PAUL BETTANY and GANGSTER NO. 1: The Retro Hollywood Interview Flashback

(Paul Bettany in Gangster No. 1, above.)

[I did this interview with Paul Bettany in 2002 and it originally appeared in Venice Magazine, This was one of the earlier long-form interviews he did in the States. Other than as the "Naked Guy" in A Knight's Tale and the imaginary roommate in A Beautiful Mind, he was unknown to the American public at the time. But Gangster No. 1, while not a perfect film (largely due to the difficulty in believing that Bettany grew into Malcolm McDowell as an older man), showcased an actor in Bettany who had screen presence and intensity that was impossible to look away from.

Bettany is currently starring in the film Legion, set to open this month. Here's a look back at the period in his life when he was just about to become famous.]

THE CONTENDER

With Gangster No. 1, Paul Bettany reveals himself, all hype aside, as one of the most promising actors of his generation.

by Terry Keefe

The Silent Scream. As delivered by Paul Bettany in his new film Gangster No. 1, it's one of the most bone-chilling moments you'll see on screen this year, or any other year, for that matter. And there isn't a CGI effect in sight. Bettany simply closes his eyes, kicks back his head, and unleashes a blood-curdling scream as the sound drops out completely. This amazingly effective moment is designed to symbolize the unrelenting evil which lurks within Bettany's character, known only as Young Gangster, as he schemes his way to the top of the London underworld.

You've probably already been introduced to Bettany via his supporting roles in A Knight's Tale (2001), where he played the hilarious herald, Geoffrey, who warmed up the crowds for the arrival of Heath Ledger's imposter knight, or you may have met him as Russell Crowe's imagnary "prodigal roommate" Charles in A Beautiful Mind (2001). But it's with his lead role in Gangster No. 1 that Bettany truly shows what he's capable of. It's a searing portrayal of ruthless ambition, as well as a cautionary tale about what such ambition can turn one into. Directed by Paul McGuigan (The Acid House), the film begins in present-day London, as the older version of Gangster (played by the great Malcolm McDowell), struts about a posh London hotel where a boxing match is being held. He's the undisputed king of gangland and all is ducky until he gets the news that Freddie Mays is being released from prison. This brings a flood of not-so-fond memories back to Gangster and we flash back to the swinging London of 1968 where we learn that Freddie Mays (played by Naked's David Thewlis) is London's crime kingpin. It's here that we also meet Bettany's Young Gangster, a quiet enforcer who proves to be an effective member of Freddie's team. The problem is that he not only wants Freddie's job, he also wants to be Freddie. He covets Freddie's life and appearance, to the point of fetishizing them. He wants Freddie's suits, his blue Aston Martin, his gold-paneled aparment, his beautiful girlfriend Karen (the exquisite Saffron Burrows), even his tie pin. And when he lets Freddie take the fall for a brutal murder that he commits, he does indeed take it all (except for Karen who wants no part of him). When we see Malcolm McDowell's older Gangster in the present day, we realize that he was so obsessed with being Freddie Mays that he never redecorated the gold-paneled apartment over the years, even though the "swinging" style is now ridiculously out-of-date. The casting of McDowell as Gangster 55 (while not a visual match) is inspired, since the younger version embodied by Bettany is cut from the same cloth as McDowell's Alex character in A Clockwork Orange (1971, coincidentally, the year Bettany was born). Although their fashion senses are different, both characters are young hoodlums with an infinite capacity for evil, who relish in violence.

Not since Casino have we seen a gangster film this bloody, although the violence is essentially in the service of character and never feels exploitive. In the most-difficult-to-watch scene of the film, Bettany's Gangster rubs out another gang lord (Nil by Mouth's Jamie Foreman) in an act of murder shot from the POV of the dying man. It's horrifying to watch the Gangster character, who at first seems a little shy and perhaps redeemable, transform into a certifiable monster.

Bettany's own rise to prominence, fortunately, has no parallel to his on-screen counterpart. The son of actors, Bettany grew up in northwest London, and was classically trained at the Drama Centre London. He made his stage debut in a West End production of "An Inspector Calls" and then became a member of the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing in such works as "Richard III," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Julius Caesar." Bettany later landed his first movie roles in Bent (1997) and The Land Girls (1998). His upcoming films include Lars von Trier's Dogville, which also stars Nicole Kidman, and The Heart of Me opposite Helena Bonham Carter. He's also worked with Gangster No. 1 director McGuigan again on The Reckoning, starring opposite Willem Dafoe. Bettany is currently shooting Far Side of the World for director Peter Weir, which reunites him with Russell Crowe. Venice had the opportunity to sit down with Bettany when he was in town for the Academy Awards, which A Beautiful Mind would dominate.

It's a lovely afternoon at photographer Jeff Dunas' house, and Bettany is being shot poolside in a stylish suit as the sun sets. Bettany's iPod plays a Bob Dylan disc, adding to the relaxing mood. Although it's clear his career is poised to skyrocket, Bettany is refreshingly grounded, frequently expressing concern during our chat that he's "sounding like a wanker" while talking about acting.

What type of preparation do you do to play a character such as Gangster, who in many ways is a portrait of pure evil?

Paul Bettany: Well, clearly you don't really have an idea what those sort of impulses are (when you start to prepare). Because, hopefully, you're a well-balanced human being. Hopefully. What did I do? I met with a lot of people. I talked to a lot of people. Most people seem to be good at something, you know what I mean? If you, for example, write a piece and someone comes up to you and says, "I really liked that piece you wrote," it's nice to feel that sort of respect. If you happen to be good at hurting people, it must be tempting to do if you receive something from it, you know? And I guess that feeling somebody's fear feels a little bit akin to feeling respect. I suppose it's a similar sensation, feeling somebody's fear of you. So that's sort of the way I tried to understand it.

Were there any particular people you spoke to in order to gain that understanding?

There was a man called Bruce Reynolds who was the architect of the Great Train Robbery in London. I also spoke to a lot of people who moved in that time who were gangsters. And I spoke to a lot of people now who work in that world. And then I read things like Erich Fromm's Anatomy of Human Destructiveness and stuff like that. Gangster No. 1 was one of the films that I did the most work on. You know, some parts are closer to you, but this one was miles and miles and miles away, I'm glad to say. [laughs]

Did you find it easy to shake the character of Gangster when you went home at night?

Yeah, mostly. [pauses] Listen, it's a really difficult thing to talk about acting. Because when I read people talking about acting, you always sound like a complete wanker. Because you're sort of faced with two choices. One is to go, "It's better than working." Or to go, "I think it's the vanguard of changing people's minds." And I don't think it's either of those things. I think it's somewhere in the middle. But look, imagine you're in a country house at night, on your own, and you hear a noise. It's very easy to suggest to yourself that somebody might be in the house. The imagination runs wild. There's nothing magical about it or particularly talented about it. It's just what we do, you know, you suggest stuff to yourself and the imagination runs riot. Then spend twelve hours a day for three days pretending to stab somebody in the neck with a corkscrew and shouting, "You cunt!" at them (as his Gangster character does in the film) and I defy anybody not to feel a little bit odd just because of the sheer repetition. Twelve hours a day, for three days. So I did feel a bit odd and I had some strange dreams. But that's what? 36 hours? and I've spent 30 years being me. So you shake it off.

The "silent scream" which Gangster does in the film is truly chilling. How did that come about?

It comes from Francis Bacon's "Screaming Popes." He did a series of paintings of these Pope-like figures in sort of cages, screaming, and they're all distorted. And that's where the image came from really. It came from a painting. What it was supposed to be was a very obvious black-and-white image of Gangster's inner life coming out. The mask slipping, sort of what was going on inside of him. So that was the idea behind it. We were making a film about violence and trying to look at it in an unflinching way. I mean, that was our intention and you can really only speak for that. There was a purity of intent. There was a slew, a rash of gangster movies being made that I felt were essentially for middle-class white boys to kind of go, "Oh, I wish I was a gangster." And we wanted to set up a really cool, well-dressed man, who was also a vicious psychopath. So you actually see how it's sort of destroying him. You're right. I enjoy fun gangster films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998).

(One of Bacon's "Screaming Popes," above.)

But murder in the real world is as serious as it gets.

Yeah, exactly. There was a man called Steven Lawrence, a black guy who got murdered in London by a bunch of blokes going out having a laugh, you know? And there's nothing funny about it. I find it difficult to find anything funny in having that sort of lifestyle. What they perpetrate is ugly and it must be awful being inside that person's head. The character of Gangster wants David Thewlis' girlfriend in the same way he wants the sofa. In the same way he wants David Thewlis' telly, and his clothes, and his stereo. He just wants it. He sort of wants to eat David Thewlis' character.

And how was acting opposite Mr. Thewlis?

[mimics bowing reverently] David Thewlis is a prince amongst men. He's the funniest man you're likely to meet. Kind and warm. Despite the content of this film, it was a very loving set. So much fun. It was a really charming place to go to work in the morning. You've worked now with Paul McGuigan twice. I adore him. He's very free and he gives you lots of space to work. He can see if you're being crap and he's very frank about it, which I really appreciate. I'd work with him again and again and again.

How was it working with Ron Howard on A Beautiful Mind?

Lovely. He's charming, funny. It's like having, you know, Richie Cunningham direct you.

Is he as nice as you'd imagine Richie Cunningham being in real life?

He really is! He's got a darker sense of humor and he can be wickedly funny. But he's a charmer to work with. And Russell Crowe I'm working with again. We're doing a Peter Weir movie together, which at the moment is called Far Side of the World and we start shooting in about six weeks. It's from a series of novels - I think there are about 20 of them - by Patrick O'Brian. It's set in 1806 and it's about a boat, a frigate, chasing another frigate - a privateer. And Russell is the ship's captain and is obsessed with chasing this boat which outguns us. I'm the ship's surgeon who is obsessed with getting to the Galapagos Islands because he wants to study nature.

In A Knight's Tale, you practically stole the entire film in what could have been a minor role.

Thank you. This isn't me being self-deprecating, but it had nothing to do with me. (Writer-director) Brian Helgeland not only wrote me a great part with great words to say, but he flew me over four times on his own money to make them give me the job, because they kept saying no. He had a lot of faith in me and I owe him sort of a lifelong debt really. And my apartment in England. [laughs]

You've just finished working with director Lars von Trier on Dogville. Was it shot under the Dogma Rules?

No, not really. It was a bit of a departure for him, actually. It was still shot on video, hand-held, all of it. There's no sets. It's like a Frank Capra movie and Brecht mixed together.

Can you tell us anything about the story?

What I can tell you is that it's about a woman who runs into a town. It's set in the 1930s in the Rocky Mountains, in an old mining village. She's running away from gangsters. And it's about how the town absorbs her, or doesn't absorb her, into their community. That's about as much as I can say without having my head kicked in by Lars. [laughs]

Your father was an actor. Was this something you always wanted to do?

Well, my dad wasn't acting when I was a kid. When I was born, my dad was a dancer in the ballet. He stopped because he was getting too old and then became an actor. But he needed a steady income to bring up his kids. So he stopped acting and he gave it all up. Which I'm sure was a massive loss for him, you know, a sacrifice. Now he's acting again. He's 72 years old now.

Tell us a little bit about how you got your start as an actor then.

I left school and then I was a busker, which is somebody who plays guitar on the streets. I lived with two of the smallest lesbians in the world and about five million cockroaches. At one point, the lesbians moved out and the cockroaches didn't. So I thought something should change, and I went to drama school. And it was just really very lucky when I left, and things started to happen for me. I did a play in a theater above a pub which got really great reviews, because it was a bloody well-written play, called "Love and Understanding" by Joe Penhall, whose play "Blue/Orange" just won a bunch of awards last year and is going to Broadway. People came to see me in that and they were all sweet enough to start giving me jobs in films... which was nice of them. [smiles]

Your performance in Gangster No. 1 is definitely going to get you noticed. You're on the verge of breaking out as a star. As you chart your course for the future, are there any actors whose careers you'd like to emulate in terms of your choice of work?

Oh. [pauses, seemingly a bit embarrassed by the praise] That's silly because I'm sure a lot of people would say what I'm about to say, which is "I want to do great work." When I say "great work," I mean be offered stuff which is great, which I can either fuck up or do justice to. Acting can be a really dull job if you do the same thing, every time, every time, every time. What's nice is when you get to play different characters. There are people I think who have allowed themselves to do that and I have found it tricky because you do one thing and it's well received, and everybody wants you to do the same thing again and again. So I'd say that somebody who hasn't fallen into that trop, on this side of the world, is somebody like Sean Penn. Or, on my side of the world, somebody like Daniel Day-Lewis, who continues to do amazing work with everything he does. Billy Crudup is a force of nature. He never puts a foot wrong. He's a beautiful actor. So there are people, yeah. I have enormous respect for good actors. But I think where people really do screw up is when they try to emulate somebody's career. And the impulse which I hope is the case for people like Sean Penn, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Billy Crudup is to do as many different things as you can, because you're forced to look at things in a different way if you play different people. You can learn really interesting things being other people. It can be sort of edifying to me. I'm not sure if a film has changed anything, really. Ever changed anything in any sort of real political way. But I can learn things from doing them and maybe people can have fun when they go to see them. [pauses contemplatively] And listen, if you get to sit there with a guy like Paul McGuigan, he's a really bright man; Paul Sova, the director of photography, really bright man; David Thewlis, really bright man; Malcolm McDowell, really bright man; Saffron Burrows, amazing girl, really bright, amazing politics. You're working upwards of 12 hours a day, six-day weeks. You put enough weeks like that together, it's a hell of a life, you know what I mean? It's inspiring.

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OLIVIA WILLIAMS: The Hollywood Interview

[Olivia Williams and Paul Bettany in The Heart of Me.]

Note: This article originally appeared in the April 2003 issue of Venice Magazine. I remember that they had poor Olivia doing the interviews in some very cluttered office at the publicist's. She was sitting behind the big desk when I walked in and acted as if this were a job interview. Then she jokingly asked for my resume. The Heart of Me is a pretty bleak film, so that's about as fun as it all got that afternoon.

Olivia Williams opens her Heartby Terry Keefe

Blessed with a face that could have been made from porcelain and an elegant British voice that is like a pleasant melody to the ears, actress Olivia Williams has often been cast playing women who are so perfect and irreplaceable that their romantic interests would understandably do anything for them. In The Sixth Sense [1999], her deceased husband Bruce Willis so wants to be with her just a little longer that he lingers around the material world for an extra year as a confused ghost. Jason Schwartzman's high school student Max Fischer gets so obsessed with her teacher character, Miss Rosemary Cross, in Rushmore [1998] that he soon finds himself in a romantic duel for her affections with a devious Bill Murray. In The Man From Elysian Fields [2001], reluctant male prostitute Andy Garcia becomes not-so-reluctant after experiencing a few nights with the lonely millionaire's wife that Williams plays. But with her newest film, The Heart of Me, Williams shows us something we've yet to really see in her canon of work: a darker and more selfish current running beneath the pristine surface. The film showcases a real breakthrough role for Williams who creates a character full of surprises.

The Heart of Me opens on the London of 1934, a bleak time if there ever was one. The first World War has been over for some time but the second one lingers on the horizon. Williams portrays a stiff and proper society woman named Madeleine who is married to the wealthy Ricky (the always great Paul Bettany). When Madeleine's father dies, she and Ricky take in her eccentric bohemian sister Dinah (Helena Bonham Carter). Soon Ricky and Dinah are drawn to each other like star-crossed magnets and find themselves in a disastrous affair. Madeleine wants it to stop of course, but not so much because she loves Ricky as because she wants her life to maintain its status quo. At first glance, it seems obvious where this story is headed: Madeleine is the evil wife who prevents true love from blossoming. But what is so defining about the film, directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan and deftly adapted by screenwriter Lucinda Coxon from the Rosamond Lehmann novel The Echoing Grove, is that there are no “good” or “bad” characters in the story. Madeleine takes some devious steps to disrupt the romance, but you will also come away from the film feeling great sympathy for her. The illicit lovers Ricky and Dinah will commit some despicable acts as well, ensuring that you won't necessarily be rooting for their love to succeed. Symbolic of the way the film views humanity is the bracelet that Ricky makes for Dinah - it’s engraved with a line from her favorite Blake poem which reads, "And throughout all eternity, I forgive you, you forgive me." By film's end, all the characters may not have quite forgiven each other, but we the audience will have. Or at the very least, we understand why they did what they did.

Williams was born in London and educated at Cambridge University, where after graduating she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Her first American feature role was opposite Kevin Costner in The Postman [1997]. She has also appeared in the films The Body [2000], Born Romantic [2000], and Dead Babies [2000]. She'll next be seen in director P.J. Hogan's take on Peter Pan, as well as the historical drama To Kill a King.

Do you think Madeleine forgives Dinah in the end?

Olivia Williams: [thinks deeply before answering] I think she finds peace. Forgiveness though, I don't think you can really [laughs]. That's coming more from me than Madeleine. That's Olivia speaking. I think Madeleine's line "A man might well remember the woman he loved" is her sort of accepting defeat. That's as much as you're going to get [from her]. But it's enough to mean that she and Dinah can live in peace together.

Something that makes the film great is that it doesn't judge either Madeleine or Dinah.

That's why I took the film. I had very little interest in playing this character when I read the first half of the script. You know, the cold woman who behaves with a very restrained, almost martyr-like response to being betrayed. But then she says the interesting line to Ricky, "Dinah's ultimately cold. You’ll discover it in the end." It's like she’s saying, "I may look cold, but just wait until you get close to my sister. She's actually the devil here. At least you know where you are with me. With Dinah, you never know where you are." And then later, when you're thinking, "Poor Madeleine, she's lost everything. She's so upset," she pulls this hideous trick of bringing Ricky home from the hospital to her house and locking him in the study, where he's not allowed to leave, and pretending that Dinah's gone off with some French bloke. Ricky's not there of his own free will and isn't in possession of all the facts. So you hate her again and I like that. It was a fun, meaty, and unexpected thing to play.

You seem very sweet in person. How do you get into character to play someone like Madeleine?
[laughs] There is quite a bit of Madeleine in me, in that I'm impatient with people who refuse to behave in a way that's appropriate to the situation. I think that people who behave histrionically when they shouldn't should learn to restrain themselves. [laughs] So that's quite a lot of Madeleine in me. But I also think there's quite a lot of Dinah [in me]. I had wanted to play Dinah originally because she was less like the stereotypes that I've played in the past. And I feel like I have a bohemian, feely-touchy, physical person in me as well. But then the Madeleine complexity won me over in the end. I liked her layers of damage and pain. They were actually more interesting to play for me. But no, I'm very fluffy - I'm not like Madeleine at all! [laughs] I'm in fact the younger sister [in my family], I'm the attention-seeker. My older sister's a lawyer and I was the younger child singing into a hairbrush, standing on the table, or sitting on my mummy's knee going "I love you, mummy!" And my sister standing there, I'm sure she was thinking that I was a vile thing that needed to be restrained. I'm surprised she didn't thump me more often than she did. I must have been very insufferable. So when I first read the script, I identified much more with Dinah being the attention-seeking younger child. But I definitely drew on my sister's experience to play Madeleine. Not that I fled with my sister's husband [laughs]. The comparisons [to the film] start at around age 11 or 12 when we chose to grow up. Dinah and Madeleine didn't.

The screenwriter Lucinda Coxon said something which really sums up the melancholy that hangs over the film. She said, "In the 1930s, it was commonplace that people of this generation would lose their parents in one war and their children in the next." That must have been one difficult period to live through.

My character [in the film] was very much influenced by my grandmother. She was the right age. She was born in 1901 and died 90 years later. She had lived through that. My grandfather had survived the first World War but she spoke of how a generation was wiped out. And how that ensured, just in sheer demographics, that there weren't enough blokes to go around. Enough men went off to war and never came back, that it left many women unmarried from that time. And playing the loss of a son to a war, again one of my very first boyfriends was a French boy. And he was 19. They have national service in France. He died in Lebanon. His mom and I became very close. I was young, I was 15. I had no idea what it meant to lose a child of that age. But I can remember the huge and inconceivable grief. That she felt that it was all in the wrong order. That she felt that she had no right to be alive, that she was meant to die before her child. That was hugely influential on the scene when Madeleine talks about the loss of her son. And the fact that she doesn't really talk about him as an adult, that she talks about him as a child, you know? [She talks about] when he was a little boy and afraid at night. I haven't been through any of these things so as an actor you have to use your observation and your empathy.

What was the relationship between you and Helena on the set? Did you try to stay away from each other to stop from becoming too chummy?

No, it was great. We were actually at school together [Note: at the Southampton High School for Girls], so we had kind of a shared history. I didn't know her at school. She was in a different class and was headed for being sort of extraordinary, even at that age.

Did everybody at the school know this?
Oh definitely. I remember her poetry was extraordinary. It was always in the school magazine. And we all knew she was going to be extraordinary, we just didn't know at what. So meeting up again and playing sisters, it was ideal because we didn't have to invent that common history. We had all the kind of parallels that sisters would have had, being at the same school and the same humor and remembering the same nightmare history teacher. Or the uniform we had to wear. So we had this common thing. The intervening Hollywood years just sort of disappeared and we were back to being Southampton school girls. That was very useful in the sisterly thing. And I think we made good sisters. We were as similar and different as sisters can be.

Did you and Helena do any theatrical productions together in high school?

No, we were in different years so I just sort of admired her from afar. I was a pretty insignificant nobody [laughs] and she was an extraordinary person who had a sort of cult following.

I did a profile last year on Paul Bettany for Gangster No. 1. Ricky in this film is obviously a completely different role but I barely recognized him from one film to the other. He has quite a range.

What a great actor. You have it right there. You don't see a glimpse of the total murdering nutcase that he played [in Gangster No. 1]. He's a consummate actor. He and I were friends from a movie, it was called Dead Babies in England and Mood Swingers here. We met and got on very well. I showed him The Heart of Me because I wanted his opinion as a friend. I thought it was wonderful but I wasn't sure if my judgment was off because I'm over-obsessed with good writing. The script was very literate and literary. And that doesn't necessarily make a good film. He's got a much better sense of film than I have. So I showed it to him and he really liked it. But there was another guy attached to play his role. When he dropped out, I said, "Paul, do you think you would do it?" And I never thought he would but he was interested because it was so outside his regular casting. The director loved him but the producer was like, "Who is this guy? We need names." And I thought, "You don't understand. You're getting this man in the millisecond before he becomes too expensive for you." I think he had just turned down Red Dragon and they were saying, "Who is this guy?" I was like, "You're mad. Take him now or you're going to regret it." [laughs] He's a funny, charismatic, very bright bloke, and yet he managed to play this confused, morally beaten-up young husband. It's such a great performance.

You had a prominent role in The Man From Elysian Fields which was also one of James Coburn's last films. What was that experience like?

It was wonderful. You'd never know that he wasn't long for this world. He was full of energy and was funny and charming and stubborn and brilliant. What an honor. I remember my dad waking me up and bringing me downstairs to watch The Magnificent Seven on the telly when I was little. I couldn't believe it, here I was playing his wife, it was so surreal. It was one of those jobs that came at the last minute. They asked me with about 3 days left in pre-production. I flew out into this wonderful pre-existing situation. The script appealed to me. And then married to James Coburn and shagging Andy Garcia - how bad can life be? [laughs] I'll take it!

How was director Wes Anderson to work with on Rushmore?
He's wonderful also. He's a very precise man. His writing is so good that the emotional stuff kind of just jumps out of it without you having to push. You need nothing more than the lines. I love his writing and I think he's genius. [That set] was surreal. I had my first movie job that summer on The Postman. Then I came back to do ADR and post-production on The Postman and got Rushmore. Suddenly, I'm in Houston, Texas with a 16-year old boy and Bill Murray! [laughs] It was surreal but eminently enjoyable. Bill Murray was charming and generous and funny. And Jason really was Max Fischer. And Wes would appear occasionally in the hotel looking harassed. And we'd watch movies and talk about them. And then Brian Cox shows up, to add to the surreal. He's such a guru from my childhood. We were all sitting around the fire at the hotel. And I've got Bill Murray, the kid, and Brian Cox. It was a very confusing time but immensely good fun [laughs].

How were you cast in your first big role, that being The Postman?

From a really dreadful audition video. My agent rang and said "Do you want to go on tape?" and I was like "Is there any point? I’ve done this before and paid 10 quid for a taxi ride and never hear from anyone again.” So I rode my bike there and read the thing and a month later, God bless him, Kevin Costner rang me up and asked me to come over to America and be in his movie.

Speaking of your bike, I read on the Internet Movie Database that you insist on riding your bike to and from the set every day. True?
[nods] There's this absurd situation on a movie set where your trailer's here and the set is here and the lunch tent is here. And you're not allowed to get yourself from these three places. You have to be taken. You can be very hungry here and the food is there and you have to wait until a man with a microphone finds you. Then he sends a message to the driver, the driver drives from over here, where he's eating lunch, and then drives you 10 feet. So I got myself a bicycle. And I didn't know at the time that it was irregular. I was like, "Then the driver guy can eat his lunch and I don't have to wait." And what I didn't realize is that the car is an instrument of control. You need to be escorted everywhere in case you suddenly wander off into the wilderness and fall down a hole and the movie has to come to an end because you've broken your ankle. I thought I was saving everyone a lot of hassle. But when I got on the bike, my hair extensions got tangled in the wind [laughs]. So I learned the hard way. But I do try to cycle everywhere I can. I cycle to rehearsals in London. It's my control issue. It's like, "No, I want to be in control of wherever I go." And I hate environmental damage. So I ride a bike when I can. Here [in Los Angeles] it's weird because people have bicycles, but they're purely recreational. They're not a way to get from A to B. They're a way to lose weight. The irony of the gym where somebody says, "I couldn't exercise today because I had no electricity, so my running machine didn't work." I'm like, "No, the running machine should be wired up so it's like a dynamo system - when you pedal the bike the lights come on!" How do you get into a situation where you use electricity to ride a bicycle?! In my future home, my children will be out pedaling away so I can watch myself on the television [laughs]. That's my ecological dream. No, I like cycling when I can but it has as much to do with my own control issues as it does with saving the planet.

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