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

axis engaged in an astonishing double act both transforming themselves into other people and revealing their most personal emotions few have done that better than the actors who've made a mark in this year's best bills from this episode we have Benedict Cumberbatch the imitation game ethan hawke boyhood Michael Keaton's Birdman Eddie Redmayne the theory of everything Timothy Spall mr Turner and Channing Tatum Foxcatcher welcome to The Hollywood Reporter round tables the actors [Music] [Music] I'm Steven Galloway and welcome to The Hollywood Reporter round tables the actors I'd like to welcome Timothy Spall Ethan Hawke Eddie Redmayne Benedict Cumberbatch Channing Tatum and Michael Keaton some of you've played real-life characters and/or dwells in the research you did what most surprised you about the particular character you played Benedict you played famous British codebreaker yes eyelid cheering I think what surprised and relieved me really because of the the math and the science being well out of my reach was the fact that everything he brought to us as a scientist as an incredible unique thinker was brought about by his interaction with the world by everything he felt and experience as a human being as a physical body as a sexually active homosexual man as an athlete as a Olympic standard marathon runner as somebody who wasn't isolated in ivory tower you know just this sort of removed brain in a glass jar you know he was very in tune with his world which I guess that's immediately an easy way to understanding someone who's so sort of removed from your capabilities who's just beyond something you could ever possibly hope to achieve and let alone pretend to achieve so it helped to sort of humanize a very complex intellectual life into something that we could all relate to [Music] got more secrets to the best of them what if I don't fancy her in that way don't tell anyone no it's a label I'm just a mathematician sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything off who do things that no and imagine with any factual thing you found out about him that surprised you a lot of it an awful lot of it I mean all sorts of details but just randomly the fact that at the end of his life he was given the sentence after being prosecuted for being gay in a time of intolerance in the 50s England and he was given the choice between two years of Britain imprisonment or two years chemical castration through state I'm sanctioned Eastridge and injections and he chose the latter in order to carry on his work so at least if he wasn't allowed to love in his life the way he wanted to love him and was able to love that he could carry on with his work the other half of his life when you knew you know that honestly you almost laugh because it's shot up it's like if somebody did an insane brilliant satire people's attitudes turn almost like Charlie yeah that's what you'd come up with it's it's it's insane it's gonna make him we're on this horrible choice yeah yeah between castration and prison which would you take a prison I think but this man was so driven with his work and you know what the thing I was got to say the thing I found out was that he'd said in an anecdote for Franklin I wanted to find out how that affected him how that changed him for the scenes I played was the treatment was going on and I spoke to a colleague of his who worked with him in Manchester where it all happened he said Alan it was very private so I didn't notice much even talk about him much but he did say to me one day that the doctor was finding it very embarrassing giving him weeping Easterns injections and gave him the opportunity to swage and get rid of this embarrassment by implanting a small slow-release device in his hip that would be enacted by his metabolism and it was supposed to stop dosing him after two years and he was telling me this story and it was well past the two-year sentence and Alan said and it's still dosing me that's not really cricket is it and that man who you know dealt with it with stoical tight upper lip British humour and just to bat back what was obviously emotionally physically happening to him was also the same man who during a darkened night of the soul wandered into his kitchen opened a drawer took out a carving knife and gouged his leg to try and remove the device which is why I gave him a limp in the last two things one of that detail but there was nothing that I didn't find out about him that was that was shocking and overall why more of us don't know about them and this has to be the general reaction when people were these humans because so much that was kept secret in England partly the 30 yeah 35 years Official Secrets Act because of his work in the war could that films have been made 10 years ago I think ten years ago you know it was before the political campaign to get him pardoned on his centenary I mean it's absurd he shouldn't have been punished of course but he should have been pardoned years ago if you could have met him what would you've asked oh gods are so many things I think I would have asked him first of all I don't know if he thought he could live a life that was true to himself and not be punished for it because I think he did successful in a very active homosexual life for a long a long time and even when he was at Bletchley Park he was he described that as a sexual desert but he he was engaged to Joan Clarke dear friend somebody who he had a complete and utter intellectual and spiritual bond with but it was a platonic relationship and it was a convenient cover and they both loved each other in that way and she was willing to have that as a relationship and he couldn't live with the lion I kind of admirable I mean this is someone who asked if I just want to give him a hug he probably shrink away in horror if I tried but I just think incredible human being Eddie you did meet Stephen Hawking from the second that both Felicity and I were cast um we've been wanting to meet Jen and Steven but Stephen is incredibly busy solving some quite cool problems but also he was promoting he had a documentary out which he was promoting so it was actually only five days before he started filming and it made it complicated action because you'd done all these months of research and because we knew we weren't going to be able to shoot chronologically we'd had in some ways and the film covers 2025 years we'd had to shape her a sort of arc and then it was the fear and we'd done all the research but what if when I meet him I realize it could all wrong basically what if I reverse time to see what happened at the beginning of time itself going back the clock going back the clock keep going I don't know how yet [Music] the point our film takes it to he can still use his his finger so he has a cursor and so he could speak quicker than he does now and so now it's just the cursor goes across the alphabet on the screen and when he moves this muscle it stops on one letter so it's incredibly unique rhythm and there are these long long pauses and so when I went to meet him by this point I've read everything and researched as much as I could I was just so horrific allene ervis and I hate silence and so I basically just literally spent 45 minutes spewing out information about him to him and it was disastrous I mean it was really chronically deserved one of those lives well you know about no one candy meeting Paul McCartney didn't you night making this up do you ask him what sign he was so basically I'm now sweating which fine is he he was born on the 8th of January which was Galileo's birthday my reason I pointed off is because he makes a big point of the fact that he was born to the day 300 years after Galileo and and so I was in this silence because he I was telling him this about himself and I had said I actually was born on the on the 6th of January just so what's the most interesting thing Hawking said to you in the three hours I spent with him he maybe said eight or nine sentences but one of the things he asked me was are you playing me before the voice machine and I said yes and he said my voice was very slurred and there's one bit of documentary footage from the 80s where you hear Steven speaking and he's completely incomprehensible to us but his students and his wife would translate for him if he wanted to be one of Stephens students you'd go and spend two weeks learning how to understand him and I was in the film they were worried the producers were worried about having subtitles and I've been pushing to go to this extreme because it's the only bit of footage we and before that all the work I was known as an educated guess rather than you know a real truth and but after he said that to me he said could you not have someone translate and that meant that I went back to the producers and the writers and Antony the writer wove in an element in the film in which Jane does translate so that was pretty important because it was one of the specific things he cared about you initially turned down Foxcatcher with it because you didn't identify with the character I read it and kind of just I was like I don't I don't understand why you want to make it I didn't know like what these characters like learned at the end of the day I didn't know really what the movie was saying and I didn't this was after I had done my my second film and I just chalk it up to I had no idea what I was doing as an actor or as a storyteller or anything and then you know Bennet and I ran into each other I'm about seven years later six years later and then and then we started talking about it again and I just I think I had I had come a long way and my understanding about what we're doing what's the biggest challenge for you okay it is heating up Mark Ruffalo getting getting my head kicked in every day by Bennet um you know really being around Mark I think we talked about a lot I hadn't hadn't never done anything like this before and I had no idea really how to approach it other than just to talk to mark and Mark Schultz um it was the guy that you plays the guy playing and try to see through like who he was you know he's so factual he has all these he knows what move that so-and-so did on so-and-so to win the the the four Olympics you know he knows he and he just reels off all this all these things and you're trying to like sort through them all and really you know I kind of just started to just get rid of all the stuff that all the data that he was telling me about his life and he said one thing that I just clicked into and he just goes I I never wanted to win I just didn't want to lose hmm and that was it do I did you identify with that in real life I think at some point I did but not now what's the difference between now losing and winning it was fear of not being the person that he that he saw himself as I think and Dave his his older brother was this shining example of like something that he knew he could never be he was never gonna be this just charismatic individual that everyone sort of flocked to so he decided to go the other way and he wanted everyone to be afraid to him I didn't want anyone to get close to him and I got two really lonely walk to choose we as a nation fail to honor you I want to see this country saw her again well it's he gets me winning in America winning this is more than just some piece of money it's about what the metal represents the virtues it requires to attain him how does it feel when you're talking to the man and you know that the story is gonna have an angle in form of the script to the F script approval did he did he look at the script at all not at all and then did you feel that thing of like oh well I need something from you you might not get anything back from me other than something that's going to upset you yeah that's that was my fear yeah because I I knew all these things that he was telling me that he wanted in the script wasn't in the script you know the retribution of people that he felt wronged him and I knew that wasn't in there and I just you know I was terribly afraid there was the seduction of getting him to sort of open up and collaborate it wasn't he he was completely and utterly free and open with me as far as I could tell I mean he there was nothing that was off-limits I could ask him any question within the first seven seconds of talking he was welling up with tears I don't know he's in a very emotional person and I think all of it was pretty overwhelming for us both it's not surprising that he remembered every move and what happened athletes they're not like the rest of us it's a different it's a different type of mentality baseball players and he was ball fan yeah well don't remember it was a slider the inning what the wind was doing they remember everything and there's something in particular about wrestlers it's so different called and it becomes a real deep deep mental discipline and every time I meet someone learn they were a wrestler and you start to look at their life you go oh yeah this guy does any one thing that says act as a pot like that oh you're pretty deterrent person right I'll tag on to that it I think wrestling in particular is very very similar in a metaphorical way to acting you're wrestling you're literally in a fight with what's going on with you like you're in a you're in a suffocating situation and there's no resting you can't take a minute you're constantly in this in this uncomfortable state dealing with a lot of emotions a lot of fear here of what fear of just doing it honestly of giving everything that you could have given to it you know and not walking away and being like God I didn't do I didn't do the work for that one you know is it harder when you're a star and everybody knows you know the social media universe is gonna pick on every single thing you do I think it picked it pick on us all everyone huh everyone gets picked on I don't think it's just because you know we're up on the screen you like being a star I don't really look at it that way I think I've been afforded a lot of opportunity in this world and I've tried to walk through every door that I've been given and and some of them have been great on the other side and other ones haven't and they named me one I think the pressure of what school is projected as and when you're growing up yeah that going to college is the answer and to me it wasn't I tried and I went and I didn't get it and I and I failed at it miserably and I felt like a failure for it and so I wouldn't tried for another door that's not a failure at all to me that's a victory you said the same me I'm gonna go do what's me yeah it's a note to know that is it success that's bringing us so closer to understanding this which is a mighty achievement Michael how about you you turned your back on Hollywood at one point and moved to Montana not really I mean in return my back I don't really I just probably went through a phase that may not be over of getting tired of hearing hearing yourself kind of do the same old thing and fairly proud of the fact that I don't often do the same thing but to me I did the same thing and I'd hear that let's hear the same kind of rhythms and maybe tricks and when you destroyed management was that an opportunity to do something different yeah yeah to what extent did you want to get away from yourself and playing that character a couple of things I have played people I'm playing someone who exists now actually a journalist and I have it's just 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 it's I've done that and I've currently playing someone now but in a lot of ways in terms of personality I didn't particularly at all really relate to this guy but look I'm an actor and I played Batman so there was that you know to act like that wasn't a factor it's just silly but yeah I did the work the same way I always do the work you buckle down and approach it essentially the same way [Music] [Applause] a bird suit yes he is but he's going out on that stage and risking everything to do something right can take it the other people what they want let's go back one more time and show them what we're capable of one of the great benefits of working with over the government some people might leave is that it's lovely to work with a collaborator 33 years I've worked in seven times over 33 years and you know I've plied my trade mainly as a kind of character of Supporting Actor he's always been the director that's asked me to play the leading roles you know and this time now I'm playing they're really the titular head the eponymous character so the this character was difficult because all the research and there's a lot of it was all absolutely contradictory every picture of him look different every piece of actual eyewitness account of how he was no different so what you were dealing with was trying to build this character every time we go one way with it you were contradicting yourself but luckily we created honor and an amalgam of human beings and alkalis the furious people so he was a contradiction anyway I'd must have read about seven biographies about this guy and looks at pictures looked at all his work Noah suddenly realized that actually the whole point of making the content to stop the contradiction being a barrier the contradiction was the whole point I mean we're all contradictions as human beings we are massive contradictions sounds to a lesser or larger degree mr. Tanner seems to have taken leave a fault Tanna clearly losing his eyesight master beats I here present which mr Turner has just said I believe you to be a man of great spirit and fine feeling [Music] universe is chaotic and you need a suit mr. Turner [Music] so when we when we were liberated by the fact that this bloke was both kind and horrible generous and mean funny wicked sometimes really sweet sometimes a total also and what was brilliant about that was very very difficult trying to create this this genius this visual poet who took happened to turn out to be someone who was like a simian mucker somebodies I say simian I tried but a lot of people said he's like a pig you know yeah anyway there's all sorts of as a whole zoo of animals people what is great is it it was difficult for them we realized to actually just create someone who was actually revolutionising the sublime and the sublime didn't mean what is now a rather camp term for a rather charming piece of cheesecake the sublime meant that somebody was able to convey paint realize and make you understand what is both beautiful in nature and horrendous at the same time so this beauty that you look at Turner and you think my my god what is this some of it is conventional and some of it is later work it's not and you think what created that and if you didn't know anything about Turner that we were revealing you think he was this romantic character and then we this guy was revealing this this mud creature is amazing and then we realising in fact the more we went with that the more we realized the tension with inside this incongruous genius was the man had created a it was never gonna be someone who was gonna have an easy time but if that with any cricket person I think to a certain degree there's a lot of tension a lot of handsome and rather people who get lucky with almost sorts of things they were still pretty great artists inherently competetive stratosphere as well that's great well it's that union thing isn't it the the erotic and the destructive those are the two sort of primal full forces they were otic to join and have empathy and love whether it's one-to-one or through society yeah I'm greedy and then the destructive is to define yourself as different and separate and build walls and fight wars its kind yeah this one I said that and when the Surrealists like Max earns any of those a lot of them used to get up in the morning I have a wash I put on a suit and a tie and sit and paint the most remarkable insides of the fantasies of someone's you know soory or mine so it's always a there's the mixture of turmoil is often always there do you think the Leo McKern Turner I do I remember it yeah but I didn't watch it again you don't want to copy anybody and and also especially if someone's really good you know you don't you don't want to start a business anything and oh my god you know I mean someone's already done it much better than I'm gonna do it so you're better off just ignoring how about your decision to do boyhood what's the most challenging thing about taking that all nothing nothing was challenging about it because III feel that we all get a lot of credit sometimes for taking risks or something but when you're working with a world-class filmmaker I don't ever feel I'm taking a risk you know that's when you feel safe but what was interesting about boyhood was that Rick was offering me a job I don't think an actor had ever been offered before which was to really get to use time as your clay he came to me and said I want to do this movie about a young boy right we're gonna cast a six year old boy and I wanted to kind of be like literature a little bit and we're gonna just write it as we go and I want you to do a portrait of fatherhood I was a young dad my daughter was three and my son was on the way and both of our fathers are very similar both from Texas both our dads are in the insurance business so I'll spoken men baseball fanatics you know do we have a lot in common he said I want you to do a portrait of fatherhood you know immediately the sensation of remembering who my dad was when I was six and who he was when I graduated from high school and how different that person was and would it be interesting to try to connect those dots where you could really use time and see from a child's point of view how time shapes a man so was it challenging yes I guess but all under the category of fun not how we are going to talk to one another all right no I will not be that guy you cannot put me in that category all right the biological father I spend every other week with and I make polite conversation you know well he drives me places and buys me [ __ ] no talk to me Samantha how was your week I don't know dad it was kind of tough Billy and Ellen broke up and Ellen's kind of 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 off so now it's a zebra okay but I still think I'm gonna get an egg Mason how was your week well dad you know I was gonna tough Joe he's kind of a jerk actually he stole some cigarettes from his mom he wanted me to smoke him but I said no because I knew what a hard time you had quitting smoking dad seamless the way he did it and you have to also factor in which often people don't factor into great difficulty Alejandro Inarritu as an example of degree its degree of difficulty were factored into somebody giving somebody something or judging something you got to really what Ethan did because I watched and I thought man those are smooth transitions and it's one thing to be locked in your work for two months for three months or five months or whatever it is and that's kind of where your focuses and you can track the transitions you can track the changes in the levels he had to my wrong go away maybe work on a play work on a another film and come back and slide back into those troubles because we're really about the you know never gave up the guy because you also didn't have a finished script when you started did you did you see what work you done did you come back a year later say okay let's see what we have so far or a real clear idea of what we were trying to achieve yeah of what I was going for and it just became about when do we sell the GTO yeah when's the right time when does it seem like it you know that film by the time the GTO gets sold but son your dad's sold that car that you identified with your dad you know my dad has a Chevy Impala or whatever Barracuda whatever it is that you know them I identified masculinity with this car and by the time it happens in the car is gone it actually was three years after the moment the you know it seemed inevitable it wasn't you know in do you know what I mean at all anyway it was fun to do [Music] Benedict I've always felt with you that you resist Fame to some degree is that true there's so many strands of it aren't them and if you mean being scrutinized in in your public life which isn't your work if you mean requirements of your time which distract your focus and your energy from what you actually brought you to that point where you're being distracted with your focus and your energy that's a complete catch-22 the more work you do the more attention there is the so therefore you know it's it's a strange thing you tried to escape by you know dissolving into work and it keeps catching up with you every time you start because it's something that's part of the the process of work now to to publicize it so I'm just I'm saying that because it feels hypocritical to make any complaint about Fame when you I'm doing a round table mouth without even reporter what the [ __ ] if I got to say that's you know it's ridiculous that I'm complaining of famous sitting here complaining about Fame um you have a role model whose career you emulate Olivier for instance the hundreds no not specifically no definitely not who most influenced you as an actor oh well many different members of movie talk before the tape was running about Stephen delaine's Hamlet when I was seventeen that was a massive impact to me that the sort of essential quite still truth of what he did and the hilarity of it just utterly owned every single beat of that character I knew nobody else was Hamlet by him you know it was extraordinary and then you saw mine and then I appreciate if there's some actor whose work you wish you want to emulate or whose really taught you something when I first came out to LA I ran a clean and sober and I put watched it like 17 times back-to-back with friends of mine and that was at a moment for me when acting was becoming very real like I was I was really a student of it and you were you know Batman Beale juice clean and silver this stuff you're just kicking ass and doing all this unbelievable work that I found so inspiring you know and I also loved your interviews you know you do these interviews and call everything the way it was the way it kind of seemed like it could be to me I think sometimes we don't know that what we do we all have an effect on other people and what we do does matter you know every little thing and when acting was at its most malleable for me you know you were a real 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 um I have no idea but I want to jump back to that last thing only because I similarly I've never said this to Tim that um no family at all I have any interests and my mom and dad because I had an interest would take me to the theater and one of the first things I went and saw was um the Midsummer Night's Dream at the National Theatre and Tim was playing bottom and it was all set in mud and there was a contortionist playing puck this woman and when when the ears came onto bottom this contortionist got up on Tim zo Tim's shoulders and her feet were the ears and I remember afterwards we went on a tour behind and that is when when I got sold on like on genuinely on the magic of it and and I know it does feel like it was that one moment you thought I want to wear it is what it's the time when I was like because I didn't know anything about that one hold anything I don't know it was it directed by Robert Powers yeah what to really say that it's fantastic because it was one of the most uncomfortable experience not only were you performing in the best-designed wet fart you'd ever seen a french-canadian contortionist on my back when I was trying to do thanks be a comedy and it felt like hell and you go back two days and there were people wearing Varun socks widget planters warts you know and it looked like an IRA dirty protest but the Royal dog school theater you never got a sensation whether the audience were enjoying or not because it was so attritional I mean I've got to tell you this story but one day somebody came in because they had to test it was in a massive pile of water so so so I'm so pleased that you liked it so somebody came in and said you've not heard the latest someone's done a poo in the mud hole right and I said what are you talking about someone's done a poo in the mud I said I'm laying in that before the audience come in they said we know that we have to test it someone's done a [ __ ] in the mud I said this is outrageous and I went I went to the stage doorkeeper the National Theatre had been there for years my reformed woman I said you're never gonna guess what I've just heard you know the fairies were all diving around someone's done a pilot she said a rat doesn't surprise me we've had a phantom [ __ ] at the Royal National Theatre for years so can you run that by me again a Phantom [ __ ] now think of all the people of words are then asked to it who is the Phantom is he still there who started it I mean there's a pantheon of classical in the world and someone was droppin a log in we're talking about the classic Savannah spoil [Music] what's the biggest mistake you've made Wow you're not holding back I think one of the biggest mistakes it could make he's saying that you know enough yeah because you don't you can't because otherwise you'd stop and it'll keep repeating itself yes it is funny I I did a movie I remember I was about 29 years old and I remember being very frustrated with the director because I felt that he was an idiot and he was really holding me back from doing the work that I wanted to do and when I think back on it now I feel so embarrassed turn 30 and all of a sudden there's like another room opened up and all of a sudden I saw hallways of things I didn't know in the older I get the more I would never be frustrated with the director like that you know you have to meet them there's a great Brando quote about that but you have to meet every director is your kind of spiritual spouse you said to marry them to make the movie they want to make because if you're resisting them all along they're gonna be in the editing room there it'll notice before they're browned oh well he said it's a very young age directors would famously give them a difference yeah he says that kind of thing and yet if you watch Last Tango in Paris that is an actor completely committed to that story and he's inside a movie the way that you know you very rarely see inside a very dangerous film a film that deals with erotica which human sexuality is something you know that nobody wants to talk about on a real adult level about mourning death fear of death fear of getting older sex you know I mean were you talking about turning and you're talking about you know being gay whether the movie could've been made ten years ago and I can't help but think about just simply 20 years ago how radical it was for an actor to play a gay person when River Phoenix was in my own private Idaho this is not a movie about a war you know a secret top secret war guys it's just about a young kid who wants to be gay it was radical that he was doing that you know I was his age and his contemporary and was like people will think you're gay dude you know you can't do that your career will be over this is a vestige of that still like years to come also like you can't cross today is there any threshold that you can't peel off Elia is probably beautiful would be could you make lost ten patient Christ today and get away with it Martin Scorsese could it was dangerous I would have trouble now anytime you four Farrelly Brothers my to have a heart well you know I think the real conversation to have here is the one that 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 whether to what connection if you looked at the last 50 years of the Academy Awards for example what percentage of them were British and what why here in this giant country of America this you know I don't think Americans are represented at the bathtub they don't take us that seriously but we take you in question what's really serious is that I've been to England and worked on the English stage and seen the respect not only that the actors have for acting but the community at large even the way they were view it and critique it there's more so award for a young person like you coming up to have the right fence posts of which to guide yourself there's so much respect given to youth and money whereas when you get to London who is really respected Vanessa Redgrave who's really respected Ian McKellen you know these people Mike Lee did you agree with that I think Ethan's being very very complimentary about that but I think it grows if it has a structure it's grown out of the fact that we don't actually really have a film industry people don't get whipped up and sucked up and taken away into the unlost into a system you know can spoil you because we haven't got one what we've got and also we're spoilt in the sense that you know there's a more bookish intellectual theater based culture in New York whereas LA is about the visual image so you know we're we're really lucky and I say we don't have to make a specific geographical choice as to where we will begin 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 friend shows doing stuff at miles ago I did I need you you could just keep you confined and mate or to the most oh wow at what stage because my first ever teacher taught me extraordinary truth by literally line reading Shakespeare at me that then opens blank verse so I could read it like prose the next year um my my monodrama teachers he was time to seated the less ancient and Shakespeare faith he you know he opened the doors of American theater to me and the wonders of Mamet and Miller and Tennessee Williams I was just a whole raft of it and then beyond that you get you get incredible I put the other nuggets of wisdom that I will carry to my grave from what hopefully we're using them as well but such things about being present things about not fixing things on to yourself about grounding a truth from within and getting away from the hatbox things I grew up doing a lot of stuff at school my voice broke I'm playing sort of titania Queen of the fairies or Rosalind and I was like it's playing Willy Loman age 17 so I had this huge kind of showing off period of me you know I think also the interesting thing about the three characters we're playing is it's about British stories so its history I think that's the other thing that the England the films that make it over here are quite often to do with heritage and 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 to lower the turn slightly down back to a sort of British entertainment and Hollywood so called Hollywood which is a broadchurch never never underestimate how pleased British actors are and how much they yearn to work in Hollywood it's true it's not like oh darling we just do it because we're slowly my pretend they say Oh Hollywood oh you know I suppose if one is hot one will go that's a load of balls because most people given the opportunity that was given that play a part in a Hollywood movie would jump at it and they would say you can stick Polonius and change [Laughter] [Music] last question fool you it is that one character or one person you would like to play or be intimidated to play I don't know why I just popped in my head but Buster Keaton oh I don't know why I just jumped up because I know a little bit about him and obviously he's he was an extraordinary athlete and an performer but he was partly deaf and that's the reason why I didn't really make it into the you know the talkies or whatever you know he he couldn't do that you know very well I didn't know that that's interesting I was so fast no he's the last person I would have expected you to I don't know literally popped in my mind that you'd like to pay a player you'd be scared to play I think both I mean I think I'm scared to play everything that I'm that I'm interested in because you just want to do it well and do it justice I guess Michael Ted Williams not the most loved man in the world but extraordinary extraordinary guy actually I can't really think any males but before we're gonna further you know what I'm gonna do thank you I know you got a little uncomfortable warmth thank you very much so tell us and coming from a really good actor well tell us why Ted Williams Ted Williams is a complicated person and an extraordinary set of balls and and I literally mean his ball still holds the record for the highest average of anyone when given the choice of sitting out a game or stepping up to bat to see if he could be the only would he end up at 400 or 401 or something like over 400 over 400 he said no I'll bat and then I think two singles or something instead of saying no I'm safe I've got the record now I'll be okay yeah and and being afraid of that he embraced it he was also a world-class fly fisherman far before it was a trendy thing and that was before Redford oh yeah yeah and he and he was a heroic World War 2 pilot who I think it was shut down once or twice and really really complicated dude well I did I've always been fascinated by Charles at all and you know plan access by axis is a bit it's a little bit inverted in self-indulgent but there's something so fascinating about I think one of my earliest memories ever of seeing an actor and being both frightened terrified so sorry for something and frightened by it was Lance back a nod to DOM I watched him when I was a master being like a rule four or five and I shall never forget that what he achieved you know that mixture of being frightening pathetic sad and then eventually triumphant and of course he had a very interesting life so that's what I'm designing in your college finished design that's one of the rules too when I was looking like a little kid I saw that I thought that I was fascinated yeah yeah sorry no no in the slice cuz that's really all about you I don't really think in those terms about people that I want to play in the life of an actor you kind of longed to intersect with a writer in the right way hmm you know that 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 they blow up together you know I felt the same way about Nathan Lane in the play he did last year some know it's gonna escape me as a title the Nance well you just feel like oh this play is meeting this actor at this moment in their life and the play is bigger and the actor is bigger everything is more and I think we all kind of longed to be a part of something original hmm Eunice's maybe I do you know I'm one of those people that like at school I I would hate to be told go and make up your own essay title do you I mean I like to be told what the essay title is and then I go and I I would never take is something like the Stephen Hawking film I would never have thought your your right for that unless you've read a script and you then throw yourself at it um but you did fight for this role of walking didn't I did fight for it because I because I read the script in it and it sort of blew my mind but I fought for it in that way that I feel like we all do if you but that doesn't necessarily mean that you believe that you can do fine for a job and appearing really confident and telling people the right things and then you get it and then you reassess how you're going to go about it but for several years random people have come out to become by the way you should play which of the second at some point and I'd go okay and then a couple years ago I was doing job and I got a call from the British director Michael Grandage he's like by the way I'm going to say two words you have to say yes or no he said Richard - I was too embarrassed to admit that I'd never read Richard a second but enough people had said that I should play it but I was like okay I said yes I wouldn't read the play and he's a futile extraordinary character but sort of useless I tend to quite I don't really I always found the most interesting things in my life has always been those parts that are so up so far from me and then I go well let's just try going in for it and see what happened Benedict Dolly Parton I mean it's not an obvious choice but it's a choice I'm slightly the same as Eddie I've sort of lived in that fortunate sort of land of yeah just I wasn't sure that you were joking when you said dolly pop that's because I do find it brilliant fascinating original and a woman but apart from that it doesn't what's wrong with fail you know I mean I I know no she she does deserve a film about her but I can't think of a better access the meat that are bought appropriately anatomically designed to do that Rob not seriously though I like a DI I've had this sort of very lucky conference of things that have interested me that people have talked about before whether they're classic roles or whether they're things that the things have written with me in mind and I've kind of fallen on my feet a bit I mean I I like to I like the idea of you know determining choices and amongst that but not I don't have our ambitions for a particular person they're good well thank you I'd like to thank him Spall ethan hawke Eddie Redmayne Benedict Cumberbatch Channing Tatum and Michael Keith for taking part in The Hollywood Reporter round table [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Hollywood Reporter

Views: 1,359,187

Rating: 4.9033113 out of 5

Keywords: Channing Tatum (Celebrity), Benedict Cumberbatch (Musical Artist), Actor (Profession), Ethan Hawke (Celebrity), Boyhood (Film), Eddie Redmayne (Film Actor), Timothy Spall (Film Actor), Michael Keaton (Celebrity), the theory of everything, mr. turner, the imitation game, foxcatcher, birdman, oscars 2015, oscars, actors, british actors, stephen hawking, bennett miller, richard linklater, oscar winner, academy awards, stephen galloway, thr, oscar, actor, movies, celebrity

Id: hdhv95gC1LQ

Length: 49min 4sec (2944 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 03 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/Moussekateer]

Timothy Spall's story from 30:20 onwards about the Royal National Theatre is hilarious.

[u/cdrake64]

Timothy Spall is one stoic looking motherfucker