Successful Actor Interview: Marion Cotillard

"I can fit in any process as long as the director respects who I am and doesn’t try to put me in a situation to get something out of me."

Ms. Cotillard, you have worked on all kinds of different projects, from art house French films to Hollywood blockbusters. Do you have a favorite style of working?

No, I love when it’s different every time. I don’t like to compare because I don’t see the point. I don’t have a favorite process. My favorite process is the right process for the person I am working with. I can fit in any process as long as the director respects who I am and doesn’t try to put me in a situation to get something out of me – if I can give it without that situation. It doesn’t work at all.

What kind of situation?

Someone who will try to make me angry or create a situation that is not related to my character in order to put me in the state of the character. It’s 100 percent counter productive. Either I will get mad and I won’t be good or – and most of the time this is what happens – I will laugh. I cannot take it seriously.

Why not?

Because I can see the trick and I need authenticity. I need to be on the same page as the director. It happened once that the guy was doing things and he would ask me to do things that I didn’t expect, but I liked it because it fit with the movie. I was never slapped in the face, but some of my fellow actors have had this experience. That wouldn’t work for me at all. I need to be part of the process – and the trust.

Are you more self-confident now than you used to be?

No. I think it’s part of myself. Insecurity is very common among actors. When I started giving interviews and talking to people that I didn’t know, it was a nightmare. I’ve learned how to deal with interviews and insecurity; I’ve gotten used to it. But it’s always weird when you have to talk to someone you don’t know, someone who asks questions about yourself. It’s kind of a weird process. But I feel good. I love to discover and jump into the unknown and there is no security there.

Is that why you work in Europe and in Hollywood?

That was totally by luck. I had never thought I could work outside of my country, especially in the United States. I am from this generation where the American, the U.S. movies are part of our culture, so the American movies fed my dream to be an actress, but I never thought that I could one day work in an American movie. So I feel very, very lucky.

Well it doesn’t hurt that you won an Oscar for your performance in La Vie en Rose.

I feel lucky that this crazy Olivier Dahan thought I could be Édith Piaf. He changed my life. As an actress I always wanted to do movies and I never dreamt about doing movies in America just because I didn’t think it was possible. It was never a part of my dream. My dream was pretty simple. I just wanted to tell stories, make movies. I already consider myself very lucky to be able to do what I love to do.

But many French actors and filmmakers choose not to work in America, even though they could. French director François Ozon told us, “Americans respect you when you stay in your country, but when you arrive in America it’s finished.”

I was in Cannes one year with a French actress and she is very talented, very beautiful, and my American agent grabbed my dress and said, “Introduce me to her. I want to meet her!” So I went to see her and said, “My American agent wants to meet with you.” And she was like, “I don’t care! I don’t speak English and I don’t want to do any movies there.” I was surprised, but she absolutely refused to meet with my agent. She’s my generation, she could have everything, and she totally refused. And I was begging her! I said, “It’s an experience, you never know…” So you know, it’s very personal. Some people are just not interested. But it was not my goal and I don’t consider it as a big achievement to act in America. I just always wanted to be an actress.

Always?

My parents are actors and so I was surrounded by actors. I was surrounded by great energy and storytellers all my childhood. And that was fascinating. When I was very young I saw plays that are not for kids and I have a very, very vivid memory of those moments. Usually it was when the nanny didn’t come and my mom had to take my brothers and I to a three-hour play about ancient Greece or something. We would go crazy – she would go crazy, too. (Laughs) I remember the actors who were friends with my parents being normal people that I knew and then on stage they were cats or dogs. That was crazy. As far as I remember I always wanted to be an actress.

What was it like the first time you were on stage?

I was very young, I think I was like four or five. My mother was doing this play and the director asked me to do something. I remember exactly the location, the theater. There was a big piano, there was this woman on the floor and she was supposed to be my mother. But my mother was on stage, too. And I remember the confusion. I didn’t understand why they were saying such crazy things, pretending that my mother was there lying down while my mother was over there! That was my first time on stage.

Do you bring your son on set with you like your mother took you to the theater?

Yes, but you need a very good make up artist. (Laughs) You don’t sleep anymore, but at the same time you have this strength that comes from this life that has just arrived. It’s a big cliché how your priorities change, but every parent knows that sometimes there’s a thunderstorm and you look at his eyes and everything is all right. It is a revolution of everything you feel. It increases strength. It increases everything – except nighttime.

Original source: http://the-talks.com/interviews/marion-cotillard/

Next Year’s Oscar Race Is Already On: Will Redmayne & Inarritu Return For Round 2?

Re-posted from Deadline.com. Great article to read about upcoming movies of this year. Enjoy, my dear followers!

By Pete Hammond
With the 2014 Oscar race fading further into memory, I say it’s never too early to look ahead to what’s in store for the nascent 2015 contest. It s
hould start coming into the beginnings of focus when Cannes starts in May, or maybe even at CinemaCon in late April (though that National Association of Theatre Owners confab usually highlights more obviously commercial stuff, not necessarily Oscar bait). It’s interesting to note that by this time last year, three of the eight eventual Best Picture Oscar nominees already had premiered, and that was a bit unusual. The 2014 Sundance Film Fest in January gave us Boyhood and Whiplash, which went on to earn a total of 11 nominations and four Oscars between them. And then after its smash Berlin debut, Fox Searchlight opened Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel exactly one year ago this weekend. With nine nominations and eventually four Oscar wins, it also became the first film to be released beforeMay to get a Best Picture Oscar nomination since Erin Brockovich in 2000. So anything on the horizon now that could match that impressive record at this point so near the ides of March? Hmmmm.

Out of Sundance this year Fox Searchlight — the reigning Best Picture distributor two years running with 12 Years A Slave and Birdman (along with 12 Best Pic noms overall) — grabbed two promising awards prospects in Brooklyn starring, Domhnall Gleeson and Saoirse Ronan, as well as Me And Earl And The Dying Girl, with Thomas Mann and RJ Cyler. The latter film won two prizes at Sundance, emulating what Whiplash did the year before. A24 Films also has awards hope for James Ponsoldt’s Sundancer The End Of The Tour, which opens in July, the same time period in which Boyhood successfully launched.

Looking at the landscape so far this year, I would venture to say we won’t have a repeat where nearly half the Best Picture nominees already had been seen by this date. From the Sundance buzz, though, Brooklyn would seem like the perfect recipe to go all the way, and Searchlight this week dated it for the Oscar-friendliest of weekends, November 6. Also this week Focus Features came out with a Thanksgiving weekend date of November 27 for The Danish Girl, a movie currently in production that has a pure Oscar pedigree as it comes from The King’s Speech Oscar winner Tom Hooper and stars newly minted Best Actor winner Eddie Redmayne. I even heard early in the 2014 season that Hooper joked to a friend that it would be fine for Redmayne to be nominated forThe Theory Of Everything but he was going to win  for his movie. Redmayne’s triumph at the Dolby after an exhausting campaign season has changed the stakes on that plan, and now Focus will be trying to position him for the rare feat of back-to-back Best Actor wins, something not accomplished since Tom Hanks in 1993 and 1994 for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. Even though cameras are still rolling the Danish Girl campaign seems to be on, with Focus releasing an early photo of Redmayne as transgender pioneer Einar Wegener. It’s a role right out of the current zeitgeist for Redmayne and obvious catnip for Academy voters. The part originally was meant to be played by Nicole Kidman.

Another big 2014 Oscar winner, Alejandro G. Inarritu, also went straight from the Dolby — after winning three Oscars for Birdman — back to the set of another highly ambitious film. It’s The Revenant  from big Fox and New Regency, which are looking for three in a row and might find themselves with a major contender with this Leonardo DiCaprio-starring film. Big Fox also could be giving its overachieving specialty division, Searchlight (which also has Far From The Madding Crowd, True Story and A Bigger Splash on its crowded schedule), a run for the Oscar money also with David O. Russell’s Joy, starring Jennifer Lawrence as the creator of the Miracle Mop, and Ridley Scott’s November release The Martian. Fox also is involved internationally with Steven Spielberg’s promising DreamWorks entry St. James Place starring Hanks, which Touchstone Pictures will release domestically. DreamWorks (and Participant Films) also could have director Derek Cianfrance’s The Light Between Oceans, starring Michael Fassbender, in the mix.

Although they aren’t likely Best Picture fodder like Grand Budapest Hotel, two March releases — Disney’s Cinderella and the Al Pacino starrer Danny Collins — have some level of awards potential. Singing for the first time, Pacino plays an aging rock star, which could find him in the Comedy or Musical category at the Golden Globes (his support cast including a superb Christopher Plummer, Annette Bening, Jennifer Garner and Bobby Cannavale is exceptional as well). Costumes and production design are distinct possibilities for Cinderella, though I have to say I was enchanted by Cate Blanchett’s evil stepmother. She’s probably a better bet for later in the year with the Weinstein Company’sCarol, though.

Going down the list –always a fool’s errand at this point in the game, with release dates uncertain and movies sight unseen– Warner Bros could be back in action big time next awards season with several films including David Gordon Green’s Our Brand Is Crisis, starring Sandra Bullock; Scott Cooper’s Black Mass, with a startling transformation of Johnny Depp into Whitey Bulger; and Ron Howard’s big Christmas picture In The Heart Of The Sea, which was moved from spring into prime Oscar-season territory. There’s also Mud director Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special, reuniting him with Michael Shannon, who also is great in Broad Green Pictures’ pickup 99 Homes, a film co-starring Andrew Garfield and Laura Dern that played the fall festival circuit already but has yet to open in theaters.

Universal, which held out high Best Picture hopes last season for Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, only to come up short when Oscar nominations were announced, has Jolie’s next directorial effort opposite husband Brad Pitt, in the marriage tale By The Sea. U also has Steve Jobs, the biopic from Oscar winners Danny Boyle and writer Aaron Sorkin, which hopscotched from Sony to Universal and stars Fassbender (again) in what should be a definite contender if things work out. And though it’s listed for February 2016, I wouldn’t be shocked to see The Coen Brothers back with their Hollywood tale, Hail Caesar. With Working Title, there’s also Tom Hardy as the Kray twins in Brian Helgeland’s Legend, and Everest, one of many titles starring Jake Gyllenhaal, so egregiously overlooked by Oscar for his great performance in Nightcrawler. Perhaps the Academy can make it up to him with this mountain-climbing tale, another Searchlight entry called Demolition or the summertime Weinstein Co. Antoine Fuqua boxing tale Southpaw, in which he truly transforms himself again, putting on all the weight he lost for Nightcrawler.

Speaking of the quintessential Oscar player, Harvey Weinstein, he has several films including the aforementioned Todd Haynes film, Carol (headed for Cannes?) with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara; the Margot Robbie starrer Suite Francaise; the Helen Mirren-Ryan Reynolds true drama Woman In Gold; Regression with Ethan Hawke and Emma Watson; Macbeth with Fassbender (again) and Marion Cotillard; and of course, Quentin Tarantino’s currently shooting Western The Hateful Eight. For Tarantino’s last film, Django Unchained, Weinstein Co teamed with Sony, but thatever-so-troubled studio, which drew a blank at the 2014 Oscars — outside of specialty division Sony Pictures Classics, of course, which had multiple nominees — could have a big comeback at the 2016 Academy Awards, at least in theory, with such possible entries as Will Smith starring in the football picture Concussion; George Clooney’s very promising Money Monster, directed by Jodie Foster; newly rebooted TriStar’s The Walk, which was shepherded by new Sony Pictures boss Tom Rothman; and even summer entry Ricki And The Flash, which stars Meryl Streep as an aging rock star (shades of Pacino?). Never count out Streep. SPC always manages a strong slate of Oscar contenders one way or another, and it inevitably will have a lot of titles this coming year. But right now it can count especially on its Sundance pickup Grandma, starring an exceptional Lily Tomlin, as well as its annual Woody Allen film, this time being Irrational Man with Joaquin Phoenix.

Paramount always seems to manage to elbow its way into the race, and this year it should have Martin Scorsese back on board with his passion project Silence – if Scorsese chooses to have it ready in time. With Oscar-friendly Annapurna, Paramount also has Rick Linklater’s post-Boyhood project That’s What I’m Talking About. Disney, of course, has the Star Wars reboot, but the Academy hasn’t nominated a Star Wars film for Best Picture since the first in 1977, when it awarded that landmark blockbuster seven Oscars but gave Best Pic to Allen’s Annie Hall. Disney, with Pixar, also has Pete Docter’s highly anticipated Inside Out, and word I have heard is that it, like Docter’s Up, is headed for Cannes in advance of its June 19 release. I’ve also heard it is strong Best Picture fodder. We’ll wait and see if this animated flick can be the one that proves a game changer for the Academy’s history of treating toons.

Among the indies I am looking forward to seeing possibly in the race, there is new player Bleecker Street’s Trumbo, starring Bryan Cranston as the famed blacklisted screenwriter. The same new company also has Danny Collins and a Blythe Danner vehicle, I’ll See You In My Dreams, bought at Sundance, that could give her a shot at a Best Actress nomination. And Oliver Stone’s Snowden, going out in December via Open Road, could continue the Academy’s newfound love affair with the infamous whistle blower. It gave CitizenFour the Best Documentary Oscar this year, so why not consider what Stone is cooking up? And there is 2013’s Best Actor winner Matthew McConaughey’s cerebral turn in Gus Van Sant’s Sea Of Trees, which also is worth watching out for. 45 Years, with juicy roles for vets Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling, is one to look out for from Sundance Selects. And I’m eagerly looking forward to Robert Redford playing Dan Rather in James Vanderbilt’s intriguing-sounding Truth.No list of hopefuls would be complete without my personal most anticipated film of 2015 — or whenever — Warren Beatty’s untitled Howard Hughes drama, which still is without a U.S. distributor. But going by the best of Beatty, the only filmmaker nominated twice in two different years in four different Oscar categories, we can’t wait.

And of course there probably are many other possibilities not listed here. Some of these movies won’t even make it out this year, if the past is any indication, and others we aren’t anticipating quite yet will. But overall, on paper at least, 2015 looks like a winner with new films from so many Oscar-winning major directors. Good thing, because as Peter Sellers says in Being There, “I like to watch.”

http://deadline.com/2015/03/oscars-race-redmayne-inarritu-back-1201386935/

Successful Actor: DAVID OYELOWO

Re-posted from The Talks blog. Great interview and very inspiring. Enjoy the read.

Mr. Oyelowo, how do you approach playing a historical character?

It’s a very tricky thing because of course you have to be evocative of who they were, how they moved, how they spoke. You have to make people relax and say, “Okay, he feels like him enough that I can just go on this journey with this character.” But if it becomes an imitation, if it’s about mimicry, if all people were saying is, “Oh, yeah, he really got the voice,” you’re dead! That’s the worst compliment you can pay.

Really, why?

Because when you go to see a movie, there is a spiritual exchange between the audience and what you’re watching. There is something metaphysical going on, where through the eyes, through what that person is exuding, you go, “I understand who they are. I have a sense of what they’re feeling when they’re not even talking.” There is an embodiment that is total so that you forget all of that. People shouldn’t be looking at the mechanics of what you did.

What should they be looking at?

How you did it emotionally. I believe that we go to the movies to see ourselves. “How would I react?” If all you’re seeing is a superhuman human being who had answers for everything, then you’re just watching in awe and it’s just like, “Okay, wow, he’s him and I’m me.” So I think it’s important that we can see ourselves on screen and I think that also means that we’re looking for the greatness in ourselves.

Is it important for your work to inspire people to be better?

It is important to me! I want to do films that hopefully inspire people to be the best version of themselves. If you look at the films I do, all of them, in some way… the remit I set myself is, “How does this enrich people’s lives?” You know, what’s meaningful? I want films that, when my kids see them, they understand why daddy did those films. They understand how it correlates with the way I’m trying to raise them.

Did you gain that perspective when you became a father?

Being a father teaches you very quickly that you are not the center of your own universe. That’s one of the gifts of having to wipe poop! (Laughs) Other people’s poop… Four times, with four children! I’ll be on a plane tomorrow back to my kids, lock my door, and it’ll all be about poop again! (Laughs) That’s the life I lead.

I’m sure that makes it easier to focus on the important things in life.

The fact of the matter is that every actor’s career has highs and lows. When success as an actor comes early, it’s very easy to believe the hype. But to me, it’s about how consistently you do the work – whether it’s celebrated or it’s not. I’ve been in movies with huge movie stars who have been crucified when there are failures and who have been adulated when there are successes.

In the last few years you’ve been in The Help, Lincoln, The Butler, and most recently you portrayed Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma. Why is it so important for you to make films about African-American history?

We need those films. Up until recently, films that deal with civil rights and racial unrest have mostly been told through white characters, through white protagonists. Malcolm X is probably the only film I can think of where you have an indisputable black American leader as the focus of the film. What you’ve tended to have is Mississippi Burning or you have Glory or you have these films that are all through white protagonists. Great films – but a different point of view. You can’t have a film about Dr. King and it be all about Lyndon Johnson in my opinion.

Why do you think there are so many films about African Americans coming out of Hollywood lately?

I think it’s synonymous with Barack Obama’s presidency. I think having a black president means that for a lot of white people there is an opportunity to not just focus on what’s negative about the past, but we have clear indications of progress, so it becomes easier to go: “How did we get here, historically? How have we got to the point where we have a black president?” All these films, they were just not getting made before his presidency. I actually saw President Obama about two weeks ago when we took Selma to the White House, and I thanked him for my career.

What was his reaction?

He went, “Ah, I don’t know about that.” But I told him, “Trust me. I can track when these films came my way!” I can chart it because it’s synonymous with when I moved to L.A. I’ve been in five of those movies! So I think that’s what it is.

And last year 12 Years a Slave even won the Oscar for Best Picture.

But a film about a slave is different than a film about a leader. Black people have been celebrated as slaves and butlers… The very first black person to win an Oscar was for playing a maid in Gone With The Wind, Hattie McDaniel. So, you know, that’s not an issue. We’ve been celebrated as subservient people forever. Great! Fabulous! As leaders? No, not so much. Barely ever.

To quote Dr. King, do you believe that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice in the end?

I think it does – if love is where you’re operating from. I think if you have anger and bitterness in your heart, and you just decide to lash out against it, all you do is you feed prejudice because prejudice exists on the basis that you are lesser than. If you prove that you are lesser than, you are only going to perpetuate that myth. I think there is a reason why the phrase is moral because to be moral is to absolutely embrace the fact that there is a right and there is a wrong. So the only way it bends towards justice is to be part of the solution as opposed to being part of problem.

http://the-talks.com/interviews/david-oyelowo/