wonder if you showed that same group of 15 year-olds The Wild Bunch, which was made in ’69 and is cut for both action and emotion, with some of the greatest action set pieces ever filmed, that they’d feel the same way?
Good question, and again, it raises a bigger one: what is the modern language of film? What worked in 1969 for The Wild Bunch, which was made by Sam Peckinpah and single-handedly redefined movie violence as we know it, and what worked for Sidney Lumet in ’75 for Dog Day, can that still work today? I remember seeing Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen during its first run in 1962 and remember thinking to myself ‘Wow, 70mm is amazing!’ I remember seeing Omar Sharif appear for the first time, riding across the desert. I remember experiencing that in a crowded cinema, that experience of being in awe of what you were seeing with a group of total strangers, and I don’t know that cinema means that to an audience anymore.

Movies like Watchmen give me hope that that isn’t the case. To me, it encompasses some of the best revisionist sensibilities that were present in films of the ‘60s and ‘70s and marries it with 21st century technology. Have you seen it yet?
No, I haven’t, but I want to, because the idea of a revisionist super hero movie really appeals to me. The idea of a super hero is something that’s been around in primitive literature since the world began. The idea that we’re now questioning the idea of a super being that’s indestructible, which is a very American idea and ideal about itself, maybe the fact that we’re questioning that shows that America is questioning itself as a “super hero” power.

I think that’s correct, but there’s a big dichotomy that still exists: we’re the country that elected Barack Obama, but in the state of California, we also voted yes on Proposition 8. So we still have a long way to go in my view in terms of what we perceive to be the righteousness of our moral fabric.
Yes, absolutely. The problem is that when a small group of people decide what other people do or see, you have to question that. Whose ideals and values do they reflect? Whose politics do they really reflect? So it’s hard to know if cinema as we know it now will be around in another 50 years. The notion that people will queue around the cinema for a week to see a picture, I just don’t know that in the age of immediate gratification that will exist or does exist anymore.

I’d argue that it will simply because there are so few communal experiences left in our society: Church attendance is dropping off. We’re increasingly isolated by technology that we have in our homes. What other communal experience is left to us, but going to the movies?
That may be true, but one thing I’ve been noticing lately is that everything I took for granted for so long has now been challenged.

Like what?
I never thought when I was growing up there would be such a thing as the abolition of albums and CDs, and that downloading music would be the new way people would listen to music. People can communicate directly and immediately across the Internet. But the big question, again, is where do we go to get our stories from? I hope that some version of sitting around the fireside telling a story, which is what the movie house is: a dark room with everyone sitting around watching their imaginations projected onto a screen by a storyteller. That’s very similar to what we did in the caves. We need that kind of rest for ourselves as human beings, and we’re not going to get it over the Internet. We need, as you say, to get it communally. I think we’re living in a real revolution now: a political, cultural, social and economic revolution. And the difference is, in the past during a revolution we attacked the castle with our spears and went after the lord of the manor. Now, we have a really profound, hopefully non-violent, revolution happening, which is affecting how we communicate and tell our stories. It’s a very exciting time, and I don’t know where it’s all going to end, but I do know that it’s a great time to ask questions.

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NATASHA RICHARDSON: 1963-2009

Actress Natasha Richardson.


The telephone is the bane of most interviews. Rarely does it allow the interviewer to connect with his or her subject, resulting in a less-than-stellar conversation fit for reproduction. When Venice Magazine Publisher Nancy Bishop asked me in December of 2005 if I'd do "a phoner" with actress Natasha Richardson, I was a bit surprised at how quickly I jumped at the chance. I had interviewed Richardson's sister Joely just two months before and, like many cinefiles, have had a lifelong fascination and admiration for their parents: the late filmmaker Tony Richardson and actress Vanessa Redgrave. Joely proved a charming, bright and engaging conversationalist during our lunch at The Chateau Marmont, with one of the most fascinating topics of conversation being her sister Natasha, their relationship, and their unconventional, albeit loving, upbringing. Needless to say, my appetite was whetted for more.
Natasha's sons with actor Liam Neeson could be heard rough-housing in the background when she picked up the phone at their upstate New York home. Every once in a while she would kindly, but firmly, ask them to keep it down, and each time return to our conversation with a gentle hint of laughter in her voice. Like her mother, Natasha Richardson was a classic beauty, with eyes that belied a fierce intelligence, qualities that served her well in the variety of roles she seemingly morphed into, both on stage (winning a Tony for her turn as Sally Bowles in the revival of "Cabaret") and screen. If there were a single, defining word for Natasha Richardson that carried through her very diverse 35 film appearences, it would be grace. Grace of presence, of movement, of just being. A rare quality that, and one which will be sorely missed. In the words of Carson McCullers "This minute is passing. And it will never come again." Rest in peace, and thank you.

NATASHA RICHARDSON: CHINA DOLL
By Alex Simon

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the December 2005/January 2006 issue of Venice Magazine.

Natasha Richardson is the product of cinematic and theatrical royalty: the daughter of legendary director Tony Richardson (Tom Jones, Blue Sky) and actress Vanessa Redgrave (Blow Up, Julia, The Loves of Isadora). Born in London May 11, 1963, Natasha trained at the prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama in London. After cutting her teeth on the stage, Natasha made her screen debut as novelist Mary Shelley in Ken Russell’s Gothic in 1987.

Since then, Natasha has appeared in nearly 30 feature films, most recently in the final Merchant-Ivory production, The White Countess. Natasha gives a masterful performance in the film, set in the mid-1930s, as a former Russian aristocrat whose family has fled to Shanghai, and a life of poverty. Working as a cabaret girl, she meets American businessman Todd Jackson (Ralph Feinnes, also excellent), who was blinded in a tragic accident. Together they decide to open a nightclub that becomes the toast of Shanghai, but are seemingly oblivious to the growing Japanese presence that is encroaching on their doorstep. The Sony Pictures Classics release hits screens December 21.

Natasha Richardson, who lives with her husband, actor Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List), and their two sons in upstate New York, spoke with us recently by phone.

The White Countess is the final Merchant-Ivory production, after Ismail Merchant’s death last May.
Natasha Richardson: It was sort of a gift, really. We shot it last Fall, this time in Shanghai. The summer before I was doing a play in London, which Ismail saw. He came back to my dressing room, handed me this script and said “Here’s this wonderful movie we’re going to make and there’s a great part for you in it.” One part of me was thrilled, but the other part was thinking ‘Oh yeah, right!’ (laughs) as you often do when wonderful things just seem to fall into your lap. Then I still couldn’t believe it when I read it, because it was such a beautiful story and beautiful part. So I feel like it’s a wonderful gift from Ismail and Jim, Ismail in particular. I knew Ismail very well, for many years, so his death was very sad for me.

What was the Merchant-Ivory process like?
I think they were entirely different men. Ismail was very, very outgoing, avuncular and full of life force and Jim is much more reserved, soft-spoken and working with him as a director, he’s not a very talkative director. He’ll basically tell you when he doesn’t like something. I knew to trust him, because my mother had worked with him before and she said “Don’t get put off if Jim doesn’t rush up to you after every take to tell you how great you are. But if he tells you something isn’t right, then listen to him.” One thing I didn’t expect was that he’s very open to your coming up with ideas, improvising bits of dialogue and business, things like that. I expected him to be much more committed to getting every bit of punctuation from the script onto the screen. I think that the big thing with Jim is his aesthetic eye. His eye for detail is just uncanny. We used to joke that in a huge crowd scene, Jim would notice an extra on edge of frame whose belt buckle isn’t right. (laughs)

How long were you in China?
For just over three months, and it was pretty overwhelming, I must say. I didn’t get to see a lot of the country, because we were always working. It was incredibly difficult for everyone involved, particularly Ismail. The cultural and language barriers and making such a big scale film on a low budget was really a struggle. The crew, which was partly British and partly Chinese, I think the British crew was really in shock. They were the kind of people who had shot all over the world, but never encountered the sort of difficulties that they did in China. The conditions were very basic, to say the least. There weren’t the usual amenities. Also, Shanghai is a very modern city now, and there’s very little of old Shanghai left, which also created difficulties in terms of locations, which makes the achievement of the film that much more phenomenal.

You get to work with your mother and your aunt for the first time in this film, and in very close proximity. How was that?
I loved it. I just wish we’d had more to do together. I think we all felt we were up against it a bit, so there was a wonderful sense of camaraderie. We have the same vocabulary and the same sense of humor, so the few weeks they were there it was so lovely to be together and work together, then go back to the hotel at the end of the day and eat Chinese food and drink wine and talk about the next day’s work.

You and Ralph Fiennes obviously had a great connection. Tell us a bit about working with him.
We did. We have a sense of mutual respect and love for each other. We’ve been very close friends for some time and have talked about working together that entire time. It was a very special experience. It was difficult for me at first, because what I hadn’t bargained for with Ralph playing blind was that I was so used to connecting with another actor through one another’s eyes, and he wouldn’t look in my eyes! (laughs) So there was a sense of loneliness that set into the relationship because I think Sophia is a very lonely person.

Let’s talk about your dad, who’s one of my heroes.
Oh, thank you. He’s still one of mine.

You actually helped get his autobiography (The Long Distance Runner) published posthumously, right?
Yes, exactly. I used to watch him write it out longhand on these yellow legal pads at his house in L.A. When I asked him what it was, he said “Oh, just memoirs. Nobody will give a shit and they’ll never get published.” After he died, we found them in the back of his closet, along with his Oscars. (laughs) It was quite amazing going through all those pages, really getting to know my dad again. It was a real gift. And then, of course, the book ends with this message to his daughters to carry through life. I get choked up even talking about it now, actually.

I know you and your sister both spent a lot of time on your parents’ sets growing up. What did you learn from watching your dad work?
A lot. As an actress I suppose it was like being in training from year one. Number one, always serve your director and always trust him, that was drummed into me from the beginning. I suppose also a professional ethic and a love of being on movie sets: the different departments working together, the art department and the carpentry department, and the lighting cameraman. It gave a wonderful sense of a sort of traveling circus, of a family being together, with a very charismatic leader in the sense of my dad. I think he always created a great sense of family when he worked, and a great sense of fun, as well as hard work, like you were doing something wonderful. When he first came to see me in the theater, in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in London, he’d just come in for the night and was flying into L.A. the next day. So he came backstage, just kind of patted me on the back and smiled and I thought ‘Ooh, he hasn’t said anything…’ Then he said “I’d like you to pick me up in the morning and drive me to the airport.” And I’m thinking to myself ‘Oh my God! First he doesn’t compliment me on my opening night, and now I have to get up at the crack of dawn to take him to the airport?!’ So I pick him up, and he said “You’ve got a lovely voice and a lovely quality on stage, but that isn’t good enough. You haven’t been thought about x, y and z in this part, and I’m going to mark up a copy of the script, which I want you to read, think about, and get to work.” And I was just devastated. I thought, ‘How cruel can you be.’ In retrospect, it was the kindest, best thing anyone had ever done for me. I did study his notes, and by the end of the run, my performance was entirely different. When he came to see me again in something else, The Seagull, a couple years later, he was just sort of beaming afterwards, and so effusive in his praise that I knew it was really meant, coming not only from a father that I loved, but a director whom I totally respected. You know, when you look at the body of my father’s work, not all of his films were great, but some were downright brilliant, and almost always, the performances were top-notch. John Gielgud credited my dad with teaching him to act on screen.

What did you learn from your mother’s work?
Well, she’s just totally inspiring because she’s one of the greatest actresses that’s ever lived. Her absolute dedication to the pursuit of truth and her emotional life and her transparency. I learned an approach to work through her, which helped me, which was reading Stanislavsky for the first time, which was the key that opened the door for me. So I owe her an enormous amount, which is a very brief answer! (laughs)

Was it tough for you and your sister to carve out your own identities as actors with two parents who were such legends in the business?
I think it was particularly difficult in terms of my mom, because of other people’s perceptions when I was starting out, because you want to quietly work away and make your own name and place for yourself. Having a famous parent can sometimes result in a level of attention you feel that you don’t deserve and you don’t want and comparisons, so it was carrying a card around your neck for a while, but that time has passed.

Do you think either one of your sons is interested in carrying on the family tradition?
I hope not! (laughs) I do think that acting’s a vocation. It’s something you don’t have a choice in. When I hear people say “I want to be an actor,” I always think ‘Well, if you are one, you will be.’

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Joely Richardson: The Hollywood Interview

Actress Joely Richardson.


JOELY RICHARDSON
BEATS AS THE HEART OF NIP/TUCK
By
Alex Simon

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

Joely Richardson is a third generation actor. Grandparents Rachel Kempson and Michael Redgrave were one of the most glamorous and renowned couples of the English stage and screen. Mother Vanessa Redgrave is an internationally celebrated actress and Academy Award winner. Father Tony Richardson (who died of AIDS related illness in 1991) was the Academy Award winning director of Tom Jones(1963), as well as the seminal British “kitchen sink” dramas Look Back in Anger(1958), A Taste of Honey(1961), and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner(1962). In addition, Aunt Lynn Redgrave and uncle Corin Redgraveare celebrated performers, as is older sister Natasha Richardson (Here's an interview we did with Natasha in December of 2005: The Hollywood Interview: Natasha Richardson: The Hollywood Interview)

Born Joely Kim Richardson in London January 9, 1965, she made her screen debut in dad’s epic Charge of the Light Brigade in 1968, next to her big sister. A self-described tomboy as a child, Joely excelled in sports such as gymnastics and tennis, but soon found the acting bug in her DNA dictating where her true calling lay. After studying with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Joely made her feature film debut in David Hare’s Wetherby (1985), playing the younger version of her mother’s character, Jean Travers. An ethereal beauty who seems equally comfortable in comedy and drama, Joely went on to grace the screen in such diverse productions as Peter Greenaway’s Drowning by Numbers (1988), Ken Russell's adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly (1993), James L. Brooks’ I'll Do Anything (1994), Disney’s 101 Dalmatians(1996), and the Mel Gibson epic The Patriot(2000), to name but a few.

2003 brought Joely to the small screen, with her twice-nominated Golden Globe turn in the hit F/X series Nip/Tuck. As Julia, the estranged wife of plastic surgeon extraordinaire Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh), Joely shines once again, playing a strong, yet vulnerable woman, herself a gifted physician, whose self doubts start with the fact that she gave up a potentially brilliant career in medicine to be a full-time housewife. Nip/Tuck begins its third season in September.

Joely Richardson sat down over breakfast at The Chateau Marmont recently to discuss her latest acting turn, as well as her legacy as part of one of the world’s great theatrical families. Here’s what transpired:


Tell us about your first foray into episodic television with Nip/Tuck, and what’s it’s been like working with your mom.
Joely Richardson: It’s been terrific, especially getting to work with my mom. We worked together once before, in a play in 2002, in London, and it was very interesting because I had no idea what it would be like. You know those times in life when you wait for the right moment for something to come along, and you wind up waiting for eternity? Well, we did this play, that I wasn’t wild about frankly, and I was so nervous. I think the mother-daughter bond is too close a connection to be completely divorced from when you’re working together. But I swear to God, we both were! It was just like she was another actress. It was a really, really good experience, and I got to see one of the things that mom does best, which is work on the stage. To actually be on the same floor as her, in that arena, it was really fascinating, because it’s almost the time when she’s most alive, and most present: when she’s on the stage. And then when Nip/Tuck came along, the creator, Ryan Murphy, mentioned a few different actresses they were looking at to play my character’s mother on the show. The next day I got a call from my real mother, saying that the job she’d signed on for had fallen through! So that gave me the idea: Ah ha! (laughs) But the experience of doing Nip/Tuck with mom has been very different: I’ve felt very protective of her, maybe because it’s been taking place in my environment, or that she joined us after we’d already sort of formed a cohesive company. It was quite a strange dynamic. The third season has just been brilliant, and we’re really having fun. There’s one scene where we get to smoke a bong together. (laughs)

Nice!
She claims she never smoked one before, even though she was around in the 60s, and I never had before, so the props guy had to give us lessons! (laughs) It was quite funny. She was much better at it than I was. It was nice to do something light with her for a chance, since last season we were always shouting at each other. What I really find inspirational about my mom, is that she constantly remains a student, always open, always learning. That’s what really stuck out in my mind. She’s also a good company person, being part of the troupe, as it were.

That’s not surprising since she was raised in a theatrical family, as you were.
She was certainly brought up in that environment, but in those days, parents weren’t as hands-on as her generation or my generation. I think the children stayed at home with the nanny when mom and dad were off doing plays, or films. It was a little bit on an upstairs-downstairs existence. But if you are from that background, there is the sense of it being a team effort and everyone being happy is in everyone’s best interest.

Let’s talk about your character, Julia.
Julia’s a funny one. I have such problems talking about her. I really enjoyed playing her, but sometimes I think that we only see one side of her, which has been primarily the unhappy housewife. When I was originally cast, Ryan told me that she was the heart of the piece, and I think what he meant by that was that Julia is the one who internalizes the emotions that the rest of the characters on the show feel: the anger, the joy, the pain, the disappointment. So, I’ve loved the lighter moments, also. The big, dramatic scenes have definitely been the heaviest I’ve ever played. That’s one of the great things about television: you can really do very intricate themes that go on because you have so much time, whereas in film, you just get small glimpses of those things in a two hour time frame.

The portrait of the divorce between you and your husband on the show, played by Dylan Walsh, is probably the most realistic I’ve ever seen portrayed, either in film or television.
It’s funny because for some reason a few of the men who work on the show had a similar reaction to that and there are just a gamut of emotions that you go through. It’s such a nightmare. I’m glad in a way, (laughs) that you felt that way, though.

What else has episodic television been like for you?
I think in many ways, maybe not in America, but for Europeans, it’s the best kept secret in terms of an actor’s job, in regards to going into work every day and having some semblance of structure to your life. If there’s such a thing as training, going back to the student thing we were talking about, it’s really brilliant, because you spend so many hours in front of the camera, and you get so relaxed, but at the same time, you have to force yourself to stay sharp, and fresh, and excited and always come up with new approaches to the material. It sounds so ridiculous when you’re an actor to say that it takes a lot of guts or nerve to hold it together, because a lot of people think that an actor’s job must be so completely easy, but when the whole crew is waiting and you’ve got four pages of dialogue to remember, and if you blow it, everyone’s just groaning, the pressure is just enormous! I don’t know how public speakers do it. I would be an absolute disaster as a public speaker. (laughs) The one down side would be that you never know what you’re signing up for in the beginning. You have no say what happens in the beginning when you sign up, and you’re really in someone else’s hands. That said, I think it really is the second golden age of television. I know that in every country right now there’s this incredible boom of reality shows, but the drama and comedy shows that are on right now, especially on the cable channels, are really fantastic.

Let’s talk about your background. First off, your father Tony Richardson is one of my heroes. He brought such realism and honesty to the entire canon of his work that he directed, that when you watch them today, they still feel contemporary in many ways.
It was nice because at the photo shoot for Venice a couple days ago at Greg Gorman’s studio, Greg had shot some photos of my dad, and he gave me a couple of black and white prints. It’s really lovely when people come up and pay you compliments all these years after he died. It’s so lopsided in a way that my mom was so famous obviously, that people kind of forget about my dad, and as an artist, he was completely up there with her, if not more so. At the time, he was very much part of inventing of whole new era in film.

He really took a page from the Italian neorealists and put it through his own filter. If you look at Tom Jones, there had never been a period piece shot like that: with handheld camera, natural light, and actors with no make up! Even 42 years later, it still has a rawness and an immediacy to it, like it could be a new film.
Yeah, I remember him telling stories about that, when he said “I really don’t want anyone to wear makeup.” And they’d say “Yes, yes, yes, but…” And he’d be like, “No. I really don’t want makeup, and I don’t want hairspray, either!” (laughs) It was really strange, because when I was growing up, being a teenager and all that, I saw some of my parents’ work, probably more of my mom’s, and it wasn’t until after my father died that I went back and saw a lot of the films he’d made before I was born, or when I was very small. And that’s when you want to ask all the questions, and of course, it’s too late.

When you were growing up did you and your sister have a sense that you were perceived differently because your parents were both celebrities?
I think in a way we did. The ironic thing is, the older I got, I realized how universally across the board, we’re all the same. And that’s the great joke, that we all think we’re so unique, when we’re not. But certainly when I was younger, I think I did. I don’t think I liked it. I hated being aware that I had to be careful in what I did and said. I was aware of the press, even though it wasn’t like it is now. It was a different sort of responsibility for a child. It also made me very aware of people’s projections on us because of who our parents were.

Your mom was a controversial figure in those days.
Yeah, but I meant on a more basic level. With friends saying “My mother said your mother did this, because it was in the paper.” It wasn’t on a political level, because I didn’t have a sense of that, as a child. Even in my early teens, I really wasn’t interested, probably because she was a single parent and we didn’t have that family set up where we’d all get around the dinner table at night, so I didn’t know about the politics. When you’re a kid it’s all about you, and your friends and interests. What your parents are up to is completely boring! Hence, why I didn’t see my dad’s films until after he was dead. It was interesting, though, that even at that young age, I had that gut reaction, the one that goes back to that old saying that we can criticize our parents or family members, but the minute anyone else does, watch out! It was like that. It was a real dichotomy to me. People’s projections usually involved them imagining what my life was like, when the reality was so different. My mother gave away all of her money, which I really respect her for. She funded a little nursery school where we lived, and any big money she ever made was given away to schools, political causes, and so on. And this was a blessing, in retrospect, that we didn’t have a privileged, silver spoon upbringing. And that perception was so far removed from reality. But if someone wants to believe something badly enough, there’s little you can do to stop them.

When did you know that you were an actor?
You know, when I look back, or when I’m having a bad day at work now (laughs), I think ‘My God, I’ve been doing this since I was five years old!’ Maybe the first time I got a paycheck for acting, for about sixty pounds, in a little theater company, I had my first concept of being a professional actor. But prior to that, it was just always something that Natasha and I did, and was part of our lives: doing plays, and reading. It was everything I knew.

You were raised by your mother, right?
Yes, and actually when we’d visit dad on holiday, his life was a very different environment: he was always surrounded by actors and other filmmakers, journalists and musicians, whereas my mom was very private, and then it was just us and the television. (laughs) We were TV kids, part of that generation.

You came here, to Ojai, for boarding school as a teenager, right?
Yes. Dad moved over here and Natasha and I fell in love with American culture via the television. Now, looking back on it, maybe there was some deeper need to break away and get away from London. 14 is a pretty young age to decide that, consciously or unconsciously, I suppose.

Do you consider yourself an honorary Yank?
It’s certainly been a big part of my life. Where we come from forms us, though, and I’ve never felt that I will shed that, no matter how much time I might spend some place. But is America a big part of my life? Yeah, absolutely.

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