Paul Vaughan

Bones, blood, and gristle. This is what flashes through the mind upon binging hour-after-hour of Hannibal, staring with Da Vinci-like detail at body parts that yielded a bounty of courses on one of network-television’s most acclaimed cult shows of the decade.  While the public at large let out a collective sigh at the announcement of yet another remake of an adaptation, Hugh Dancy dove into a unique reimagining of one of the cornerstones of an entire genre. Hannibal’s three seasons added an indelible layer to Thomas Harris’ most beloved and horrifying body of work, and went down as easily as a nice chianti with – ah, never mind…

The British-born actor has been working steadily for almost 20 years, longer if you count his time on stage at school. While Dancy’s initial higher-profile fare would be the common trail of young British actors: costume dramas, and love interests (not that there’s anything wrong with that), its in the last decade that his range has unearthed itself, acting on stage in New York, springing up in low-profile high-acclaim films like Martha Marcy May Marlene, and most notably and recently, as FBI profiler Will Graham on NBC’s Hannibal which came to a close this past August.

While Hannibal would be Hugh Dancy’s most consistent and prominent spell on a project, that likely won’t be the case for so much longer. Within a week of this interview Dancy starts shooting The Path alongside Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad), Michelle Monaghan (True Detective), and helmed by Mike Cahill (Director and co-writer of Another Earth). As far as we know (and Dancy can tell) The Path depicts a spiritual movement consumed by hierarchy and zealousness in the wake of its leader’s demise. While little is known beyond the cast and the tagline, if anything looks to be a lock for another one of television – rather, Hulu’s – best- or worst-kept secrets, The Path appears to have an abundance of potential to soon make the case.

           Sitting down with Article, Dancy sacrifices one of his final days of summer in Berlin to help profile the profiler.

Hi Hugh! How are you doing?

Excellent thanks. I’m in Berlin until the end of the week when I have to go back to New York to start work on The Path.  So I’m kind of gearing up for that, the work, and also leaving here and spending a bit of time away from my family. So that’s what’s going on. How about you?

I’m okay. Pardon my cough by the way; I spent some toxic August weeks in Toronto.

That’s great. (Laughs). I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Toronto over the past few years.

That’s right! Hannibal was filmed there.

Actually I’m a little under the weather too.

No judgment either way then.

Alright, deal.

Turns out alcohol and cigarettes don’t count as a meal – never stop learning.

Yeah I’m still learning that one too. (Laughs).

So, how have you found Berlin as a city?

Berlin is fantastic, really an amazing city. Toronto is also lovely, but the three seasons we shot there were shot only over the winter months, so we’d arrive in – the last season was from mid-October to mid-March or maybe even into April, so it was basically just freezing for the duration, and all the Canadians, even they were complaining about it, saying ‘You know, you should see the summer its so beautiful!’ and I never did. (Laughs).  And I think the same is true of Berlin as well, that it’s a bit bipolar here as well. The city is incredible in the summer and gets pretty grim in the winter - but I think once you’ve experienced the Canadian winter everything else is a bit of a breeze.

Sounds like you’ve been on the move for quite some time.

Pretty much. Because of the combination of my schedule and Claire’s schedule its been essentially alternating between one or other of us filming in various cities around the world for the last three or four years, four or five years even. And somewhere in there we managed to have a kid.

Now I know you must do this every interview, but let’s get this out of the way in the event the internet has mislead me. You were born in Stoke, grew up in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and then went on to get your education at Winchester?

Yeah. Newcastle-under-Lyme is different from the Newcastle most people know in England, very small town, quite close to Stoke, basically between Manchester and Birmingham. Grew up there, went away to school initially in Oxford when I was 10, then went to Winchester when I was 13, and then went to university in Oxford.

And you studied under Francis Warner at university?

Yes I did.

What was that like?

Are you familiar with him?

Just that he was a playwright who also taught. Sort of a teacher-writer?

Yeah that’s right. He was a very quirky and interesting man. The system at Oxford would be that you applied to a particular college for a particular subject, so they’re only really looking for an intake of…I dunno, fifteen young men and women who he wanted to teach but also who had some extracurricular activity, like musicians or writers or actors. So I was with a very interesting group of people, but it turned out his agenda there was that every two years he would take a sabbatical, and like clockwork would produce a new play written in verse, which he had been doing since the 60’s. And it was quite subversive, because to be so conventional as to write a play in verse in the 60’s was practically anarchic, while everyone else was rolling around naked and so on. And he kept taking sabbaticals and when he would return all of his undergraduates would be expected to take parts in the play and so every 2-3 years one would happen at the college and I performed in one of them. He was a lot of fun.

And was acting something that you always strived for as a career, or was it an idea you grew into over time and experience?

I think to some extent I didn’t really think about it in depth, partially because I knew it was a daunting prospect. I made a subconscious decision without subjecting it to much cross-examination, but I do remember having a feeling like that when I was 17, realizing not only was it something I was doing at school and enjoying but if I stopped I would be missing something. So I had strong feelings about it even at that age and when I left university the decisions that I had taken, I was going to go to university, I wasn’t going to go to drama school, I was going to read English I was going to take a year off before I did that which I think for me were good decisions. But that kind of under the surface assumption that I would go and try and become an actor never really wavered during my time at university except for the fact that as I got closer and closer to the point where I was actually going to do this thing it became pretty obvious that I needed to figure out how. There are so many different routes you can take but the primary route in England then and now in many ways, was drama school and I didn’t feel the urge to do that. But to cut a long story short: left university, was sort of going through that thing that a lot of people do, the first time in your life where you leave the shelter of an institution and I was having a mini ‘Come to Jesus’ moment. I was in London, in a relationship that was breaking up, pretty standard. So as I was kind of contemplating ‘Okay, how am I going to put this into practice?’ I got lucky, met someone and was able to translate that into another meeting with some agents, and one of them I really hit it off with and he’s still my agent now.

My research framed it as ‘a chance encounter in a café’.

It wasn’t quite so chance because I was working in the café.

That’s a lot less chance than it makes it seem isn’t it? I mean you’d be there almost every day.

Yeah, I sort of inserted myself into someone else’s conversation, slightly aggressively. And it seemed like it was going quite well, the two of them were both quite interested and both in the business, but then I had to go and do something, and in the meantime one of them had left, so before the other person left, as he was leaving I grabbed him and said ‘Listen here’s the deal, this is what I want to do, could you give me any advice?’ Which was actually a little disingenuous, because I didn’t want any advice, I wanted help. (Laughs). And he ended up providing it.

So you get an agent you like, you’re in London, how soon thereafter did jobs start?

I spent a few months working at that bar – café – going to meetings, general meetings, meeting casting directors, and then the odd audition, frankly not really believing that anything would come of it because it all seemed so unlikely. But then eventually I got a job. And I mean someone always has to take the plunge and be the first person to hire you, which when you’ve literally got nothing to show for yourself is a bit of a gamble, but they did, and as soon as they did I horrified my mother by quitting my job at the café and that was that.

And no looking back!

Well yeah, that probably makes it seem like more of a sensible decision than it probably was.

Reading about you, you had worked quite regularly prior to Hannibal, work which people in the States may not have been as aware of. Whereas you had quite a bit of work in London…-

Actually I don’t know if that’s really the case. I think maybe to a certain extent, I had been around in England longer so you kind of feel in general that people are more aware of you, but in the last few years it was a bit of both. I love England and London and think of myself as a British actor, but I have spent quite a lot of time the past few years living in New York and working more in theatre in New York than I ever did in London but part of me also thinks that England is where I started and where I built up my career and when I did eventually go out to LA a couple years in, I went with a sense that it wasn’t the be-all and end-all, I had something going back in England, and when you find yourself sitting in an LA casting office with fifteen other actors who look just like you that can be quite a reassuring thought, and I think that little escape cord is still built into me to a certain extent.

Can you walk me through when Hannibal became something you were aware of? How you felt about it initially and consequent to the role becoming yours, and ultimately a role you could really sink into? - Sorry, I think I just asked nine questions in a row.

That’s okay, I think that’s a really good way of looking at it because most people assume that going into it one would know exactly what it was one was getting into, and I really didn’t. For me it came about because in their conversations I had come up, but I was doing a play in New York at the time, a two-hander with Nina Arianda,, and we were on stage so Bryan Fuller (show-runner) and Martha De Laurentis (executive-Producer) came to see the show and we sat down and had tea the next day and that was it. And my feeling was, first of all, upon re-reading the script my feeling was ‘Okay there’s something to this’, that to some extent somewhat quelled my… I think the natural reaction from almost everybody was when they heard the announcement ‘They’re making a Hannibal show!’ was ‘Why?’

Absolutely.

And why revisit these characters? But then I re-read the script and the characters are so well-written and I knew there was something going on there but it wasn’t like I had a lot of time to really get into it, so talking to Bryan, he was so compelling in his suggestion of how he saw the character and then to an even greater extent how he saw the show unfolding in terms of – I mean he was describing potential seasons of television that were not even going to get to make at this point. (Laughs). It really made sense of why it worked with this particular medium. So I signed on, and you know there are a lot of external reasons like life and so on that made it seem like a good decision.

How much do you find your own impressions are brought to a meeting and maybe you’re not so intrigued, but then find yourself meeting people like Bryan and you just go ‘Okay. I just like this guy and the ideas.’

I think that enthusiasm counts for an enormous amount. Its pretty rare that someone is going to completely turn you around because I didn’t really have a solid reason to be questioning Hannibal it was also the part of me that was suspicious simply because they were interested in me. (Laughs).

Didn’t want to be a part of any club that would have you?

That whole Groucho Marx thing, yeah. (Laughs). But certainly what can and did is I got a sense of Bryan’s personality and his creativity. I had worked in TV before, but never so far as having a relationship with a show-runner and knowing how that would work and how much of it is their universe. And I don’t think I had that particular thought at the time but it was clear at that meeting, Bryan described the world he wanted to create.

What are your thoughts on the status of Hannibal now? Does it feel like its come to a close? I was under the impression that it had concluded, but there are some contrary articles online.

I feel like its closed for the moment. I mean the ending of the third season is pretty final if that’s what you want it to be.  But that said, I know from Bryan what he envisioned doing in a fourth season and I think it would be brilliant and I would be up for doing it, and I think Mads would too. And if it doesn’t happen for three years and it’s a movie or whatever, that’s actually fine. It would even make sense in a strange way, and if it doesn’t happen we don’t leave it in the lurch. Bryan would end every season with half a mind that we might not come back, and create these bloody and dramatic final scenes and collectively we would all work to make them not just a bloodbath to go out on but to tie into whatever the psychological story of that season was, what was going on with Will and Hannibal. And also I know that Bryan, I think he worked to an incredible degree in editing to build up the final episode to really make it a worthwhile final episode, so if that is our swansong so be it.

Did it feel easier to look for other projects post-Hannibal?

You mean did I just – did I find that I got work more easily?

That and/or did it alter the types of projects or characters you sought?

I didn’t think about it too much. From my perspective you can only have so much of a plan as an actor, I hear some people talk about it but it’s only so realistic to.  I did when the show ended, I thought I would try and muster myself and come up with a list of a general sense of what I wanted to do and surprisingly quite rapidly that thing arrived.

Speaking of that next thing… The Path begins principle photography mid-September. Can you explain what appealed to you about the project? The story alone? The people involved? Both coming together in the pitch?

It was all of those things. I think with anything potentially good that’s trying to strike an interesting balance, there’s a kind of better version and a not-so-good version, that’s true of most things, certainly most interesting things, and so then you think okay well there’s definitely enough for me potentially to do something and then in speaking with Jessica who’s a showrunner and Jason and others, you quickly realize that they’re all on board to make the better version. The show takes place inside this ‘spiritual movement’ as they call it. Put it this way, there’s a lot of little strange movements that spring up and some of them survive into a second generation most of them don’t, most of them die and fall away because the leader or whoever generated the kind of precepts or enthusiasm, dies basically, and then it filters out and a couple survive. And this is not to judge them it’s just a fact, so without calling them anything, Mormonism is a good example, there were other such movements at the time but Joseph Smith died and then Brigham Young was able to keep those ideas and that following alive and it grew and grew and grew until it became what it is today which is a major religion, scientology would be similar. There are thousands of other examples that didn’t make that transition, so this story is set at the moment of that transition, that moment of vulnerability but also potential. And I thought that sounded very interesting, and in speaking to Jessica in particular it became clear that they thought in a pretty detailed and interesting way what sort of movement would this actually be? What are the underpinnings of it? And you’re not going to see all of that necessarily but you want to feel that all the people portraying it have done their homework and if asked could give an answer. So it’s just been really fun to dip into.

Reminds me slightly of Martha Marcy May Marlene.

Yeah the difference there is that that was a small murderous, abusive cult. I mean it wasn’t exactly Manson, but certainly more that territory, I mean Charles Manson may have been convinced of what he was saying, but he was just a psychopath there are no two ways about it. These other people, you can call them what you want but they’re inspired in some way, and there may be abuses but its not necessarily a cynical thing. I guess the point is that…what point do you stop being able to call something a cult? Or, if somebody says ‘you know I believe this, and therefore I am going to give up these personal freedoms and so on.’ Do you have the right to tell them that they’re deluded?

And The Path will be shown on Hulu?

Yes, that’s correct.

And you will shoot just the first episode or an entire season?

We’ll be shooting the whole season. It will be 10 episodes, so we’ll be filming into January or February of 2016.

Is there a possibility of a second season or will it be a one-off?

Oh no, I think it is definitely written with more seasons in mind. I don’t know how they will tie it up the first season exactly but for sure its open-ended to last longer.

And you play a member of the congregation of The Path alongside Aaron Paul and Michele Monaghan?

Yes. All three of us are fairly senior members. I am the most senior, our leader who created the thing back in the 70’s is elsewhere. There’s a potential down the line for power struggle etc but I am someone who’s inside this kind of very open but hierarchical organization. And my character sees or believes that the organization won’t survive if someone doesn’t step up to the plate, even if stepping up to the plate go up against the tenants of the religion, I still have to do it.

Have you had any time off?

Well I did a project called Deadline Gallipoli in Australia that was between Hannibal’s final seasons, and Claire was filming Homeland in Cape Town at the time so I was away from the family for a while. But this year I haven’t worked since Hannibal, so I’ve been mostly in the bosom of my family in Berlin because Homeland has been shooting here since May.

Nice, summer in Berlin.  So staying on the R&R train of thought, is there anything else you’d like to do in the next year you’d like to do? Non-acting wise?

The only thing I’d really like to do a bit more of is cycling. I’m not crazy enough to want to cycle through the streets of New York all the time but I’d like to do a bit more of it. I have a bike that I cycle outside of New York in NY State, since you ask I would like to get a decent road bike and get into that a bit more, but whether that’s realistic I don’t know (laughs).

Bit of a silly question, but I can’t resist asking you about your presence in an Internet subgroup of carpet reviewers?

It’s not so much a subgroup that I’m a part of, it’s a friend of mine who just started this website that he would eventually publish as a coffee table book which is carpets for airports. So he just photographed a carpet every time he went through an airport and would put it up on a globe of the world and invite others to do the same and over a few years assembled a very healthy collection of airport carpet photographs and attached his own somewhat specious blurb, and there it is.

That’s wonderful. I read your review of an Isle of Man airport carpet that was quite immersive - I’m really going for the controversial heart of your persona in case you couldn’t tell.

“What?! I got shot?!”

A boisterous laugh erupts from Aidan Turner’s lips as I confirm the news.

“You’re joking!”

Nodding my head again, I assure Aidan of his calamitous demise five years ago (on Irish TV show The Clinic.)

“Of course! Of course! That’s right!” he exclaims jovially, accepting his fate as he settles into a cup of black coffee, “That brings up so many memories! I forgot I got shot!”

Strange as it may seem for Aidan Turner to overlook a past life and death, destruction and creation are ideas that populate the oeuvre of all actors; inhabiting one character to an almost obsessive-compulsive degree before casting off their freshly-formed identity and immersing themselves into another one.  A strange dynamic of all-consuming commitment followed invariably by convenient detachment as a matter of course.

Turner’s rise was triggered by his first fall. The deceased in question: the character of Ruairi, a fly-by-night DJ/receptionist killed off on the final season of The Clinic, after an 18-episode arc that would provide Turner’s first extended foray into screen-acting. His death/departure would set into motion a career trajectory that would take the Irish actor from one time and place to another, steadily rising in the ranks of the industry along the way. From sucking blood onBeing Human, to blazing a path across ‘Middle-Earth’ in The Hobbit, and - now that the Tolkien juggernaut’s final instalment has been released - taking the reins as the titular character in the upcoming remake of the hugely popular 1970’s BBC series Poldark.

Before we get into all things Poldark, I wanted to touch upon your previous body of work; particularly, on your position as a go-to for the fantasy genre. Why or how do you think you cultivated this niche for yourself?

It’s a little weird. I don’t know how something like that happens. I think when you’re in something, producers and casting directors can occasionally get a bit of tunnel-vision, and can be myopic about what they see. If you’re in something, and you’re good in it, or it’s successful, that’s all they really see you doing - and that can be how the offers come. I think they were looking for people who had secured a certain fandom in a certain area, and who tended to have done something like that before, something supernatural.

Since leaving drama school you seem to have been working non-stop, one job leading into the next. Has it felt that way?

You would think so, but that’s looking from the outside in. When you’re doing it, it doesn’t feel so fast or rapid. I remember the transition very well from going from The Clinic into Being Human and then Desperate Romantics. Everything was … I mean, when you’re in the driver’s seat, the climb seems quite slow. But then I’m in New Zealand for eighteen months shooting The Hobbit, and then three months off, and then back for three months of shooting. The last one just came out, and I think we started to shoot those movies three years ago - maybe longer. So it does feel a lot more gradual, it doesn’t feel stratospheric or that it’s all happened at once. I can see every step along the way and sometimes it doesn’t even feel fast enough. You always want to be doing more. So it has been something I’ve felt very in control of, and it’s not something that has managed to get away from me. I’ve never felt out of control, and I think I’ve always wanted to do more, and always wanted to go faster. But I think every actor probably thinks that.

Have you always had that kind of mentality? Or was it a quality that developed as your career did?

Yeah, I think so, even when I was doing theatre. I mean, I was pretty fortunate, because I went to drama school in 2002, and left in 2004, and I started working right away. My first job was with the Abbey Theatre in Ireland - and, weirdly enough, it was over here in London, as the Abbey had a touring show, A Play On The Stars, which played in the Barbican. That was my first gig, and since then it sort of hasn’t stopped.

Which not a lot of actors could say coming into the industry…

No, they can’t. I mean, I know so many people - who I would consider better actors than me - who struggle for work all the time. I may have had a couple months off here and there, but I’ve always really known what the next job was, so I’ve never felt like I’ve been out of work. I did theatre for five years, and thenThe Clinic came up, and it was my first opportunity to do some T.V and … I can’t believe you watched that! That’s fucking insane! I can’t believe I got shot too! When you said that I was thinking, ‘Fuck! I was!’

Publicity for films is now more than ever as much about personality-making, as film-making. Being a part of the first wave of actors under the eye of social media and the internet, is that something that affects your career much?

I do think about it from time to time - and I do realize it is quite important for a lot of actors. I think a lot of producers and execs sort of expect it. It’s all part of the game now, and it’s free publicity. Especially if you can garner a huge following on Twitter or whatever, if you have one or two million, five hundred thousand people, that means a lot. That’s a huge readership, you know? But I’ve never really been into it; I’ve always felt that I never wanted to overshare. It’s important for me to keep me to myself. It’s the character that I want people to see. If I, Aidan Turner, get in the way of that - if they start seeing a lot of me in the character, and know how I respond to situations, or how I feel about certain issues, it’s just not important to the character. It would only ever get in the way of what I’m trying to achieve. This sort of print media is always fine, but I’ve never really understood why people want to find out about the actor. It’s always the character that is most important. In some ways, the mystery and the magic can be ruined if you learn too much about someone.

I never really felt like it was important for people to grasp what I’m about. I always felt they’d be more interested in the characters I play, and I think there’s a bigger spectrum for me to do more when the two remain isolated. The more people learn about me the less I can pull off onscreen. Plus, I don’t think people would really give a shit about how I feel about something, the world I’m in is entertainment. But it’s funny, because as I keep working and meeting producers they are always surprised, and I can kind of see there is a little disappointment …

But yeah, it gives me the heebie jeebies … And even on a social basis, to keep in contact with friends and family, I’ve never really felt like I’ve needed it, or that my life suffers as a result. Emails and phone calls, and meeting people in real life, seems to work best for me.

I’d like to shift the conversation a bit and delve into Poldark. With television, you can craft a very structured and refined 9-12 hour arc over a season. Was the opportunity to explore the depth of a character - that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to accomplish with one hour or two hours - something that compelled your return to the medium?

Absolutely. And it can be quite intimidating too. I mean, with TV these days the load is much more. As you said, there’s eight hours of the show you have to produce - but you have almost no rehearsal time, and you shoot so fast. On TV, we’re sometimes doing eight pages a day, and on a feature film you may only do two pages, or a page, or half a page. So it can be quite daunting, because you don’t have the luxury of time to get it right. You make a decision and you go for it, and if it doesn’t kinda work then you’re sometimes left with what it is, so you learn to work that muscle to just get it right quicker.

How did you find that learning curve as the lead? Was a progressive development, or something that you were quite aware of going in?

Well I kind of knew what I was getting into, because with my previous TV experience I knew that that was the way it was going to work - and it felt like, even on this job, we seemed to have less time. We aimed to make it have feature film quality, but under the time and budget restraints of a television series, so I knew what was in store. With TV, as well, you tend to get a lot of changes. As you go along they’re reviewing constantly, so you’re getting additional scenes thrown in and things are changing all the time. And you’re on set so much - and that’s what the great thing is, you can just completely immerse yourself in it. With a feature film, and that week-on and week-off format, you may even have another job in the mix if you’re really successful and in-demand. But with this you don’t – I was on set all day, every day.

What was your preparation like?

You prep as much as you can, really. A lot of internet research. What was happening in Cornwall politically and historically, the language, and just the way of life for people back then. Even small things. I mean, you think a bout these days, and the train from Cornwall to London. Now it’s four or five hours, but back then it would be four to six days. So it was very much its own entity, and its own place. It had its own language, it had its own culture entirely, so it was such a different place. So finding out about all of that was great, and going through photographs and researching the mining industry at the time, and realizing just how dangerous and difficult it all was. And how you had to do everything - I mean, Ross was a mining technician and a farmer and a soldier. You had to do so many things back then, and you had to do them well, and it took a kind of mental fortitude and physical strength. And I think men were really men back then, in a certain way, and it was quite an eye-opener into a way of life. You couldn’t be weak and survive back then, even your business acumen needed to be on point. It was a very different time.

Ross Poldark is very much an outsider, in that he returns from war disillusioned with the state of Cornwall, and with his privileged status as poverty grips the lower classes. How much did playing that sort of conflicted outsider appeal to you?

I think it was quite huge, actually. Ross does see himself as an outsider, and I don’t think he’s ever felt comfortable in that realm, with these people. I believe the opening is him coming back from the war, and he’s kind of destined for jail - and a jail-sentence in those days was basically a death sentence. So Ross kind of knows that, so he adopts that rebellious kind of ‘fuck the system’ attitude before he goes away. And I think the war changed him a lot. I think he saw a lot over there, and he never really expected to come home, so when he does he’s a very changed person. And I think getting involved with what that world is like - you know, going to balls, and having debuting girls expecting him to propose marriage at every turn - is something that repulses him. And he sees it as well when he comes home; his father has died, the land is barren, the house is crumbling, and his tenants are leaving. So there’s no money to be made, and he sees the poor people of Cornwall suffering quite a lot because the mines are also closing - and it’s the rich, sort of serving themselves, by closing the mines and moving the smelting companies to different parts of the country. And he feels like he can do something about it, and change it, so I think from the very get-go it’s ‘us against them.’ He feels duty-bound to help the poor people, the people who need it most. And that’s what I liked about him, that’s what I connected to the most. There’s a real, genuine sense to Ross that I don’t think a lot of characters have. I don’t think he cares what people think. I mean, it would be easier for him if he did sort of capitulate, and make friends with the people who could make his life easier, but he doesn’t do it in spite of himself - and as an attribute it’s what I like about his character.

Not making moral concessions.

No, not at all. He’s a very strong character in that sense.

How did you find the shift going from something ensemble-driven likeBeing Human or The Hobbit, to being the focal point on Poldark? Did you feel ready?

I did feel ready for it. It happened in small degrees anyways with Being Human - I mean, there were three of us sort-of-sharing lead role in that, and it’s been gradual. I just felt like I was ready for it now, and I never felt worried or intimidated playing this iconic character. But you know, you have those moments during production feeling the spotlight, even as part of an ensemble like on The Hobbit - you have those days or those moments where it’s just you and Peter Jackson for this scene; it may only be three lines of dialogue, but it is just you. You feel like the lead in that moment, so I have experienced that feeling before, that weight of responsibility that you get on a big set, knowing that it’s yours to fuck it up (laughs). Thankfully I kind of revel in those situations …

Is there anything you can tell us about what you have been working on since wrapping up the first series of Poldark?

“Vegas bomb?” Jason ventures with glee. “Definitely,” Jordan affirms to his partner in crime, casting a glance of excitement at me from across the table.

This would be the final exchange of the interview with the musical duo Cherub of Nashville, Tennessee. Whilst the British pub would unfortunately be unequipped to concoct the kick to the system that the shot would provide, the falsetto funk-infused electronic harmonies of Cherub and the lively twosome behind it were a more than adequate consolation. Talking to Jordan Kelley and Jason Huber, we discuss the origins of Cherub, from their humble beginnings in freshman year to becoming a group whose newest release The Year of the Caprese could likely form the soundtrack to the next generation of underclassmen looking to leave their mark.

The conglomeration of Cherub began at Middle Tennessee State University where they lived up to Twain’s famous sentiment of not letting school get in the way of their education. As Jason explains, “We were each going to school for music production. Me, Jordan and Nick Curtis [The group’s producer and de-facto third member] met our freshman year because we were all in the same program but it was probably at least five years before all three of us did anything together musically. Jordan was producing for a bunch of MC’s and I was in a psychedelic folk rock band - so very different projects than what we’re doing now but at the same time our roles in the projects were very similar.” Delving further into his first year upon dropping out of school to take a hands-on approach to continuing his education, Jordan continues, “I rented out a house and I spent a whole year kind of trying to get my shit together. Me and Nick made the first record, I brought the stuff to him, he refined the sound and made it into something listenable, after that I sent the album to Jason and he liked it, and then we just started building on it.”

Consider Cherub’s musical landscape as you would consider the Freudian notion of the ‘id’: a permutation of urges, interests and instincts churned out through the sonic sensibilities of Jordan, Jason, and Nick. The foundation of the group’s sound has clearly been influenced by the hybridity of the modern musical landscape and its pluralistic status-quo, setting the stage for an assembly line of exuberant, rambunctious party tracks which in turn find surprising congruence with other songs that showcase wistful inquisitions of lust and love. Lyrics that shift between the ‘better off without you’  tone of XOXO (“I heard what you said / So yeah, yeah / fuck that bitch!”) and the melancholy introspection of Lyndennberries (“I love you the most / More than I love them / It’s important we stay close.”)

Elaborating on the process of Cherub’s construction, Jason recalls, “there was a pretty short conversation actually – whether it was going to be you know a live band or a DJ project and we decided to do somewhere in the middle.”  Jordan adds, “It’s a three piece dynamic - and live currently it’s just me and Jason, but Nick owns the studio where we’ve recorded all of our stuff and he mixes and masters everything. The dynamic is in the studio. Even with the new stuff it’s a little different but for the most part it’s me writing the music and then we lay down that foundation in the studio and from there Jason and Nick add and layer things and then it turns into a song.” Jason continues, “A lot of the underlying writing starts with Jordan and on this one started off with all of us sitting around the studio around keyboards and drum machines and stuff like that and then developing an idea and then Jordan taking that idea and crafting lyrics and a whole song around it and then we kind of put it back together and mix it out in the studio and that’s when we start to take it and break it back apart for the live show. We write in the studio first and foremost with no thought of the live show in mind really, it’s really just about the music. Because we write in the studio first there are no limitations, it’s all about the sounds and the ideas that are in our heads and just finding a way to get them across. And then it’s a really fun process taking that and finding a way that it can translate live.”

Cherub’s latest translations come about amidst promotion for the release of the aforementioned album The Year of the Caprese as well as the re-release of Doses and Mimosas, – rightfully reclaimed from relative obscurity to becoming a multi-million YouTube hit and likely your favorite summer song that you just haven’t heard yet – one which in-keeping with the rest of their catalogue goes down as easy and enjoyably as - well, doses and mimosas (if you’re into that sort of thing). Detailing the reticence and eventual rationale behind the re-release Jason explains, “I thought ‘Everybody has heard this song. Its old news - nobody wants to hear it again.’ Then one radio station in Las Vegas makes an edit of it and we start having people hit us up and we thought, ‘How are these people just hearing this now?’ And then it starts to hit other radio stations in the country, then we realize this is just the U.S - we haven’t even reached out to the rest of the world. It’s really cool for us – I mean its humbling and it’s awesome to realize our bubble is so small. All that we want is to be able to reach out to everybody, just to have a chance to make a connection.”

“Not to sound naïve but we want to touch everyone.” Jordan chimes in with jest, “Don’t misquote that. We want to touch all the little people out there.”

“In little places…[leaning into the recorder, pre-empting a burst of laughter]…this is Jason.”

The longer the interview lasts the more apparent it becomes that the jokes fly freely and often with Cherub because the creativity does as well. While the lively party anthems and the saucy tongue-in-cheek declarations of youthful desire are symptomatic of a joyride, the group’s formation is more than simply  a careening rollercoaster. It may be a wild ride – but its one where the tracks are as important as the velocity, where the chemistry between like-minds is as vital as their burgeoning success. That success looms ahead now with the imminent release of Year of Caprese the mention of which kicks off a final spree of self-deprecation and ball-breaking as Jason and Jordan reveal the significance (or lack thereof) of their album’s title, and more tellingly, the dynamic of the group which drives them forward.

 “Not to bust out a secret – but it really has nothing to do with the inspiration behind any of the songs or the content involved in the album – its super random inside jokes, and Year of the Caprese is the same thing. I had a really good seasonal tomato with ricotta cheese thing in Paris with our manager and it was the best dish I’d ever had, and from there I just ordered them everywhere I went-”

“You ordered like eight of them in Amsterdam,” Jason interrupts.

“Because they were good,” Jordan rationalizes, “If I find a good caprese I’m gonna eat as many as I can.”

“We’re special boys,” Jason laughs, “When people ask us, ‘Did you guys ever think you’d be where you are right now?’ I mean we’ll both say yes just because we both knew that we weren’t ever going to stop until we were somewhere. We both kind of feel like this is what were made for, what were good at.”

            Setting upon a path in anything that can be considered an art has a significant degree of consistency as far as origin is concerned. The artist in question, either through some kind of ancestral birthright, innate passion, or fortuitous curiosity discovers their craft and through the years of living an inordinately imbalanced lifestyle to devote countless hours aiming towards perfection or success will then reach a compromise of the aforementioned goals. Once status within the industry is seized the arc will either continue as they improve and continue evolving and inevitably fading away over time, or leave a brief but brilliant impression burning out on the passion that formed both the fuel and the fire, left to destroy what they love the most and to love what most destroyed them.

Jonny Owen challenges this standardization. There are no parallels to draw, no allusions to consider, and no conflict with the unconquered echelons. Research reveals an eclectic surplus of past history: amateur boxing, recording contract with Sony, forays into journalism, an acting career, and screen-writing, but at a distance there seems to be little in the way of a uniting theme besides a forward propulsion leading to incremental levels of success at each and every seemingly meandering step. Needless to say it’s been a long path to where Jonny is now, discussing - between long digressions into boxing as a metaphor for life and art – the philosophy which lead to said passions and finally an adaptation of his web-series Svengali into a major motion picture.

 “I think it all can be boiled down to performance, where you get your buzz from. It’s very similar to boxing. I mean there’s nothing quite like going into the ring, or like going on stage, and it’s wherever you find that. I boxed at a young age and got a real buzz off of that. I would get so worked up fighting that I would vomit between each round, and I remember my mother saying, ‘Why would you put yourself through this every time?’ and I would say, ‘I have to, it’s something I have to test myself in.’ And it’s the same thing with acting and writing – performance. When you put yourself out there, you’re completely out there, and people can criticize you or say ‘What’s this?’ and ‘What’s that?’ and it’s a scary thing because you’re completely putting yourself out there for criticism. It’s something you force yourself through to a certain extent, and afterwards there’s an incredible feeling of accomplishment, ‘I did it.’ People say it’s the hardest thing, to give up- but it’s the easiest thing, there’s no two ways about it.”

Jonny’s latest project is one which would likely have compelled many others to give up and throw in the towel. Upon moving to London and discussing an idea for a web-series with his agent he carried on and didn’t look back – except for inspiration. The seed of the idea informed by the period of his professional life in the 90’s when music reigned, during this time his band “Played with some big groups and went to the States. Sony flew us to New York. We were a decent band - kind of at the height of the Brit-pop era.” The project in question is of course Svengali, a charming, tongue-firmly-in-cheek depiction of the music industry. Jonny plays a small-town Welshman-turned musical guru, whose earnestness and naivety is only surpassed by his expert-ear for quality music. Upon stumbling over an obscure band on YouTube that shows profound promise, he uproots himself and his girlfriend Shell (played by Vicky McClure) to London. Seeking the group out to sign them, he goes about trying to shape the next classic rock band, confounding the industry big-wigs along the way.

“Use do not abuse, for neither excess nor abstinence ever renders man happy.”

-Voltaire

Considering the quote above and trying to bridge its cautionary meaning to the precocious young face of Josh O’Connor proves challenging - despite being a bit of a self-proclaimed rascal in his adolescence, a rambunctiousness inspired as much by an incongruence with school as an innate mischievousness. That restlessness did however lead to drama and by extension a way of life, “School didn’t really work for me. I was a little mischievous, a little naughty. But drama was kind of a play around subject. To be encouraged to go in and play around and then turn that into a career was just great. My mom’s whole side of the family was quite artistic, so I always pictured doing something artistic, then I got into drama school and that was it.”

Josh looks to be, and by all indications – is, someone who couldn’t be mistaken for living a life or starting a career that would require Voltaire’s caveat of overindulgence. The bridge however is Josh’s role in Posh. Focusing on the debauched exploits of a fictional – but based upon reality - college-association aptly named ‘The Riot Club,’ Posh depicts a group of privileged young male students as they challenge Voltaire’s aforementioned quote. Posh, originally a hit play in Britain, depicted the ‘Riot Club’s’ latest festivities in a dining hall as cruel intentions take hold and the evening descends into chaos. The real-life club in question looming over the one presented in both the play and the film is of course Oxford’s ‘Bullingdon Club.’ The Bullingdon’s notoriety lay in the blatant contradiction presented in public and private record:  infamously unruly club-parties raising hell - by some accounts all the way back to the early part of the 20th century - which are in turn perpetually downplayed by the polished, successful politicians and businessmen who count themselves among their esteemed alumnus.

While the film is by-and-large informed by the foundations established by the play, Josh explains how it was necessary to take creative license tailoring the story’s structure to a different medium. Helming the adaptation and overseeing said changes is none other than Lone Scherfig, whose last film, An Education, many a cineaste will recall also considered the corruptive power of wealth and status over virtue and morality in high society. That kind of dichotomous vision for this world Josh explains, was exactly what the story called for. The divergence of public behavior and private conduct, the exhibition of cultivated behavior capsized by the revelation of inner nature: “I think it’s important that the audience genuinely like these characters at least for a significant part of the film – and that’s why we still focus largely on the dining hall scene, but introduce it with the characters in their natural environment… In the first part at Oxford you see how they socialize while introducing each character and then they go to the dining room and you see the downfall of each character. The politicians and former members who appear to be so lovely - we wanted to depict that public dynamic of the characters. They can be really charming, but as the film progresses its stripped away.”

             Conventional wisdom goes that the acting bug catches early, actors in-waiting find themselves on a stage and from then on are forever rooted by the spotlights and the eager eyes watching from the darkness. Like any performer with parents plying their trade as professional actors it was almost an inevitability that Tom Burke would one day have his moment, “I remember walking out on a stage without really knowing what a stage was- and I couldn’t naturally see the audience and there was an area of sort of abstract weird set, and then total darkness and that was sort of just a weird place to be in, and I remember feeling very intrigued at that moment. I sort of grew up in that world spent a lot of time with other actors. I just always felt I was one of them really.”

            Early adulthood was defined by varying acronyms that spell out the stepping stones to a life oscillating between theatre and the screen. After a brief stay at the National Youth Theatre at 17, Tom enrolled at RADA the following year. “For the National Youth Theatre I did the course and had some of the best times of my life really. I got into RADA when I was 18, and it was a very young time to go, they kind of seem to go really young now, but from my experience it was incredibly hard to get my head around it at that age. I think people who are older pick up a lot more, absorb a lot more, because when you’re 17-18 there’s so much going on, and you know people at drama school are trying to do all sorts of stuff like trying to throw you off your centre,  and I didn’t have a centre when I was 17 (laughs).”

            Upon finishing with the RADA and NYT , Tom took the leap from student to practitioner, where he would consistently find work across the mediums of television, film, and the stage. Despite the bevvy of both first and second-hand experience preparing for the transition proved to be as much an exploration of his own options so much as his own sensibilities. “I did sort of have a plan at one point -  I mean you are cherry picking as an actor and things come along when they come along and I found myself more challenged and more stretched and got more out of it maybe than I expected, so I stopped outlining my career and my life far less than I used to, a few years ago I was trying to do a play a year because it just felt like a very grounding thing to do. I’m not quite sure why but it just made me feel quite grounded but films and T.V. they happen when they happen and you just never know.”

You’d probably recognize Vicky McClure - maybe not the actress, but the characters she’s crafted from some corner of life. You know the ones, complex instead of complicated, ambiguous rather than vague - characters who define their environment, who contextualize it rather than being a one-dimensional product of it. Vicky’s first instance of a broad and notable kind of recognition would occur with her stand-out role as ‘Lol’ in Shane Meadows’ This is England, which would form the bedrock of her stake in the industry, and now as ‘Shell’ in the upcoming comedy film Svengali.

Upon leapfrogging from a dance studio to a drama group, Vicky realized at a young age that performance was her passion. Auditioning (successfully) for a group called the ‘T.V Workshop’ in Nottingham, from which coincidentally Shane Meadows would cast many of his films, and where Vicky and co. would spend their time “improvising and trying things out, do stuff like Shakespeare but with a twist... It was a really interesting place and it kind of moulded me into the kind of actor I am.”  

Amidst the ten years honing her interests and talents through the workshop, she would be cast at 15 in Shane Meadows’ A Room for Romeo Brass.  Despite success in landing the role which ushered in several other opportunities, years passed with little promising life-changing roles, and maintaining a job on the side of pursuing acting ones became a necessity.  It was only after This is England 86 the T.V. series that Vicky was able to forgo a second occupation spent on trips to London for auditions, and focus solely on lending her talents and perspectives to the characters she would inhabit.

Vicky’s approach to those occupations are ones instilled through a kind of outside-to-inside approach. “When I open a script and I picture her, I imagine what she would wear or what she would shop for or something like that and then you know you build on that and the clothes is just a very small component within the character internally I think it’s more of a visual thing for me, to start to build the character. It’s a small part of it but for me it’s an easy sort of first step.”  The draw to taking that first step and investing in any character is, as Vicky explains built upon that same kind of range and variability but always united by an innate strength, “whether it’s a vulnerable kind of strength whether it’s a powerful woman’s strength you know a strength of vulnerability whatever it is as long as the character has a real purpose.”

In less than forty minutes Jack Laskey has revealed a childhood belief in Superman, confessed his admiration for Michael Winslow’s display of sound-effect prowess in the Police Academy franchise (whilst exhibiting his own merit in that arena by showcasing a flawless impression of a duck’s quack followed by his natural infectious laugh) - and in an earnest, candid conversation discussing his life and career, made an ardently convincing case of his thoughtful and dedicated passion to both.

When an actor describes their professional origins, indelible characters or classic films are often cited, described in rich and awed detail. Posited as to his own inciting moment, Jack describes conversations, those that took place in the car between him and his parents on the way back from the theatre returning to his hometown of Suffolk. “The theatre was something like 45 minutes from us and we’d sit in the car and talk about the show. I think it’s the sharing thing afterwards that I really relished. You realize everyone else’s perspective on something could be completely contrary and that’s really thrilling. I think there is something about theatre, when I realized it could be a job - I wanted it. ”

Upon graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Jack’s drive was singularly focused. Performing at The Globe, Punch Drunk, and the Young Vic. “I always really wanted to do that, to learn my craft, because I think you only really learn it totally in front of an audience.” After “doing theatre job after theatre job after theatre job, where I had maybe a week off in between,” Jack discusses waking up one day thinking “Oh, I better get on and do some [film],”- and while the timing may have had the semblance of being arbitrary, the transitory action had one of inevitability, “Because theatre was the thing I’d fell in love with it made sense to focus on that when I left drama school and I really wanted to do that. But- I always knew that I’d one day want to do screen work.”

Jack’s first marked experience in film would be in Guy Ritchie’s ‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,’ inhabiting the screen alongside Stephen Fry and the A-list principals. “It was just an extraordinary experience being there with those actors and being with Guy Ritchie and being on sets like that. You have four people spraying the walls with water to make it like Victorian England, and they have fifteen dogs wandering around the set, and you’re walking over the bridge and there’s a staged cockfight going on around this barge. A lot of this stuff is barely even seen in the film but you’re there with it for a whole day. I just love that, the world it’s just there for you.”

Soon after leaving Sherlock and Victorian London behind, Jack would find another world to populate, one far more contained and reliant upon his presence to breathe life into. ‘The Secret Sharer’ was an all-consuming year of Jack’s life, transferring the setting of Joseph Conrad’s classic novella to the modern-day Chinese waters. Playing a protagonist by the name of Conrad was fitting in that much in the same spirit of the 20th century Renaissance man Jack’s duties in preparing for the role were absorbing to say the least. Conditional with capturing the character, Jack’s tasks included: putting on muscle, learning Mandarin, developing a Polish-American accent, learning a song in Polish, in addition to the accordion. “It was just an amazing and awesome task,” Jack adds with a laugh, “Just one of those tasks is probably enough.” Despite the sacrifice, the time, the preparation, and of course the challenge, Jack’s enthusiasm and captivation with the project in hindsight is evident, the kind of retelling inseparable from revelry. The setting, poised to dominate Jack’s recollection and memory for years to come, would define all else over the course of The Secret Sharer’s production. A motif found in many of Conrad’s best works, the environment’s overwhelming effect, possessing all within it and ultimately making immersion almost second-hand - would work out ideally for Jack and the film. The stage was set ideally for the role, with a foreign film crew on a rusting cargo ship on the sea, “It was filming in Thailand where I had always wanted to go, and it was just a very special, beautiful place. These incredible sunsets every night. Out at sea for filming about six weeks, it just felt incredible. It’s just amazing to actually be there in the situation.”

Russian Red - SID Magazine

“Nothing is secure,” Ralph Waldo Emerson writes, “but life, transition, the energizing spirit.”

The aforementioned quote by Emerson begs mention because, Lourdes Hernández, better known by her stage name Russian Red, intuitively depicts a woman in a state of personal, emotional, and sonic change on her third release: Agent Cooper. The album concerns itself with the consistencies that Emerson alludes to above, the unerring trajectory of lifecharacterized by the transition points between home and away, relationships and separations and the fickle symbiosis between our notions of the past, our expectations of the future, and how strongly they’re allowed to dictate the present.

Transitions are often fraught with indecision and nerves, beliefs or experiences set aside with varying degrees of conflict or glee to make room for new ones.After the release of her surprising (in a great way) debut I Love Your Glasses and excellent sophomore follow-up Fuerte Ventura, Russian Red’s sound, career and personality was established on a public scale. There were the Spanish roots and inflection that accompanied her thoughtful melancholic lyrics, and the folk-singer-song-writer niche that led many critics to reductively package her as ‘the Spanish Feist’ before wiping their hands off. As is so often the case, a body of work can start to take on a life of its own and eventually obscure rather than focus the image of the figure behind it, “Its funny how I used to make music from glimpses of things and it was only through music that I could just reach out and touch it. But then Istarted to think that defined me, that that sadness defined me. That ‘I’ in the background defined me, I thought that was my thing but at some point I got stuck and I thought ‘No – no I want to get over this. And that’s when I moved to the States.”

The move to L.A was the first change of several. Upon making the geographical and cultural shift, the creative one would follow shortly thereafter to yield her newest aforementioned release, Agent Cooper.Judging the book (or in this case, the album) by its cover, the immediate effect of the transition is obvious.Whereas past releases featured the artist in profile, looking sidelong into the unknown, Agent Cooper features Russian Red by way of Pulp Fiction, stylishly made up as a femme-fatale, brandishing a machine gun and brazenly gazing into the camera behind her. “For the premise of the cover, I really wanted to portray this woman right before losing her innocence. I remember having this folder filled with all sorts of pictures of Marilyn Monroe and Kate Moss, but when there was this innocence. I had two very different women but who had these things in common. It was always black and white photos…There was something about the two that were so different; one who was so actual and the other one who was so forever and timeless. I remember having these and wanting to come up with something in the middle, to have two very different reference points for this other woman who is losing her innocence and about to go somewhere else and becoming stronger as a result - so that whole thing with the gun was this obvious kind of image, but the funny thing is that we shot a bunch of stuff that was supposed to just be a test and there was a bunch of stuff leftover from a Halloween shoot that we were using - and that gun was something we used. So we were just playing around with things and it just made so much sense. With music it’s the same thing you make a mistake and then it becomes an arrangement.”

The arrangements occupying the space inside the album are where the notion of a transition or departure reveals itself even more, the musical style surrounding the lyrical substance particularly. Where once there was a sparseness that accompanied the acoustic guitar which connoted a kind of pensive introspection of life and love, now that space and those inquisitions have been answered by the electric backing that has been seamlessly integrated into her sound. “The whole electric thing, there’s the metaphor of letting out the noise that’s within so I think I was subconsciously using an electric guitar to let it out. You need to grow up when you do something artistic of any kind: writing, painting, photography. It’s very nice if you are really good at something and you just keep doing it like that, but for the kind of person I am I just wanted to – not like I just ‘wanted’ to - but it just happened. I just thought ‘I’m going to grab the electric guitar and see what happens.’ It’s so great to change. There are so many chances in life to change, you know to go to new places, how are you going to make music without exploring sounds?”

Though the album inarguably explores the transition ahead - it is by implication driven by the ghosts of the past, how they can haunt over the present but transversely how they may be exorcised. Here the structure of the album itself proves useful, accurately reflecting how you can often only progress towards the future when taking stock of the past. Forming Russian Red’s stockpiling, is the track-listing of Agent Cooper, where each title is dubbed by a male name of varying difficulty to decipher, some obviously from a biographical context and others (Alex T, Neruda) quite clearly an ode to each man in question’s cult of personality or presence in pop-culture. This in effect casts the listener as their own kind of Lynchian protagonist, sifting through Agent Cooper’s smooth and beautiful surface and inevitably deeper into the depths of the more significant realizations that form the album’s crux. That each step forward into the future is also a step further away from the past. The bittersweet realization that life will always move on, and the ones who made it feel like it was at a standstill were merely temporarily going in the same direction. The transition ahead, that ‘energizing spirit’ is fundamental, while the past is a temporarily lucid and remote dream,something to wake up from rather than going to sleep for. “I just felt that I had to do it for myself and then people thought that it was cheeky, or were worried ‘Are you really going to keep those titles? Do you really want to expose yourself that much?’ and I just said ‘I need to, I’m going to learn so much from this exposure.’”

SID MAGAZINE – What’s your favorite Film?

REAR WINDOW. I've watched it a stupid number of times but I always seem to forget what's going to happen. SABRINA with Audrey Hepburn comes a close second.

Favorite thing about London?

Hampstead Heath in every season. Walking along the South Bank at night in the summer is amazing too. When I was younger I wanted to live inside the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as I thought it was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen.

Most challenging role you've played? (The nature of the challenge is up to you, i.e. it could be because it was physically grueling, or was far away from home when you we're very close with friends, very grim/challenging character to play, e.t.c)

Playing Swanhild in Ibsen's LOVE'S COMEDY. It was the first time the role has ever been performed professionally in London (it was written over 150 years ago) and I really wanted to do it justice. I had to fall in love, then give up my love every night over 3 hours which was draining but totally exhilarating.

Scariest film-viewing experience?

THE ORPHANAGE terrified me then broke my heart, but SINISTER scared me more. I was curled into the tiniest ball in my seat by the end.

Eccentric pet peeve or fear?

People stopping randomly in doorways, at the top of the stairs or in entrances to stations. Or people hovering just in front of the train doors when you're trying to get on. Gah!

Most recent, best experience of watching a film (i.e. best film you've seen recently that really had a profound effect)?

FRANCES HA made me feel like running through the streets at night. It also made me want to hug Greta Gertwig. But I've just seen BLUE JASMINE and was completely blown away. Cate Blanchett's performance with Woody Allen's screenplay is just the perfect combination.

Where would you most like to travel, but haven't ever been?

Vancouver. So many of my friends seem to be fleeing England to set up home in Vancouver then posting all their new outdoorsy adventures all over Facebook. Plus I miss them like crazy.

Band or artist you've been listening to this month?

Iron and Wine. Really love them. Also Lily and Madeleine - the most insanely beautiful, talented singer sisters.

Next project(s)?

We chat to Actress Annabelle Wallis about her guilty pleasures and her biggest fears.English Actress Annabelle Wallis is somewhat of a chameleon when it comes to the roles in which she opts to play.

Her part in historic drama The Tudors, in which she portrayed one of Henry VIII’s wives, Jane Seymour, led to roles in big budget Hollywood pictures W.E and X Men: First Class. This year has seen her take on the role of double-agent Graces Burgess in new BBC drama Peaky Blinders, alongside Cillian Murphy and Sam Neil.

Biggest food guilty pleasure?

Offal. I love odd foods. I eat like only a pregnant woman with mad cravings should.

Eccentric fear or dislike?

Bad teeth and bad breath!

You can go back in time once, to either invent something or stop something from being invented, what would you choose?

The perm would have been halted! There is a whole generation of women from the 80′s traumatised by the perm and it’s been passed on to their children. I call it “perm shame”. A travesty.

Best-worst T.V show you’ve ever watched?

Best is Breaking Bad. Aaron Paul is my buddy…so it makes it even better. I’ve watched a lot of bad Latin soap operas  growing up…although I secretly wish to be in one.

What do you think would drive society into a greater state of desolation: a systematic power outage or if all the gasoline in the country disappeared over night?

Well you need power to extract the gasoline. So power. Could you imagine if our generation of narcissists were unable to take a selfie!? There would be pandemonium!!

Would you rather have to wear roller skates for a month or boxing gloves for a week?

Roller skates! It would be my one and only excuse to wear a full fluoro-spandex onesie and pirouette through the streets of London.

What would impress you more/less: If a date took you on a dinner date to a chicken shop or to a free sample stand in a grocery store.

Let me be honest…I’m a cheap date. I’m usually just happy to be on one. If the company is good then greasy chicken and chips tastes like lobster and champagne.

Worst tourist site/activity you’ve  ever experienced as a child or adult.

Being stalked by lions on a riding safari, then chased by a bull elephant on horseback. Actually that was pretty awesome come to think if it. Climbing Machu Picchu without being proerply adapted to the altitude was also crazy. It’s like being suffocated whilst trying to sprint up a mountain in 35 degree heat and 80% humidity.

If you could eliminate one sport off the face of the earth, which sport would it be and why ?

SID MAGAZINE – What’s your favorite film?

All About Eve, which I watched recently for the first time. Bette Davis is absolutely amazing in it. She’s not dated at all. The performance is just timeless.

Your most treasured possession?

I don’t know if I can count my kitten…my Norwegian forest cats. I’m an animal person.

Favourite historical figure?

Elizabeth the first. I’m mad on that period. I’d want to know more about her love life. Quite sad isn’t it! She was so controlled and I’d like to know the woman behind the monarch. She made that decision quite early on in her life that she would be the virgin queen and she wasn’t going to get married.

Scariest film viewing experience?

The thing that traumatized me when I was little was Roald Dahl’s Witches. And I was hysterically crying before I went to sleep, and I still can’t watch it. Also Ghost weirdly, I watched it when I was 9 and those demons coming back. That frightens me more than aliens and things like that, poltergeist.

If you could remake any film and play any character, who and what would it be?

I would like to be Lulu in Pandora’s box. Which is a very old film with Louise Brooks. It’s a German silent film. It’s an amazing role and she was again quite groundbreaking at the time. The play that I’m doing at the moment we kind of used her as a template, which is, probably why it’s in my mind right now. She’s kind of a naive; kind of split between being a femme fatale and having this innocence about her. And she doesn’t really understand the power of being a woman.

If you could see anyone in concert past/present, who would it be?

I would probably see Judy garland. Early in her career. The 60’s I guess. I wouldn’t want to see her final concerts.

Favorite book?

I really enjoyed On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. I really like Harry Potter too as sad as that sounds. But my ultimate favorite book is Wuthering Heights. I’m a hopeless romantic.

Most unexpected, unpredictable, contrary thing about you?

Not a lot of people realize I’m from Wakefield. Wakefield is in West Yorkshire and I don’t have the accent. I don’t know really. Maybe I’m terribly predictable.

Most challenging role?

Ophelia in 2007, for stage. It was amazing. I never ever wanted to play Ophelia because I thought there’s no way I can ever do anything with that. I did it with Johnathan Miller who is this old school director, and we went through the madness medically and looked at it from the schizophrenic angle so we had specific voices…It was a really draining time but it was quite pivotal for me as an actress because I realized I could push myself. I’m very proud of it.

Describe next project?

SID MAGAZINE – Who is your favorite actor?

I’d probably pick Meryl Streep. I love her. Every job that she does she puts 110% into it. Every character is fully rounded and I think quite different to the next. But I love the fact that when she’s not on a job she spends so much time with her family and is just a normal person and then when its work its work. Which is what I try to maintain just hanging out with friend at home and stuff. I just love her in general.

If you could experience any performance, song, film, essentially any moment again for the first time, what would you pick?

Maybe the first professional time of walking on stage and having an audience…although every single time I do a show I do get that certain kind of feeling. I think the first time that you walk out and you feel those lights and that energy and see the darkness out there it’s really overwhelming in an amazing way.

Your favorite place?

I love going home to Birmingham and seeing all my family and my friends. Even if I’m somewhere amazing, no matter how great it is eventually I always end up missing home and sitting and having a cup of tea with my Mom and seeing my mates and just being normal.

Best travel experience?

I do love going to L.A. I love the fact that you have city and beaches in the same place. Like you can be on the beach in a bikini having a proper kind of holiday, then 20 minutes later be off to an audition. Best of both worlds.

Most challenging role you’ve played either through circumstances or the role itself?

I’d say the mountaintop. A theatre job. The part of Camae. It’s a two-hander about Martin Luther King and the last night of his life. It meant so much to me. As soon as I got it I thought, ‘this is amazing, and I know how I can do it’ because then you put the pressure on how you want it to be because the stakes are really high and it was physically really, really a demanding role. Like a fairy jumping around the play non-stop for like two hours. So it was demanding but amazing at the same time.

If you had to pick a last meal what’d you pick?

My Nan’s Sunday dinner. With jerk chicken and rice and peas. And I’d wash it down with champagne, can’t go wrong with bubbles (laughs).

Favorite book?

Probably The Secret, which I kind of live my life by.

If you could see any band or artist all time?

I’d love Bob Marley to come back and jam with him. Bob Marley in the 70’s would’ve been amazing.

Who for you is the most iconic film character all-time?

Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in the Godfather. Something in his eyes. Something happens in that movie that just makes you want to be a movie star.

If you could meet any historical figure, who would you choose, and what would you ask them?

I’d choose Mother Theresa…ask her how to have more patience.

If you could travel to an alternate universe where hypothetically you could remake any film and play a character in the film, what/who would you choose?

Oh…Beetlejuice…(laughs) And I’d play Beetlejuice (laughs).

Last great cinema experience?

You know what it was? Warrior. I do like a sporty sort of film, with a good story, and I thought something about the brothers’ relationship and the father, the story was so good but the physical side of it as well, I just had to go see it again. It just hit me I don’t know why. I just really, really enjoyed it.

Scariest film experience?

Paranormal Activity. Seriously, I was in trouble. I thought I was hearing people in the attic. Every night I went to sleep I found myself staring at the hole to the attic. Because its so real it messed me up. And then I went and watched the second one just to torture myself even more.

Next project?

SID MAGAZINE - Favorite film?

My favorite film ever, I think it changes depending on my mood. Like I watched Mean Girls the other day and loved it. I had this cheesy film marathon the other day where I watched Mean Girls then The Notebook straight after. That was good. As an actress I feel I should say something with Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady, she was incredible in that.

Most recent great theatre experience:

Well, I dunno, I think going to the cinema is completely different than watching something at home. Like, The latest James Bond film. That was insane to watch on big screen, or The Great Gatsby wouldn’t be nearly the same as watching it at home on small screen. But on the big screen the music the colors, it was just amazing.

Where is your favorite city to visit, or favorite place to shoot?

I once went to Istanbul and I thought that was amazing, I went there for work, and I didn’t expect it, but it was so beautiful and untouched and un-modernized, and there are all these interesting markets and colors, and these massive mosques. It was just completely tiled, and just one of the most unexpectedly beautiful places I had ever been. You don’t really hear of people going but it’s amazing.

Favorite book or favorite author?

Once again, I think it changes depending on my mood. I find because I’m in my final year at drama school at the moment and I spend the whole time being busy and everything that whenever I sit down to read a book I can’t concentrate but then in the holidays I just love to read quite crappy romance novels, either that or I’ll re-read Harry Potter. Just changes on my mood. Maybe a good crime novel, a who-dun-it. What I always remember when I was about 7 my mother would always read me The Far Away Tree and I always remember that as being a beautiful book.

Scariest film watching experience?

You remember Signs? I had to stop watching that halfway through. I mean it’s only a ‘12’, and I was like 15. That’s really embarrassing. I’m terrible with scary films. It was too much for me.

What Band or Song have you been listening to this month?

Bruno Mars, When I was your Man. I don’t know why but I keep listening to that. On my way here actually I was cruising Spotify and I was looking at this Acapella group from America, that was the Spice Girls mixed with The Beach Boys that was just so bad it was amazing.

Favorite actor/actress?

Helena Bonham Carter. I just think she’s so talented. Like in Alice in Wonderland, and I just think I’d love to play the parts she’d played because she’s just not afraid to play mad things.

If you could adapt any book to a film and play any character, what and who would you pick?

A Streetcar Named Desire. I’d love to play Blanche in that. I think she’s an insane character. It’d be amazing to play her, she’s got such a journey and there’s so much going on there. She’d be insane to play…Literally and figuratively. I’m also obsessed with period dramas so anything Austen wise.

Irrational fears/Phobias/Pet Peeves?

Slow walkers…Makes me sound quite passive aggressive but…Tourists that walk really slowly.

If you could choose a place to film something where you haven’t filmed yet, where would you pick?

Always wanted to go to China, I’ve actually never been. I’m fascinated by the different culture. I guess being an actress I’m very fascinated by different people and how they live. I’d love to go to Japan as well. You know in Provence in France, the Lavender fields? Also New York, I’d love to go there.

Next project?

George Blagden is an actor’s actor. With a perpetual care orbiting his every response, and a transparent devotion to the craft of acting its an easy statement to feel comfortable making. All things being equal- with a standing army of 24,000 supporters populating his Twitter account and a role in an Oscar-winning film under his belt- it is safe to say that he is no best-kept secret, but a talent on the borders of the mainstream since the inception of his professional career.

Manifesting himself both on the big screen in the aforementioned ensemble cast of ‘Le Miserables’, as well as the upcoming ‘The Philosophers’, and on the small-screen in the series ‘Vikings’, George Blagden has undeniably made the most of his chances. As the saying goes, ‘luck is when preparation meets opportunity,’ though, in Blagden’s case, ‘the beginning of a promising career’ usurps ‘luck’ in the equation of the expression. As George recollects, “Just as I was starting rehearsal as the lead in ‘Kiss Me Kate’ in my final year at drama school, on the first day of rehearsal I found out I got ‘Philosopher.’ It was a dream really, a dream come true. I remember talking to James Darcy who also went to drama school and who was in the film as well, and he just said, ‘It’s downhill from here mate, you just did this American movie in paradise really. All filming locations from here are gonna go downhill’ (laughs). As an actor who had done school plays and gone through drama school, and then to end up there- happy accident seems like something of an understatement. Everything just came together.”

Talking to Blagden about his career, the synecdoche of his experiences proved to be as useful as they were, well, lucky. A kind of laissez faire quality to the circumstances churned out in his wake. The starring turn in the upcoming ‘The Philosophers’, was followed by his role as Grantaire in ‘Les Mis’, a major breakthrough that was an amalgamation of Blagden’s passion for music, acting, and everything in between. Blagden recalls, “Le Mis was kind of the perfect marriage of everything I love about the job: a musical- but it wasn’t, a film- that a lot of people say wasn’t exactly. A lot of people described it as an art form in itself in a way and it feels like that watching it, it feels almost more like a documentary the way Tom shot it. I was able to do acting through song but with so much subtlety that I just adored.’ Following his turn as Grantaire in ‘Le Mis’, Blagden then won the role of Athelstan on the series ‘Vikings.’ Shifting from one very particular place in history to another. Discussing ‘Le Mis’ and ‘Vikings,’ Blagden dissects the nature of historically rooted performances and his interest in them, “Human nature is timeless I think, and the interesting thing about ‘Vikings’ is were trying to show the world this ancient culture that will feel very alien to a modern day audience, but I get the luxury of playing the one character in the show who should relate to a modern day western audience. I just think its more fun playing characters from the dark ages or the French revolution because it’s just the epitome of escapism.”

WONDERLAND MAGAZINE - What is your main hobby in downtime?

I dream of being a DJ. Its not a hobby per say, but I’m trying to pick up all sorts of little things. Learn Spanish, DJ-ing, ukelele. Never stop learning.

Who is your style icon?

I love Sam Rockwell, I think everything about that guy is cool. He wears flares still, and he’s just so relaxed and totally wicked. I don’t really have a style, and I don’t really think of him as having a style, but I think he’s really cool.

What was your most hated class in school?

God I was never really big into the sciences to be honest. The interesting thing is, school can be really mistimed, like you can get really into history when you’re like 23 years old stoned in your student flat, all like ‘I really wanna know about the Romans!’ Typically, you’re not gonna be really fascinated in stuff like chemistry when you’re 10 years old and you just wanna run around and kick a ball or something. You don’t want to sit down for 7 hours learning about chemistry until later.

What’s the best present you’ve ever been given?

I think someone bought me an eagle once. Not like a taxidermy eagle, but I got to name a rescued eagle-like a constellation. Someone actually bought me a star once as well. My ex-girlfriend was Canadian and she once dressed up as Santa Claus and came over and gave me a whole bunch of presents. She was awesome, really cool. Canadians are awesome man I’m all about them.

If you could select any male or female actor to co-star with who would it be?

I’d go for Sam Rockwell. Female would be Kristen Wiig.

Whats your biggest pet hate?  

People who text and drive.

If you could be an actor during any decade what would it be?

I’d go back to the golden 50-60’s era. When it was all becoming very rock and roll. The Dean, Brando times…get in that mix. Would be great, wouldn’t it? Seemed like such a golden time. Film now, it’s so saturated.

Most stylish character you’ve played?

Probably the vampire in Twilight. In Eclipse he was just pimp, he was wearing this like mesh gold thing, with a hood. It was awesome.

What was your teenage fashion faux pas?

It's 2:30pm and I am talking to Willem Dafoe on Skype about the Dionne quintuplets. My body does an involuntary shudder as his laughter cracks out through the speakers-a physical betrayal of Pavlovian proportions to the plethora of villainous (cinematic) acts that typically would pre-empt the sound. Needless to say, it’s a Wednesday unlike any other. With the laptop transmitting Dafoe’s unique timbre across miles, countries and time-zones, it is surreal to say the least.  However with distance -and more crucially, reality- placating the detrimental effect of basing so much of reality on the filmic projections of it, Dafoe explores the implications of those projections, of a life devoted to the performances that have been his driving force for so long. Speaking from New York, in the past and present tenses, Dafoe recounts the circumstances that guided his choices from the beginning to the here and now. Recollecting his bafflingly conventional upbringing in the Lynchian-sounding Wisconsin town of Appleton to his rise in the New York theatre scene as well as the annals of the film industry.

  Exposing myself a to a certain degree, I was always aware of you having theatre experience prior to my research, but I had no conception of the breadth of your establishment within the medium. Including everything from Theatre X, to the Wooster Group, to your involvement in The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, is there any kind of transition or point of artistic realization that stands out within that massive span of experience? Did every kind of shift feel like a natural progression? For instance did film seem like a medium you’d inevitably make moves towards or at the time did you feel there was a lot of risk creatively?

No, it always felt it seemed to once things flowed into the next there were never really any big moments where I noticed a shift, it was just about going towards people and situations and then reacting. All I know is when I was young, where I grew up, I didn’t know any actors. No-one that I knew made their living making theatre or films. Films seemed very far away, films seemed very much a thing that only happened in California. So when I started out performing my identity was formed very much more as a theatre actor and I thought that was what I was interested in. I always liked movies but I think as I was younger I was always more interested in theatre, so when someone saw me and said ‘would you like to be in this movie?’ it was really just something that I tried and I enjoyed. I felt like the two different mediums fed each other in my interest in performing and my interest in making things. So it felt quite natural.

It’s interesting, because out of the scores of interviews I’ve gone over, I’ve rarely heard about you talking about the origins of the connections you had with art and performance other than the stuff you did with the Zuckers and Kentucky Fried Theatre. That notwithstanding, Was there any kind of seminal moment for you in relation to finding the certainty that this was what you wanted to dedicate your life to?

I think it was slow, I think I grew up in a big family, I think you develop a kind of a character within that family to get what you need to get the attention you need to kind of have an identity within this group and I think as a child I grew up being kind of a comedian, the prankster, and I think that was the beginning of my performing life and the beginning of making things, so I think, I never thought of being an actor as being a career and I didn’t really formally train for it very much, so I always assumed I would do something else, and  I started out really going towards situations and people and things were much more fluid then when I was younger, I didn’t care, I wasn’t thinking about tomorrow I was just interested in the company I kept and the adventures I was having in the moment. So a kid from the Midwest moves to New York City; and I just went to where the action was, and where the action was there was always a lot of interesting stuff going on downtown so I started to work with a group there.

In respect to the notion of being typecast within a group,  you spent many years being typecast as ‘the villain’...

You know its kind of funny that I started out my career playing villains I suppose. I suppose it has to do with what I was presenting and how I look, but the truth is when you’re young if you’ve got a look that isn’t terrifically conventional and you’re interested in saying things that are sort of off-centre and off the periphery, you cultivate an interest in the outlaw culture, the outsider culture, and I think just personally that’s what I was doing.  From a very young age I was more interested in art than I was in entertainment. I think that I developed this presentation, or this persona as I was surviving in life really, because as a child I was more like the comedian, a little goofy, a little sweet fat kid, and that part is still in me, but that villain thing was just really a mask that I think was attracted to.

When I was researching, I somehow found it simultaneously surprising and logical that you were born in the mid-west. History is apt to reveal that many artists, especially ones who perpetually keep themselves in a state of transition or perpetual change- have a form of conflict with their upbringing, or their history, or merely the place where they spent their formative years. Was there a conflict rife with in relation to where you came from, and if so what characterized it?

On the one hand I grew up in Appleton which was very white-picket America, then on the other hand it was a very dynamic time where there was a clear shift away from that. I was born in 55’, so I was born in the 50’s and had come from a large family and I have lots of older brothers and sisters, so I grew up in-not a necessarily conservative time and place, but an ‘American’ town in the 50’s and 60’s, and then I also saw my older brothers and sisters go to the university of Wisconsin-Madison where there was a lot of anti-war movement, I would go down and visit them and police would break down the door where I was staying. So I had this kind of mix, because I was younger than the generation that established my community, but I was very close to the counter-culture youth generation that I lived through, through my brothers and sisters.

Coming from a family of 8 siblings who are professionals, and two parents who were as well, what was the lack of appeal with a life of a typical profession and the attraction to one that was so unconventional?

I think I always loved physical jobs and I somehow- growing up in the Midwest middle class and then moving away not really getting a proper education and moving to New York and falling like a couple of social classes made me identify more with working-class people more than I did when I was growing up. I grew up not aspiring so much to so much have a career as have a life, and then I think when I got to N.Y out of that more working class environment I kind of had a shift politically and I started being interested in what it meant to be an artist– and that was a very fertile time for a lot of experimentation in New York City. I’d kind of look around and see things that excited me very much and gave me lots of energy and piqued my curiosity so really everything was set up very much from my back ground, I’m very much a product of my background but at the same time I was lucky to be in New York in a very inspiring time, so it was like I was busy being turned on by people and events to much to think about having a career or getting a job (laughs) and I think when I moved away from home I didn’t have any problems but I think I did move away from home and as many people do I sought to create a new identity, I think it’s a normal thing. You know its an adolescent going out in the world, which I was very ill-prepared for because one thing I did learn is that the experiences/education I had was really good emotionally but wasn’t so good as an education, and not so good really to let me know what the world was. Good training for being a decent human being and knowing how to function in a group which is something I’ve sought out over and over again in the form of a theatre company or a production making a film, but not so good at cultivating curiosity because so much of that culture that I grew up with was based on productivity and making things that had a function. And the interesting thing about art is that it its function is always a little debatable.

What its refreshing about reading about you, researching you, is that there is so little about your personal life beyond the bare constructs: birthplace, marital status, number of children, countries of residence ex.  I’ve read that you don’t really go method with a role, that interestingly enough- central to your performances you bring your own self into a role within a foreign context i.e.

I don’t think, “Oh, how would he, the character, do this?” I think, “Oh, I’ve got to run over the hill. What do I have to consider? How do I want to cover it? How do I want to run over the hill this time?” I don’t think in terms of effect and I don’t feel an obligation to become something that I’m not.

you don’t think how a character would run up a hill, you think how you would run up the hill in the context of what is occurring, has occurred, may occur. How much does it help you, especially with the form of your approach when you’re playing a role onscreen or onstage having that kind of anonymity enshrouding your identity?

What you said, what you quoted I still do believe in basically, and it is my approach for the most part. I’ve always been task-oriented. You apply yourself in action and something happens and if you’re not looking for an effect and you’re really open and flexible there can be real transformation or there can be a real shift in how you see things and that’s when you enter the character that’s when you become another person, that’s when you function in the context of the story that makes a character. As far as anonymity I think it just gives you flexibility, flexibility for yourself and flexibility for the audience because if they know too much, its information that works against their ability to be flexible in how they see you. Also more deeply, if you’re in a business of selling yourself of being a persona up and presenting it to the world that contributes to an egocentricity that kind of works against you as a performer because the irony is you want to work for yourself you want to know yourself, but you want to lose yourself in the respect that you want a full range of impulses and opinions and views to be able to apply yourself to being other people, to take other peoples points of view to take a different set of impulses and really the best way to do that is trick yourself into not serving your ego. Or serve something outside of you, if you can trick yourself into that- because it’s not in human nature to do that and its knit within our culture-if you can do that then it can be incredibly liberating.

Being someone whose acclaim has grown progressively throughout the years, Has that been an attitude that you started out with at the very beginning, or one you’ve developed over time?

 That’s a good question…who knows how much you really are reacting and justifying and then making a stance out of a condition or how much is that your true nature, I don’t know…you do have some sense of where you do feel comfortable and where you feel free or where you feel humiliated and not comfortable and of course in order to keep my opportunities going you do dabble in some sort of selling of yourself or publicity or celebrity stuff but only to the extent that it allows you to make more work.

In breaking down your career its clear that the two dichotomous entities are obviously the theatre and film. Out of everything that has defined your body of work so far, what’s missing, notable especially due to the way things are going right now, is television work. With your history of working in a theatre company, and your film work, is there any temptation to break from the two of them but also find a loose kind of hybridity composed of a regular series like those on HBO?

I’m not attracted to television. I think that all the energy and all the attention is going to television now, which is interesting. People are very excited at the fact that they can have long character arcs and the writing is getting very good, but the most beautiful things about performing don’t always have to do with writing, and the most beautiful things about film don’t have to do necessarily with story or character. You know I like the performing and I like the pure performing and I like the poetry of cinema. I like the poetry and the formalness of theatre, and in television I don’t know it well enough to get into it. I’ve heard a lot of great work is being done with it but I just don’t know it so much. You know I’m a guy…I still work very much from a place of fantasy and I’d much rather be in an art gallery or watching dance recitals than watching T.V. Now keep in mind the emphasis is not really in movies right now, and the opportunities are kind of sliding around, who knows what will happen, never say never, but at this point as long as I have interest in theatre and film, just-almost socially-I wouldn’t want to be tied to one place and one character and involved in the whole selling of a television show. Whether you like it or not it’s still creatively driven by writers and ultimately advertisers in some fashion, and you can say that about film too but you feel it in a different way. Also, call me old fashioned and I may be a sucker but I still enjoy this kind of relationship you have with a director as creator, director as auteur and I often seek out these people that are making something that’s personal and specific to them and I like to attach myself to them and I like to be their creature, to be the doer of their dreams because not only is that good for me but it’s the only way to make things that aren’t calculated in a way that they suffocate themselves. I think you have to make stuff from a deep intuition and a deep sense of what you need and not-for me anyway- you can’t be thinking about the audience you just have to trust that you’re not a martian and you work through yourself and if its of value it’ll find its way. There will be like-minded people that will relate to what your dealing with or not- but as far as having contact with what your making, I think that you can’t have one eye on the outside and one eye on what you’re doing. You can’t do this to get that, I mean of course you can in life we do it all the time, but I think if you do it too much, you get drawn away from the task at hand and that opens the door for corruption. Then you start doing things not for themselves but you start doing them for something down the road for something- a place where you want to be. And I think when you start to do that then you’ll never do anything where you’re really present and you really lose yourself in a way where you’re fully engaged.

Throughout your career you’ve worked with a number of directors widely accepted as visionaries, whether its Ciminho, Scorsese, Anderson, Lynch, Stone, Von Trier, Spike Lee, Cronenberg, Wenders, Minghella, Waters, Friedkin, and that’s just your film career. It’s a veritable who’s who of Cinema. How does your process go when it comes to finding projects? Do you watch films on a regular basis looking for interesting people to work with? Do you read a lot of scripts?

I do a little of all of those things. I read a fair amount of scripts, I do love movies, I don’t see them nearly as much as I would like. You know as I get older time gets faster and faster and faster and I never have enough hours in the day, and so there’s never enough time to read what I want to read, to see the movies that I want to see, to meet the people who I want to meet, to do the things that I want to do in my personal life. That’s a beautiful thing and sometimes you get caught up in this kind of anxiety about how you spend your time. But back to your question, you know I don’t know how I find projects (laughs), I mean sometimes your appetite changes and sometimes you have to balance things out, sometimes you put out feelers, sometimes you cultivate things and sometimes there are directors who I’d love to work with but I can see why I wouldn’t be in one of their movies I mean there’s a practical aspect to it, you don’t just work with someone, it has to be a convergence of the role, the director, the situation, it all has to come together. Its not like I sit there and go ‘oh I have to work with this person and I’m going to do anything I can just to work with him or her’ it just doesn’t work that way, you keep an eye. Its like if you drink wine, how do you educate yourself about wine, you drink it and taste some stuff, and the stuff you like you may return to, or not and your always in the search for more things, more tastes. Also looking at situations, it sounds crazy but really a sense that you’re needed and you have a function. That you’re the guy to do the role, that’s important. Sometimes I read things and I go this is interesting but a lot of people can do this. I always feel most comfortable when I read something and think ‘Wow I’m the guy, I’m the guy to do this,’ that’s not always the case but that’s when I feel most turned on, which is kind of a half-lie because when I read something I sometimes don’t really know what it is, it can be an instinctive thing, and you read sometime and you go ‘wow I really want to do these things – I don’t know what they mean, I don’t know what the story means, but these are things that interest me, I want to exercise this curiosity.’

As incredible as the film industry is in the films it provides us, it is rife with contradictions and flaws. Being someone who has been involved in the industry for so long, working with Ciminho on Heaven’s Gate through to Wes Anderson on Budapest Hotel, what are the largest fractures that have given way to flaws over your time/involvement? Changes in the industry as an actor that stand out?

Many things stand out. It’s amazing for how much work I’ve done in film I’m so ignorant about the film industry, because I think I live on a set and I don’t live in the business of ‘the business’. Partly being in New York partly from having been a part of my own company and being on the sideline for various reasons, so I’m not the wisest person to say this but I can state some obvious things. When I started out directors still had power, and that power has been marginalized more over time. Right now studios don’t even make money, companies make money that is funneled through the studio system. Also, culturally, films do not have the same kind of cache as they did in the past, their just part of a bigger system, films are just content that get fed into this system, but where the interest is not in film itself its on all the stuff that comes off of film you know, there’s more energy for promoting films than making films, that’s very funny to me. You know it’s a world where the importance of actors is measured more by social media- tweets- than they are by anything else. A very interesting article in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago about how hard it is to gauge popularity now because there are so many delivery systems, there’s so much fragmentation in culture its so specialized, we’ve really gone away from a dominant culture that I think defined itself in relationship to people and now its- you know the advertisement people have become where the real power is. It’s selling of the movie that gets more resources and creative energy than the actual making of the movie. Those are some of the things that I think have changed. And you know there are exceptions and you know you make your way, I mean I can’t talk broadly about the movie business but those are just some of the fragmentary thoughts I have.

Is there anything you find more interesting about being an actor now? Using technology as a lynchpin?

Not really. I don’t want to be an old crank and say ‘oh things used to be so much better’ because that’s not exactly true. But there is you know a depression around popular culture now I think. And I just look for the things that interest me. Look there’s much written about it and there are people much more articulate about it than I, but I mean we can’t underestimate what the internet has done to us as human beings and I think there is a greater need for culture because were getting all this information and we feel smarter and more empowered but the truth is at the centre people aren’t in their bodies in the same way people don’t know how to deal with each other in the same way, there’s more depression and neuroses than there ever was, that’s kind of backed up by drug company profits you know. I think culture is still a place where we can have a community, and still have an exchange of ideas and still do things that can surprise and remind us that things that we’ve forgotten and also give us a new view, and hopefully see what cuts across cultural conditioning and politics and I think that’s the only way that we can survive.

I always find art movements of any kind inherently fascinating. What they’re striving for, what they’re shifting away from, the inception of the guiding principles e.t.c. In the context of the Wooster Group, What was it like being apart of something so-pardon the simplicity of the term- ‘new’ ? What was it like being a part of something from the ground floor, as opposed to joining a kind of lineage?

That was a very exciting time. There were a lot of people making things not with career intentions not thinking about tomorrow, as a community. People were making things with very little money and they created their own community their own audience. One of the interesting things about the Wooster group was, as it started out it wasn’t a group of theatre people, they came from other disciplines but they were making theatre, I think that was true in a lot of places, in the downtown New York scene in the 70’s and 80’s particularly the 70’s you had musicians making films you had dancers making theatre there was this cross-fertilization that was very immediate. You had a lot of experimentation. It was a lot of fun, people were social, people were motivated. It was a sexy time, people were mixing it up, people were trying to create worlds, that’s what I remember. With the Wooster group in particular, Liz was really the engine of it from the very beginning but the truth is we always thought the show that we were doing was the last and we were lucky to have a space and that’s what really helped us survive and also the commitment of the core people, but in the end we were making things from our own curiosity and from our own pleasure, not so much conditioned by career aspirations or even lifestyle things as far as- we weren’t thinking about money we weren’t thinking about being famous- in fact the mainstream culture was shitting on us all the time saying what we were doing was bullshit- it was only many years later that we got to be accepted and now in fact The Wooster group which I am no longer involved in but they continue- are quite respected all around the world and are something of an institution. Although I must say, a lot of the original people are not there anymore because they have either moved on or passed away or for various reasons, so now its Liz with a new generation of younger actors.

I watched part of an interview with Charlie Kauffman the screenwriter a couple years ago where he was discussing the notion of the varying forms of resiliency of theatre and film. To paraphrase, he commented that film is ‘dead’ in that once its made, its made, it is fixed, concrete, unchangeable. Whereas theatre is ‘alive’, eternal, in that its constantly being remade and reinterpreted. Being someone who is wholly intimate with both mediums, how do you feel about that notion? Does it impact the way you reflect upon your accomplishments in each field? I.e. you can watch one of your films and it’ll remain the same, but your memories of a performance or a run of performances may be changed through experience and recollection.

Well there’s something very romantic about something that can’t last. It’s a lot closer to life, it’s a lot more adult in a funny way-Listen film changes too, because the context of how we see it changes, so that’s not absolutely true that film is dead or frozen. Film exists and it will evolve for better or for worse, even films that are made they’ll have a life. I think, you know from an actors point of view there are many differences and I could talk for years about my impressions for the difference of the two, but one of the biggest differences is so much of the activity in film is about re-animating things, and I find that in your dealing with your making your score when you make a piece and then so much of the performing is re-animating that score, re-investing it, making it live again, whereas in film not always but often, your going in their and dealing with first impulse very much- you go in there and you shoot a scene, never to return to it again, you move on, where theatre you keep on going back, you keep on going back, you keep on examining the same thing from many different angles so the simple way to say it, for theatre for an actor you conjure, and in film for an actor you capture. I mean there’s obviously an overlapping of the two, but as an actor that’s the main difference, and I think that’s why there’s a lot of pleasure in films and films provide you with great adventures and the process of making a film is fascinating and film acting is always so mysterious because its only you know one part of a film and its mediated by so many hands its an interesting collaboration but I think essentially in the end theatre feels a little healthier because it feels like its better training for life, like its better for your character because first of all you address so much more of your whole self because sometimes you can do a whole movie that’s practically in close-up, that doesn’t mean that your body isn’t necessarily engaged it is but it doesn’t have the same level of engagement as a theatre piece where all the time your body/mind/voice/timing is integrated, is working in concert. In film it’s a collage, its cut-up, its edited, its mediated, now I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, that can be very exciting sometimes what you provide in the collaboration can be made even better by your collaborators and sometimes it can be made worse (laughs) it’s a crap shoot but that’s sort of the fun part about it.

With the Wooster group what is so fascinating I think is the depth of innovation of what you were all establishing. How much do you think it helps and/or hurts collaboration, when it is with someone you know personally? Be it in theatre or film?

You know, it can be all those things. All I know is I find I make things and I work with people that I like being around and the people that I love. For many years my partner was Elizabeth Decompe and for many years I was her collaborator that was intense and not always easy but it was very gratifying, and now with Giada Colagrande I worked with her, and I enjoyed working with her, there is a complicity and a short-hand and a stake, we also know each other very well, so it makes everything a little more intense, a little bit more full. To have a relationship with someone outside the work it always depends, sometimes it can help sometimes not. More than a script more than a character more than idea more than anything else, what I’m attracted to is people, and I like to be in the room with people, that inspire me, turn me on, I don’t have to like them, but there are people who trigger something in me that I feel engaged in a way that is free and feels fluid and that’s always what I’m searching for that place to feel that I see clearly.

Speaking about directors you commented you ‘like the crazy ones better than the well-behaved ones normally because they tend to be the passionate ones. They never come after you if you’re holding up your end.’ Having worked with so many notable personalities, What do you make of this? i.e. is there a parallel or connection as you see it between creativity and chaos or desire?

Yes. To answer briefly. One very beautiful place for me as an actor is when you’re really able to give yourself to someone as material, as a thing, as energy, as a series of impulses, as a character, if your able to give yourself to someone and they need someone’s complicity and trust and you make something together, that is great because your better than you could ever be by yourself, you’ve had impulses that you’d never make by yourself, your stronger together, and those are the sort of situations you seek out, and you know its almost like if you seek a mystical experience you have to really get rid of a kind of egocentricity that the culture really tells us that we need and you have to make an offering and I think you don’t just offer yourself to bullshit but when you offer yourself in a sort of pure way and someone needs you to do something and you do something together without dragging your feet or worrying about what it means or what is in it for you, those are when the most beautiful things happen.

Was that attitude something you knew prior to getting into acting? That that was on the other side of the door for those kinds of collaborations or was it something you learnt over time?

No I’d say that’s something that’s evolved. I mean I’d say it was probably within my character but it’s only to see what are the most rewarding situations.

Which plays into how it informs choices you make and the response from people that you work with…

And sometimes even if you’re in a less than perfect project or situation sometimes that and you can trigger that kind of openness and flexibility . It’s kind of like you have to learn to make what you do sacred. Even if it’s a stupid comedy, I’m telling you there is something about approaching it-not with a seriousness- but with an attention and a concentration, that’s what’s most important. I mean its always about the quality of the doing, its what I do not what I think.  I’m not an interpreter I’m a do-er. That’s my mantra.

Being someone who’s so productive, as well as so creative, taking on average about 3 films a year since your debut (and that’s to say nothing about all your theatre work) have you ever been tempted to direct on stage or on screen? Have you ever come close?

No. Because I don’t want to watch, I want to do.

Looking across the span of ground your career has covered, you’ve had your fair share of controversy, notably with Body of Evidence, Antichrist, and to an even greater extent, The Last Temptation of Christ.  Having experienced those kinds of zealous responses to your films, is controversy something you think about at all in relation to a performance? How important do you think it is to push societal boundaries?

No I don’t think about that. Sometimes you think oh this could be a popular movie, or this is commercial, you do have those instincts but I mean I don’t sit with them very long and I don’t think about them too much because that’s not my job.

In a story that’s been rehashed throughout several other interviews I’ve read with you, its discussed how you got kicked out of your high school for a short film where you interviewed a Satanist, a drug dealer, and an exhibitionist. As magnificent an anecdote as that is, what it doesn’t really provide is a connection to so many other things about you. Being that you were from Appleton, we’re you always drawn to the unconventional, untraditional characters and segments of society? Did that focus unearth itself during your high school years or was it a feeling you’d always sensed?

I think it was always there. It was kind of in the culture as well. I knew there was something outside, I was always looking to other places to see where the real world was because while I wouldn’t complain about where I grew up, but the culture at that time to the American way of life to when and where I grew up in my family was all about productivity and making something of yourself as I mentioned before. And I knew that wasn’t necessarily how most of the world lived with a certain sort of entitlement and privilege and I mean I grew up very modestly and middle-class but this kind of entitlement and aggressiveness and this kind of competitiveness and careerism and drive for comfort at all costs and drive for getting ahead of the other guy at all costs I had a feeling there was something wrong there (laughs) so I think I was always attracted to people who either through their condition or their circumstance didn’t share those ideas or didn’t live those ideas and how they behaved  and what they were interested in that were different than the values that I thought were the only ones that existed. So once you see that other side I mean I wanted to go right towards it, because I think like everyone you grow up with a certain dissatisfaction, particularly if everything is geared towards denying pain and just doing everything to increase pleasure. It was clear there was something else there. So as a kid it was just about being available to people and I just wanted to do an investigative magazine show, I come from a fairly square high school so I wanted to find the people who were most unusual and those were the people I interviewed and I goofed around and had some footage and went out for lunch one day and some stuff was left in the editing machine and someone poked around and looked at it and when I came back I was locked out of the editing room and told I was expelled. ‘ I said that’s fine with me,’ and you know never retuned. Then I left town.

Do you think that was a ‘crossroads’ type moment? Would you have stayed without that push, or would you say it was simply a matter of time?

I think it was inevitable.

In a past interview I’ve read you talk about going back to theatre when the time is right. Is the right situation for you an offshoot of your personality at a specific time or of career aspirations, or both? Did it, or has it, alternated more specifically at certain points in your life?

It’s a marriage of those two things... I mean I do try to keep opportunities coming that’s all…also my tastes are not necessarily popular tastes so I always have to be careful not to marginalize myself because I need resources and even though I’m not thinking about the audience while I am making things I do want the audience to see what I’m doing, particularly when I think its beautiful.

Being the stage of your life where you are, its obvious that you’re not remotely close to the twilight of your career, but as a result of the bevy of experience that you’ve accrued you are at a point where if you chose to you could reflect upon your achievements and your choices and your body of work. Is legacy something you think about? Either in casual reflective passing or when considering roles?