Benedict Cumberbatch, Channing Tatum & other Actors on THR's Roundtable l Oscars 2015

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you with everything you do. I think she messed with us, everyone, uh, picks on everyone. I don't think it's just because you know. We're on the screen you like being a star I don't really see it that way I think I've been given a lot of opportunities in this world and I've tried to go through all the doors that I've been given and some of them have been great on the

other

side and others don't and they named me one, I think the pressure of what school is projected as you grow up, yes, going to university is the answer and for me it wasn't.

I tried and I went and I didn't make it and I failed miserably and I felt like a failure because of that and that's why I wouldn't try to open another door that's not a failure at all for me that's a victory you said the same thing I'm going to go do the same thing which is me yes it is a note to know that it is success that brings us so close to understanding this, which is a great achievement, Michael, what about you? You turned your back on Hollywood at one point and moved to Montana, I don't really want to say, in exchange for my back.

Actually, I do not know. I probably went through a phase that may not be over. getting tired of listening to yourself do the same old thing and quite proud of the fact that I don't do the same thing often, but I did the same thing and I was hearing that we listen to the same kind of rhythms and maybe tricks and when you destroyed the management It was an opportunity to do something different, yes, yes, to what extent did you want to get away from yourself and play that character? A couple things. I have played people.

I'm playing someone who exists now. I'm actually a journalist and it's really interesting to listen to these guys just to listen to them, but when you do places they speak English the right way, yeah, yeah, I've done that and I'm currently playing someone, but in a lot of ways, in terms personality wise, I don't particularly identify with this guy, but look, I'm an actor and I played Batman, so you know acting like that's not a factor, it's just silly, but yeah. I did the job the same way I always do the job: you buckle up and approach it essentially the same way as a bird suit, yes it is, but go out on that stage and risk everything to do something right, you can take what other people want.

I want to come back one more time and show you what we are capable of. One of the great benefits of working with the government that some people might leave out is that it's lovely to work with a 33-year-old employee I've worked for seven times. 33 years and you know, I've plied my trade primarily as a bit of a supporting actor character. He's always been the director who asked me to play the lead roles, you know, and this time I'm playing them as really the titular boss. the eponymous character, so this character was difficult because all the research and there is a lot of it was absolutely contradictory, every image of him looks different, every piece of actual eyewitness account of how he was no different, so what you were facing was trying to build this character every time we take a path, you contradict yourself, but fortunately we created honor and an amalgamation of human beings and alkalis, angry people, so it was a contradiction anyway.

I must have read about seven biographies about this guy and look at pictures, look at all of his work. Noah suddenly realized that contradiction was actually the goal of making the content no longer a barrier. I mean, we are all contradictions as human beings, we are massive contradictions. lesser or greater degree mr. Tanner seems to have said goodbye because Tanna is clearly losing her sight. Master Beats. Here I present what Mr. Turner just said. I think you are a man of great spirit and good feelings. The universe is chaotic and needs a suit, sir. Turner, so when we felt liberated by the fact that this guy was both kind and horrible, generous and cruel, funny, evil, sometimes very sweet, sometimes also totally, and the brilliance of that was very, very difficult when trying to create this genius, this visual poet. whoever took it turned out to be someone who was like a mucker ape some I say ape I tried but a lot of people said it's like a pig you know yeah anyway there are all kinds of animal zoos people what's cool is It was difficult for them, we realized that actually just creating someone who was really revolutionizing the sublime and the sublime didn't mean what is now a pretty camp term for a lovely piece of cheesecake, the sublime meant that someone was capable of transmitting paint.

Realize and make yourself understand what is beautiful in nature and horrendous at the same time. So this beauty that you look at Turner and think, Oh my God, what is this? Some of it is conventional and some of it is later work, it's not and you think about what created that and if you didn't know anything about Turner that we were revealing, you think he was a romantic character and then we, this guy, were revealing that this mud creature is amazing and then we realize that, in fact, the more we went with it. The more we realized that the tension within this incongruous genius was that the man had created a man he was never going to be someone who had it easy, but if that happens with any cricket person, I think to some extent there is a lot of tension. of beautiful people and rather who are lucky with almost all kinds of things, they were still great artists, inherently competitive stratosphere, that's great, well, it's that union, isn't it the erotic and the destructive?

Those are the two types of full primary forces. They were otic to come together and have empathy and love, whether it be one on one or through society, yes I am greedy and then the destructive thing is to define yourself as different and separate and build walls and fight wars of this type, yes, This is what I said. that and when surrealists like Max make some of that, a lot of them used to get up in the morning, I wash up, put on a suit and tie and sit down and paint the most notable innards of someone's fantasies, you know. or mine, so it's always a mix of confusion it's often always there do you think Leo McKern Turner does?

I remember it yeah, but I didn't watch it again you don't want to copy anyone and also especially if someone really good, you know no, you don't want to start a business and oh my gosh, you know, I mean, someone has already done it so much better. than me, so you better just ignore how about you? decision to do boyhood, what is the most challenging thing about making all that? Nothing, nothing was a challenge because I think we all get a lot of credit sometimes for taking risks or something, but when you work with a world-class filmmaker, I never feel like I'm taking a risk, you know, that's when you feel safe, but the interesting thing about childhood was that Rick was offering me a job.

I don't think an actor had been offered a job before, which was really helpful. At that moment, like your clay, he came to me and said, "I want to make this movie about a boy, right, we're going to cast a six-year-old boy and I wanted to be a little bit like literature and we're just going to write." as we move forward and I want you to paint a portrait of fatherhood. I was a young father, my daughter was three and my son was on the way and our parents are very similar. They are both from Texas.

Our parents are in the insurance business. I will speak, men who are baseball fans, you know, we have a lot in common, he said, I want you to paint a portrait of fatherhood, you know immediately the feeling of remembering who my dad was when I was six years old and who he was when I graduated. high school and how different that person was and it would be interesting to try to connect those dots where you could actually use time and see from a child's point of view how time shapes a man. Was it challenging? Yes, I suppose, but all under the category. of fun, not how are we going to talk to each other, okay, no, I won't be that guy, you can't put me in that category, okay, the biological father that I spend every two weeks with and have a polite conversation, You know well, he motivates me. places and buy me don't talk to me Samantha how was your week?

I don't know dad, it was a little hard Billy and Ellen broke up and Ellen is a little mad at me because she saw me talking to Billy in the cafeteria and you remember that. sculpture I was working on, well it was the unicorn and the horn broke so now it's a zebra okay but I still think I'm going to get an egg Mason, how was your week? Well dad, you know I was going to be hard on Joe, he's kind of a jerk, he actually stole some cigarettes from his mom, he wanted me to smoke it, but I said no because I knew how hard it was for you to quit smoking.

Dad, no problem with the way you did it and also keep in mind that often people don't do it. great difficulty factor Alejandro Iñárritu as an example of degree his degree of difficulty was taken into account when someone gave something to someone or judged something, you really got to what Ethan did because I watched and thought, man, those are smooth transitions and one thing it's being locked into your job for two months, for three months or five months or whatever and that's where you focus and you can track the transitions, you can track the changes in the levels that you had, my mistake, go away, maybe work on a play. in another movie and come back and get into that trouble again because it's really about you know, you never gave up because you also didn't have a finished script when you started, did you see what work you did? you come back a year later and say, well let's see what we have so far or a really clear idea of ​​what we were trying to achieve, yeah, what I was looking for and the question was when are we going to sell the GTO, yeah, when is the right time? .

When it seems like you know that movie when the GTO is sold, but son, your dad sold that car you identified with your dad? You know my dad has a Chevy Impala or whatever Barracuda, whatever you know them. I identified them. masculinity with this car and when it happened in the car it was gone, it was actually three years after the moment you know it seemed inevitable, you didn't know, you know what I mean? Anyway, it was fun to do. Benedict, I've always felt with you that you resist fame to a certain extent, it's true that there are many aspects to it, isn't there?

And if you mean being scrutinized in your public life, what isn't your job? If you mean the requirements of your time that distract your focus and your energy from what really brought you to that point where you are distracted with your focus and your energy, that is a complete dead end, the more work you do, The more attention there is, so, I know it's a strange thing that you tried to escape from, you know, by dissolving into work and it keeps catching up with you every time you start because it's something that's part of the work process now to publicize it, so that it's just me.

I say this because it feels hypocritical to make any complaints about fame when you're doing a

roundtable

without even a reporter. What if I had to say that? You know, it's ridiculous that I'm complaining about famous people sitting here complaining about fame. um, do you have a role model whose career you emulate, Olivier, for example, the hundreds, no, not specifically, no, definitely, no, who most influenced you as an actor, well, many different members of the film spoke before it was aired Stephen Delaine's Hamlet tape when I was seventeen. It was a huge shock to me that the silent, essential truth of what he did and the hilarity of it completely took over every heartbeat of that character.

He knew that no one else was Hamlet to him. You know he was extraordinary and then you saw mine. and then I appreciate if there are any

actors

whose work you want to emulate or who really taught you something when I first came to Los Angeles. I did a clean and sober job and watched it like 17 times in a row with friends. mine and that was at a time for me where acting was becoming very real, like I was really a student of that and you were, you know, Batman Beale, clean and silver juice this stuff, you're just kicking ass and making all this amazing. work that I found very inspiring, you know, and I also loved your interviews, you know, you do these interviews and you call everything as it was, as it seemed to me it could be.

I think sometimes we don't know what we all have an effect on other people and what we do matters? You know everything and when acting was more malleable for me, you know you were a true inspiration and continued to be, obviously, but I do if you didn't. Act, she had to choose another profession, what would it be? Oh, something in the performing arts. I have no idea, but I want to come back to that last one just because, similarly, I never said this to Tim, that there is no family at all. I have some interest and my mum and dad, because I had an interest, they would take me to the theater and one of the first things I went and saw was A Midsummer Night's Dream at the National Theater and Tim was playing in the background and everything was ready. in the mud and there was a contortionist playing disco this woman and when the ears reached the bottom this contortionist climbed on Tim zo Tim's shoulders and her feet were the ears and I remember that later we did a tour behind and that's when they sold me a lot, genuinely for its magic and I know it feels like it was that moment when you thought I wanted to use it, it's the moment I was because I didn't know anything about it.

Hold nothing NoI know, it was directed by Robert Powers, yeah, what to say really, it's fantastic because it was one of the most uncomfortable experiences, not only were you acting out the most well-designed wet fart you've ever seen from a Frenchman. -Canadian contortionist on my back when I was trying to do a comedy and it felt like hell and you're gone. Two days ago and there were people wearing Varun socks, gadget planters, warts, you know, and it looked like a dirty IRA protest, but in the Royal School of Dogs theater you never had the feeling of whether the audience was enjoying it or not because it was very exhausting, I mean.

I have to tell you this story but one day someone came in because they had to try it, it was in a huge pile of water so I'm really glad you liked it, then someone came in and said you haven't heard the last one someone pooped in the mud, right, and I said what are you talking about, someone has pooped in the mud. I said I'm lying on it before the audience came in, they said we know we have to prove it, someone has done it. a in the mud I said this is scandalous and I went I went to the stage porter the National Theater had been there for years my reformed wife I said you'll never guess what I just heard you know all the fairies were diving around someone has made a pilot she said a rat I'm not surprised we've had a ghost at the Royal National Theater for years so can you run it again?

A ghost now thinks of all the word people and is then asked Who is the Ghost? Still there? Who started it? I mean, there's a pantheon of classical music in the world and someone was writing a record. We're talking classic Savannah spoiler. What is the biggest mistake you have made? Wow, you're not. hold back, I think one of the biggest mistakes you could make is saying you know enough, yeah, because you don't know, you can't, because otherwise you'd stop and you'd just keep repeating yourself yeah, it's funny. I made a movie. I remember I was about 29 and I remember being very frustrated with the director because I felt like he was an idiot and he was really stopping me from doing the job I wanted to do and when I think about it now I feel so embarrassed I turned 30 and suddenly another room opened up. and suddenly I saw aisles of things I didn't know.

The older I get, the more I would never get frustrated with the director like that, you know? You have to know them, there's a great Brando quote about that, but you have to know every director, it's your kind of spiritual spouse, you said marry them to make the movie they want to make, because if you resist them all the time time, they will resist you. be in the editing room there he will realize before they turn brown oh well he said it's a very young age the directors would give them a difference yeah he says that kind of thing and yet if you watch Last Tango in Paris, that's an actor completely committed to that story and it's within a film in a way that you know you rarely see within a very dangerous film, a film that deals with eroticism and human sexuality is something that you know no one wants to talk on a real adult level. mourning death fear of death fear of aging sex you know, I mean, you were talking about becoming and you're talking about being gay?

Yes the movie could have been made ten years ago and I can't help but think about Just 20 Years Ago, how radical it was for an actor to play a gay person when River Phoenix was in my private Idaho. This is not a movie about a war, you know, a top secret secret war, guys, it's just about a kid who wants to be gay it was radical what he was doing, you know I was his age and his contemporary and it was like people think you're gay, you know you can't do that, your career will be over, this is a vestige of that still. like the years to come also like if you can't cross today is there any threshold you can't take off?

Elia is probably beautiful. Could you make ten Christ patients lose today and get away with it? Could Martin Scorsese be dangerous? I would do it. I'm in trouble now any time you four Farrelly brothers, I must have a good heart, you know, I think the real conversation we need to have here is the one we're joking about, which is that you know the fact that there are three Englishmen at this table , I mean. four but three of the six

actors

here and I would really wonder if by what connection if you look at the last 50 years of the Academy Awards, for example, what percentage of them were British and why here in this giant country of the United States this you already know.

I don't think Americans are represented in the bathtub, they don't take us that seriously, but we take you seriously. What's really serious is that I was in England and worked on the English stage and I saw the respect not only the actors have for acting, but the community in general, even the way they view it and criticize it, is even more a prize for a young man like you who has the right poles to guide you, a lot of respect is given to youth and money, whereas when you get to London, who is really respected, Vanessa Redgrave, who is really respected, Ian McKellen, you know to these people, Mike Lee, were you okay with that?

I think Ethan is being very complimentary about it, but I think it grows if it has a structure. Due to the fact that we don't really have a film industry, people don't let themselves be whipped and sucked in and taken into a system that hasn't been lost and you know it can spoil you because we don't have one that we have. we have and we're also spoiled in the sense that you know there's a more bookish culture based on intellectual theater in New York, whereas Los Angeles is all about the visual image so you know we're very fortunate and I say we don't have to make a specific geographic choice about where we'll start our career so we don't have to wait tables for years to get a break in a pilot season, we can, we can cut our teeth doing buddy shows, doing things miles ago, I did it.

I need you, could you just stay confined and companion or to the max, oh wow, at what stage because my first teacher taught me an extraordinary truth by literally reading me a line from Shakespeare who then opens up a blank verse so I can read it as prose the next time? year, um, my monodrama teachers, it was time to seat the less ancient and the faith of Shakespeare, you know, opened the doors of American theater and the wonders of Mamet, Miller and Tennessee Williams. I was just a complete raft of that and then beyond. what you get, you become amazing, I put the other nuggets of wisdom that I will take to my grave because I hope we are using them too, but things like being present, things about not fixating things on yourself, how to ground a truth from within. and moving away from the hat box things I grew up doing a lot of things at school my voice broke.

I'm playing a kind of titania The Fairy Queen or Rosalind and I was like I was playing 17-year-old Willy Loman, so I had this huge kind of period of showing off of me, you know, I think also the interesting thing about the three characters that we play is that these are British stories, so their story, I think that's the other thing that England, the films that come here, are made quite often. with heritage and legacy and that's because of history and as we're very lucky to have in these three specific films, they're quite extraordinary, not that that's not true, but they slightly reduce the turn towards a kind of British entertainment and Hollywood.

So-called Hollywood, which is a broad church, never underestimate how happy British actors are and how much they long to work in Hollywood. It's true, it's not like oh honey, we just do it because little by little we're going to pretend like, Oh Hollywood, oh, you know. Suppose if you're attractive you'll go, that's a lot of balls because most people, if given the opportunity to play a role in a Hollywood movie, would jump at it and say you can hit Polonius and change the last question, trick you. that character or person that you would like to play or feel intimidated about playing I don't know why it popped into my head but Buster Keaton oh I don't know why I jumped because I know a little bit about him. and obviously he was an extraordinary athlete and artist, but he was partially deaf and that's the reason why I didn't really get to appear in talkies or whatever you know, he couldn't do that, you know very well.

I didn't know that's interesting. I went so fast. No, he's the last person I expected. Don't know. It literally occurred to me that you might want to pay a player you'd be afraid to play against. I think both I mean, I think I'm afraid to play everything that interests me because you just want to get it right and do it justice. I suppose Michael Ted Williams is not the most loved man in the world, but he is extraordinary, extraordinary. Boy, I can't really think of any men, but before I continue, you know what I'm going to do, thanks.

I know you have a little uncomfortable warmth. Thank you very much, so tell us and coming from a very good actor, well. tell us why Ted Williams Ted Williams is a complicated person and an extraordinary set of balls and literally, I mean his ball still holds the record for the highest average of anyone when given the option of not participating in a game or of bat to see. If he could be the only one, he would finish at 400 or 401 or something like over 400, over 400, he said no, I'll bat and then I think about two singles or something like that instead of saying no, I'm safe, I have the record. now I'll be fine, yes, and fearing that, he accepted it, he was also a world class fly fisherman long before it was fashionable and that was before Redford, oh yes, yes, and he and he was a heroic de the Second World War. pilot which I think closed once or twice and it was really very complicated mate, well I did it.

I've always been fascinated by Charles and you know, access to the axis plan is a bit self-indulgent, but there's something so fascinating I think one of my first memories of watching an actor and being at the same time scared, terrified, so regretful. for something and scared by it, it was Lance, a nod to DOM. I saw him when he was a teacher, being like a rule four or five and I'll never forget that what he achieved you know, that mix of being scary, pathetic, sad and finally triumphant and of course he had a very interesting life so that It's what I'm designing at your university, finished design, that's one of the rules too. when I looked like a little kid I saw that I thought I was fascinated yes yes I'm sorry no no in the portion because that's really about you I don't really think in those terms about the people I want to play in the life of an actor you wanted to cross paths with a writer in the right way hmm, you know sometimes, like for example if you saw Mark Rylance in Jays Butterworth's Jerusalem, you see the intersection of a writer and an actor and then they explode together You know, I felt the same way about Nathan Lane in the play what he did last year.

Some know he will escape me as a title, Nance. Well, you feel like, oh, this play is meeting this actor at this point in his life and the play is. bigger and the actor is bigger, everything is more and I think we were all longing to be part of something original hmm, from Eunice, maybe I know, you know, I'm one of those people who, like in school, I would hate to be told , go and make up your own essay title, I mean, I like being told what the essay title is and then I go and I would never choose something like the Stephen Hawking movie.

I never would have thought that you're entitled to that unless you've read a script and then jumped into it, um, but you fought for this walking role, right? I fought for it because I read the script and it blew my mind, but I fought for it in That's the way I feel like we all do it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you think you can do well at a job and that you seem really confident and tell people. people the right things and then you understand it and then you reevaluate how you do it. I'm going to do it, but for several years there have been random people coming up that, by the way, you should play which of the second at some point and I was doing well and then a couple of years ago I was doing a job and I got a call from the British director Michael Grandage, he says, by the way, I'm going to say two words, you have to say yes or no, Richard said.

I was too embarrassed to admit that I had never read Richard for even a second, but there are enough people. He had said that he should play it, but I said okay. I said yes, that I wouldn't read the play and that he is an extraordinary and useless character, but somewhat useless. I tend to do it. Not really. I always found the most interesting things in my life to be those parts that are so far away from me and then I'm going well, let's try to get in and see what happened. Benedict Dolly Parton. I mean, it's not an obvious choice, but it is a choice.

I'm a bit the same. Like Eddie, I have lived in that fortunate land. Yes, but I wasn't sure you were joking when you said Dolly Pop. That's because I find her brilliant, fascinating, original and a woman, but other than that, no. What's wrong with failing? You know, I mean, I know, no, she deserves a movie about her, but I can't think of better access to meat that's purchased with proper anatomical design.to do that. Rob, no seriously, although I like a DI. I've had this kind of very lucky conference about things that I've been interested in and that people have talked about before, whether they're classic roles or whether they're things that things have written with me in mind and that I've fallen into. my feet a little, I mean, I like it, I like the idea that you already know how to determine the options and between that, but no, I don't have our ambitions for a particular person, they are good, well, thank you, I would like to thank you Spall Ethan.

Hawke Eddie Redmayne Benedict Cumberbatch Channing Tatum and Michael Keith for participating in The Hollywood Reporter's

roundtable