I'm not experienced enough, or certain enough of my acting on the screen to say to a director, "You are wrong, I am right. I will only do it this way." I could never feel that, I wish I could be absolutely certain. But on the stage, it's different. I know where I am on the stage.
The performance is created by the director. The actor is the material. And I think that has to be true.
There are directors, and I think this is true of all directors, it would be true if I was a director - If the actor didn't want to do what I was suggesting, I would let him do it his way, and then I would say to him, "Just give me one where you do what the director wants", and that, of course, is the take that's used.
When you're on stage with an audience, the director's nowhere to be seen. He's onto the next job.
You would be surprised how many directors don't know what they want. They might not know what they want until they see it, they might know what they want but no idea how to get it out of the actor, then you've both got a problem.
In fact, my face has shrunk in the meantime, but it won't be particularly noticeable because it's covered up with hair. So I hope I'm not alarmed if I ever do sit through the five movies.
Some directors don't tell you that it's not your fault, so you get increasingly depressed that you're not delivering what's required, and then you discover it's not you at all, it's something in the background that's out of focus.
I think if I were asked to do as many as fifty takes, I would assume the director had no idea what he wanted, and was just hoping, eventually, to see it.
It is so painful watching yourself act, particularly because you can't do anything about it, it's all done and dusted.
I think I'm a bit gruffer than I used to be, and I'm certainly older.
As for the clarity of the 48 frames, I've heard people say that it looks odd, it's too demanding, there's too much information, you don't know where to look.
I suspect the base that I'm working from is not particularly one of inquiry, but of memory of what I did last time.
2D looks so flat. Well, it is, of course, it's flat. But 3D isn't. And for an adventure story that takes you into a long-distant, fictional world, it's ideal, I think.
My memory of 3D movies is Fernando Lamas in a swashbuckling movie. And I suppose it had been the fifties, in which swords came out at you, bullets came out at you, things were thrown into the auditorium, apparently. All that sort of cheap, "Oh, look at us, we've got 3D" isn't in the film.
Ever since the invention of the camera, people have been trying to create 3D, because we see things in 3D, and everyone's aware that the camera doesn't.
My reaction to 3D is subtly. Things don't come out at you, but rather you - The audience come into the film.
The audience's expectations are ever-present.
That's the imagination that happens in the theater. That imagination is translated in film by the film magicians and all the technology.
Most of the time when you do a job, a play or a film, you're wondering, "Will there be an audience?"
If you're sounding right, you're probably walking right, and vice versa. If you get the footwork right - if you get even one line right in a rehearsal, the director will say, do you know when you said that, it was exactly the character. You were - really landed on it.
[There's] nothing special about an actor's imagination, except that he uses it a lot.
It's a joy to be up close to Derek Jacobi's work. Alas, we haven't worked very much, over the years, since we were at university together, but I don't think I've missed many of his great shows and performances.
In the old-fashioned sitcoms, to be gay was, in itself, funny, and you laughed at the characters rather than with them.
We are very lucky to be men because women have a terrible time getting older parts. It's much more difficult.
Television can take anything. It can take the most exaggerated of storytelling forms.
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