FULL Actors Roundtable: Andrew Garfield, Jonathan Majors, Nicolas Cage & More | THR Roundtables

werner herzog used to say to me now nicholas let the pig loose that was before i made pig that's what he was saying let the people i saw i'm not a pig i'm more like a shark what do you mean i'm a pig let the pig loose you know the bliss of evil [Music] [Music] so let's dive in my first question is if you were teaching an acting class on day one how would you start out with the students what would be your first lesson oh wow andrew what do you think me why me because you said once i said wow yeah unfortunate like impulse that i had um the first day oh god i mean i wouldn't i wouldn't deign to know what my first day would be um i i i feel like it would be something to do with freedom something to do with humiliation in the sense of allowing oneself to fail in front of a bunch of people that you don't want to fail in front of i i say that maybe because that feels like it's been my journey for the last 20 years and i think about myself as a 17 year old trying to get it right i think about myself as a 38 year old trying to get it right and when i try to get it right i get it kind of like half right and when i allow myself to be a human being and follow impulses and get it wrong you end up somewhere much more interesting and much more alive so for me i think it would be about um collaboration in play and not making it about me or about how i'm doing versus how you're doing but actually what can we make together in the spirit of kind of um exploration and getting it wrong and allowing ourselves to get it wrong you just made that up right now just like no how is wicked brother all right yeah that's incredible thank god that yes and no yeah that's that's my answer it's been so long since acting classes i don't remember really i guess that's kind of what andrew was saying about just allowing the freedom to just express yourself and not getting it right because there's what is the right way you know and uh also i remember being an acting class and a lot of people took the classes just because they thought it was perhaps easier than biology and therefore they weren't they didn't really prepare so and i felt like the people who loved to do it were really eager and prepared and we had a couple teachers who were really kind of stricter than some in terms of like preparation if you want to be here be here all in 100 so that's kind of key don't be lazy you know so i'd keep it simple and just say i'm not here to lecture you yeah i want questions and answers ask me anything you want to ask me let's have this be a conversation uh if they asked me a little more deeply to scratch the surface i would say there's no real style of acting it's it's it's almost like a mixed martial art it can be whatever you want it to be you can combine you can create your own g kundo with acting don't get trapped in a style don't get trapped in naturalism and you know be open to your dreams be your imagination is your most important tool and uh there are ways to augment your imagination healthy ways to augment your imagination so that you're not necessarily doing your being and dreams dreams are important and i would say i remember one thing i learned in an acting class that a teacher said that stuck with him was kind of what you said is dare to suck and if you could do that and just you know be willing to be a fool i think you said that i think that's important uh and and don't do it for a lot of people i think do it for the wrong reasons a lot of people want to be famous and i see people kind of going down that road and they maybe aren't really in it for uh you know doing it to do it because they love it i think a lot of people just want to be famous and i don't think they realize what they wish for because i'm sure you guys have experienced fame and sort of what that brings could be a little challenging so i think a lot of people just do it for the wrong reason so yeah i'll speak on it i agree with everything everyone said especially the imagination the dreams subconscious all those things i would probably do all these things but i would just ask um the young artist you know how you're doing we first have to be honest with ourselves before you step into a character i think i think um if we don't make contact with ourselves it's very difficult to make contact with somebody else and we miss that part a lot we have an opportunity to do that every day how you doing well well i'm and you just say the line i'm good versus touching where you're at and then responding truthfully under imaginary circumstances et cetera um but yeah in addition to everything everyone who said uh i'd ask them how they're doing and and and create a space in which they can give the uh proper response um and that proper response is the truthful response and i think from that uh that i think that's we have to build confidence as actors you have to build confidence that you can fail that your strongest when you're vulnerable and the thing that makes you quote unquote famous or original um is speaking simply from that tiny small little voice that says you're feeling this way today and to be able to say that in front of a group of people that you don't know that's that's pretty much i would say 65 percent of the job yeah well vulnerability as you say is so much of what makes a good actor but it's also what we teach men not to be um men in particular and i'm just curious how you were able to find that vulnerability for yourself or preserve it i was talking the other night and someone asked me a similar question or said something similar about male female the male archetype you know in the movie that i'm here for pig you know there was a lot of men in the movie and did you what were you trying to bring from the male standpoint i just said i didn't see it in terms of a man i or i just saw it as a person what is person but where the sound comes through it doesn't matter i think you could be this character i could be maybe betty davis and all about eve i think the idea is to have it be genderless and have people relate to it one way or the other so you don't you don't have that it's man or or woman it's it's all it's just it's just emotion it's just per it's just person you know i'd be totally here for you as betty davis and all about eve i just want to be on the record i'll tell you i've been betty davis and all about even my own life in my own history it's happened it's happened well i say i'd say i say to that you know just holding holding your performance in my head um you're in mourning oh yeah yeah absolutely i don't think um i don't think morning has a has a gender exactly has no gender ambition has no gender love has no gender revenge has no gender right um and i think it's it's i mean unfortunately we we all can grow beards and this and that and they can we can be stuck in that masculine archetype but it's all about the facial hair they're pretty much in the shoulders you know and shoulders and then we're screwed but um i mean that's pretty much i have to say about that i was just i was just speaking to your to your performance which i thought was because it hits us at the end but for me at the end when it was that he was dealing with you know that amount of yeah uh tightness that he was walking around with holding that um holding that you know you go what is that what is that what is that and then it's revealed to us that oh he's in mourning when we find out that the pig is not needed for the truffles right right the [ __ ] is the fan then it becomes a human story that's what you know um and i think that's i mean real street said that didn't she she said her goal is that a essentially a cis white male can can appreciate and connect to her portrayal of any any character you know i think that's the objective you know as an artist you know um back to that class you know not to say okay you're an actor you're a guy dude just do the guy stuff you're the girl just do girl stuff you know there is no and we hold multitudes oh shut up now well you said it far more articulately than i did and i i do you hit it right there it's it's love and mourning and revenge is not male or female it's just us it's all of us you know when you do a period piece you're sort of made more aware of the gender roles obviously because of the different time period like cereal takes place in the 1600s it was written in the late 1800s by a man so obviously the character the female lead is she's put on a pedestal she's put behind glass like many of those characters were but the reason why it's a classic piece is that doesn't i think i think that's been imposed upon it by society upon the literature it's not what rastan's intention was if you go back and you really read his text so i think that's fascinating because he's a guy who was ahead of his time but um that's sort of one of the the the trappings of those period pieces you just completely go in there assuming the gender roles but if you take that away especially in our case her adapter was a female raider it's really not there it's just left and also i'd like to say i think that uh at least for me i'm sure all of us like being raised as men in the west we sort of aren't allowed to be vulnerable you sort of have this uh i don't know walls up at least i did you know you weren't allowed to show weakness and you know i think uh all speaking of vulnerability like all these roles that these guys did and myself included i think that's what it was is being vulnerable as a man i think that shows strength like you said and yeah that's what's interesting to watch yeah for me it took me a very long time to get to the point where i was able to like let that go and show weakness you know uh or vulnerability i mean i guess they're not the same thing but yeah it's interesting things like framing it framing it as weakness is how we've been right it's kind of programmed yeah against our own very natural impulses to be receptive as well as you know uh kind of out there slaying dragons like this yeah it's like a survival mechanism or something so like charles bronson grew up so poor that he actually had to wear his sister's dress to elementary school that's how poor he was he they had no money had to go to school dressed in a girl's clothes and you see the result of that in his stoic strong you know once upon a time in the west performance which is what i think you're talking about it's like we've been he had to do everything he could to to counterbalance that which is sad if you really think about it that it was like that it was that hard core then boy name sue kind of thing yeah that exactly that but it's i think what simon was talking about growing up in the west what we were taught which is that to or even many parts of asia even still like in japan or korea if you cry as a man you're look it's not not everybody but a lot of people think it's weak you know that's and that's but i've seen some great movies out of japan like coreyetta or like father like son and you see a great looking you know strong japanese man crying in that move and just like whoa you know and it really gets you you know that's just a spillover though isn't it yeah the spillover of i mean the beauty about our jobs is that we get to take on these i think i think every every hero every heroin every villain they are extremely vulnerable at some point and it's how they metabolize that emotion that puts them into action right the bigger the feet right the bigger the gaping hole then there there would be no there would be no story i mean that none of us would be here without without the vulnerability that our characters um kind of take on i think i thought it was so interesting when i read that when you met with the director of the harder they fall james samuel you sent him some poems afterward which when you're wanting to get a role as a cowboy outlaw seems a little bit surprising why did you do that and what were they i was that was an interesting beat because um as we've all experienced and i just it was one of my first times yeah i didn't have to um i didn't audition for the role right um it was a different type of audition process which i realized i hated because it didn't give me um again for me the process of of winning a role or gaining a role or being chosen for a role is me showing you me uh representing my take on the character and then you know because of my personal [ __ ] being picked right for that and i go oh great and so first day of shooting there's no problems um in this case that was not the case so i i felt that i needed to express to him my take on the character and so i wrote two poems um one one was essentially the rage of that love and then one was the loss of that love um and it was to to show him me in a way to say this is what i'm gonna do given the opportunity um which is actually you know a security blanket you know it's like please like i need to show you what it's going to be that way i don't go nuts and go crazy and not perform and and you know i couldn't i could have done my work that way but i need to be i need him to see me you know and show him that vulnerability and he happened to run with it and it was all right well what do you do when you really want to roll how do you how do you communicate that that's so cool though because it's like i want to make sure that you know what you're getting right it's like i want to make sure i know you're what you're about to deal with yeah because like you might have you probably have a lot of projections yeah just by looking at me or looking at my previous work about what you imagine yeah or what you imagine how i'm going to fulfill what maybe the vision you want in this film but actually these poems may give you something totally different and it's cool for you to say you're not the guy for me yeah that's right like that's like that's like self-empowering like it's like that's that's you kind of like giving him an out and giving you an out from a situation that may not be a good collaboration which is like crazy mature and wild and like kind of bold as hell it's like i've never heard the flip of that like people that you enjoy the audition process for that reason that you've proven something interesting because most actors myself included like that's scares me away from the whole craft the idea of auditioning yeah it's terrifying yeah it really is the worst and some people my wife is a theater director and some people can do great auditions and they get there right like that's all they had right right i think there's nothing to build off of or from that and how would they really know like in a casting office how would they really know if something was great if it was truly great right it would be unlike anything they'd seen before it would be original and that would probably terrify them so what i would say to that classroom going back to that classroom is if you're going to send an audition you know things look better in a frame so why don't you videotape it and and then show them different options so they know you're not completely out of your mind and say this is the range i can give you because other because if it's just in a room they're not going to know greatness when they see it and they don't know better than we know they don't we know we know what we can bring we know what our craft have we know what our instrument is yeah and they either very rarely have that eye where they can go oh wow that really i felt it or they're by and large going to be terrified of it which is what my experience was was that your experience has that been your experience they look at you and they go i don't know what you're doing right yeah looking at their nails yeah and to go back to what you said sometimes the more you want it the less it comes to you kind of thing like i remember i would over study for an audition i'd want it so bad and i'd go in there and nothing would happen or i'd go in there disheveled and half hung over and booked the job so it's kind of one of those things where sometimes the more tight you hold on because you're making it precious yeah i think people feel that this should be the opposite of making anything precious right and like that's why there's so much uh sort of pressure put on young actors because every moment they come in they fix their hair they put their makeup in the next take has to be really precious and now you just should just you know cassavetes style just does are you rolling i don't care if you're rolling this is happening you film it it's happening as opposed to action preciousness and got to get it right but how much of that is is the is the grown-up actor you know because we're again back to our our classroom yeah we're trying to get these we're trying to get these kids back to the sandbox you know where they're not thinking about oh i gotta have a role you know like like they're just thinking about this is how i would play it you know like but i find a lot of people that i work with if they're over prepared they're not listening to you no i agree like are you in the scene with me yeah because we're just can't we just rip but there's another weird thing going back to the acting class that we've all created like like you you in america you guys have the active studio and you have a place that like for for actors to come and gather and keep the muscles working and work on things that you would never usually work on in the uk once you're at a drama school even if you don't go to drama school you're kind of just like everything is that pressurized i think it's the same here because i think not many people are involved in the active studio as much as maybe you should be but like you have the history of shakespeare everybody knows i was on a chat show and yeah last week and one of those on cam and we were talking about hamlet for 15 minutes that doesn't happen but it would also be so wonderful for us to have a gym for us to have a room to go and like keep that looseness keep that fair and mentor younger people who are going out on their first auditions who are kind of like who have that who it's inevitable to have that like i how am i going to make ends me i don't want to work at starbucks for the rest of my life i don't i want to be able to make a living off of this so like this is the most important moment of my day of my month this audition like how like to to stretch that out for them to kind of like give them space and for us as well i know i need it i need to keep my muscles loose so that when i get on set i don't go oh this is like the moment where i perform whatever that means right i know i find that interesting that we don't have that even like just this now talking to a bunch of actors around the table it's just so rare and beautiful to be able to say oh yeah we have similar things that we kind of like struggle with and i don't know i find it quite mentorship is such an interesting thing that i don't think we really have as much in our community than maybe we need to look for i think it needs to be there it's like i i consider myself a student i'm a student and every time i get to work with a a young actor for like alex wolf or fred heckenstein yeah you know but i'll be like well what do you think of this because i'm i'm i want i'll learn from you you know and and we rip off of each other you see so i think that's the mindset and then also going back to the precious thing i think if i had to talk to this art the classroom we didn't start it you started yeah our little classroom i love that you're running with it thank you with the risk of sounding like like an arrogant you know what i would say you know what you can't be great unless you know you're great and you are precious so be precious about it because what you have to offer them is precious whether they get it or not doesn't matter you're precious go in and be great like you know you're great because that's what you are three of you around this table are working with directors who were making their first feature um which is an interesting leap of faith i mean they had experience in other realms i mean how did you know that you were stepping into it that you were going to be in the right hands i mean nick in your case i was just conversation well first of all i had the luxury of them you know michael and vanessa writing a just a script that sung to me it was just so lyrical and i just felt i knew i had the life experience the dreams the imaginations to be able to be rob without forcing it we didn't do more than one or two takes but i sat down with michael we had a quiet little conversation i said you know i had a dream last night about my cat merlin and something horrible happened to my cat i just know i can play this part because this pig but by the way did you try the shishito peppers aren't they good and then it was we just started smiling at each other and we were off to the races and it was it just flowed you know you know you can tell right when you meet somebody you have an intuition about them you know it's going to work right yeah they click can you tell how do you know when you're going to click with a director i mean in your case you had nurtured this play right uh before i mean i was a part of it you were part of something that was you know somebody else is somebody else's brand um and joe wright comes aboard how do you know you're all gonna collaborate well together you don't you just you just jump off the cliff um and if he was inspired by something that we did a stage production of sierra now that he was inspired by to make a movie of it um and uh if he's inspired by what we're all inspired by then that's part of the journey that there's a trust there but you don't know going in and that's sort of scary every time but it usually works out rare is the bad experience i mean it can be rough experiences i think if if you do it long enough and i think we've been doing it long enough we know through experience the kind of personality that you're not going to gel with there is it's very clear so when you so when i got to sit down with michael i knew he wasn't that and i knew we would we would jive and we would have a flow together but you can tell if someone's all about themselves and there's an arrogance or there's a just a kind of self-involvement where they don't they don't look at the beauty of filmmaking which is that it's a collaboration you know i think after time it becomes almost like a second sight instinctively you can see somebody and go okay that's probably not going to work out and that's a rare thing with first-time directors as well in my experience anyway there's a kind of going back to the tightness there's like a there's a fear that creeps in especially if they if someone isn't owning their lack of experience or their lack of knowledge there's that there's there's that terrible like yes well then i have to be in control of everything everyone and i have to treat actors like puppets and i have to do and then suddenly you want to go home and you don't want to be a part of this anymore because you're not actually being asked to show up right like with your poetry like it's like i want to make sure i'm bringing all this poetry like did you want it because i'm bringing it if you even if you want it or not but with so with lynne manuel miranda you know obviously he's you know he's done a few things he's a pulitzer whatever winner before the age of whatever [ __ ] and he's like so like when he when he calls you know that whatever he's calling you about is gonna be rich it's gonna be textured it's gonna be um deeply moving it's gonna be joyful it's gonna be the whole human experience from the work that he's attracted to but he says lynn shares something as a first-time director with the thing that set apart like you know like like i've been so lucky crazy early on to work with like redford and scorsese and fincher who who are like they they want everyone's talent they want everyone to bring all of their talent the confidence of best idea wins the confidence of collaboration that for until then manuel miranda i thought only came with time only came with a real kind of settling into the self as you know unknowing of the self as a filmmaker as a storyteller but lin's first film he was like you're gonna make me look so much better because like he looks incredible as he is that's no detriment to him but like that was one of the beautiful things about about lynn was like actually he made you he made your consciousness expand because his consciousness is so expanded like the fact that he was like yeah i can direct a film yeah let me give it a try like he's missing a couple of synapses like he's missing that kind of like censored doubt he's like no i think i can he was raised by parents that just didn't traumatize him i guess and he's just kind of got this like clear runway of like not needing therapy and he's just like kind of like creating just like a child like a six-year-old still like this incredibly precocious six-year-old and then that's becomes infectious and he and he loves everyone he loves talent he loves creativity and and everyone bringing their own particular unique beauty and and and dreams to to his bigger dream so yeah for me that's what it that's what it was a lot of these uh directors become very micromanaging when they lack confidence a truly confident filmmaker knows not to fix something which isn't broken so what they do is they they welcome the blossom the flower of our creativity and they they want us to bring it you know and so and then maybe they'll give us one or two takes and if there's something a little often they'll come in and sculpt you know but they want to see what we bring i remember when i was working with ridley on matchstick men and i i went into his office and we had a cigar together and i said you know really i've been reading this script and i think yeah it's ocd but a little of what i know about obsessive-compulsive disorder there's also a tourette's component so i really just want to explore like really graph out the different outbursts the different twit twitches whatever so that we can have that component he looked at me so you know what nick you you bring you find it and bring it and that was it you know that's confidence right right um simon in your case you get this phone call from sean baker just a few days before he wants you on the set can you tell us what was going on in your life when you got that phone call and yeah so this is pretty interesting way to get a job i was sitting out and i moved out to the desert you know uh right before the pandemic hit and i was sitting out it was july of 2020 and i think everybody was sort of like you know what's going on i think we were collectively in a very weird place we were living in the twilight zone still kind of are and i get a call out of the blue from a mutual friend of sean baker saying can i give sean baker your phone number of course you can uh and he calls me up and he said hey i need to uh have you audition right now can you send me a just basically a cold read of this uh monologue so i did sent it to him and he said i need you in texas in three days we start shooting so i didn't even have time to think and going back to the director conversation he said do you trust me and i said yeah i do and off instinct just from seeing his films from seeing florida project and knowing just kind of you could just tell through his film films that uh he was i don't know i just i trusted him and he said you're not gonna make any money i'm not gonna make any money we're gonna make a cool little movie just get out here and let's go i know you don't know me and i trusted him and i went out there and here we're sitting here now because i just trusted it and that was and i remember him saying i don't want to deal with your agent or manager um that's going to slow down the process i need you here right away so i didn't tell my agent until the very last day of shooting that i even shot the movie i called my agent on the last day and said i just wrapped the sean baker movie wow yeah how high are you right now like yeah in joshua's tree right yeah they pretty much just wrapped up sean baker yeah they didn't understand it was very unorthodox how it happened and and uh credit to sean for just like yeah rolling the dice on me because quite frankly the phone wasn't ringing very much and he he saw something in me so he trusted me and i trusted him and that's a beautiful thing such a spark they have in that movie sean and simon my god it's blistering the the the speed and the movements that he has and that you know and the rhythms it's so it's so spontaneous and electric thank you you have so much fun watching thank you yeah it's like music i was watching recently and it's like there's a rhythm to it because it is a comedy it's a dark comedy but there's definitely a rhythm and shawn you know sean i trust him as well because it's so rare that someone writes directs and edits the movie so he knows what he wants from conception to execution he knows everything that's happening and so often it gets lost when you have a producer over the shoulder putting in his two cents and an editor ruining it and so i really trusted like i could just sit back and let the captain do his thing yeah and that just gave me so much freedom yeah but what did he let you do your thoughts oh yeah exactly it was a mutual truth and moving together that is a great question right this is kind of what you want and i agree like you just kind of you one director is going to set you loose yeah you know say okay go yeah you know um i don't want to feel confined and that's not true all right yeah that's used to say to me now nicholas let the pig loose that was before i made pig that's what he had what do you mean i'm a pig you let the pig loose you know the bliss of evil sounds like somebody stay in my horse yeah yeah on the holiday farm my horse's name was cinco and if you want to think of the girl you say all right go ahead you say go ahead and he take out your horse my horse and then music and boom and boom and james samuel of course right who was the director of harley fall and is a uh as a scientist is a mad scientist i think um and very much you know a first-time director but you go okay bro um hear the palms okay you see you see what you see what i might what i want to do um and he just sets the space up it was almost like um to me in addition to the confidence that a first-time director has to give they have to have a clear vision and have a clear faith in their in their protagonist you know you've got to feel that you got to be like okay you you want me to do this one thing spike lee said to me um on the fire plus he said do it more house so you just call me morehouse just do it you know and it was literally like that is what you i mean that's a staged director especially in james samuel kind of doing the same thing and he's a music producer you know he's a music man he's a full-on creative he's an artist some things he'll he'll say all the time i'm an artist i'm an artist i'm an artist one thing he would say on set the whole time is i'm making a classic i'm making a classic i'm looking at classic and i i just keep my mouth shut but if someone says everybody the classic you know for eight months in the middle of quarantine you go like [ __ ] it yeah we are let's go yeah i mean um was that his decision to do the reggae music on the all over that was so cool visually that messed my brain up watching a cowboy western with reggae yeah that was really cool at least you had a nice horse my horse on uh butcher's crossing named rain man wanted to kill me rain man where'd you shoot that uh montana i was in uh in a blackfoot country on the reservation rain man kept trying to knock me off the horse he would try to run me my head into like roofs and then he would try to throw me and then i'd get off the horse and try to be nice and he would headbutt me it was not fun i've always had good experiences with animals i've always had great experiences with horses but rain man wanted to kill you right now i'm so glad i got through that movie alive butcher's crossing i am and the last shot it was just like gabe i'm not doing it i'm not the director's name is gabe i said i'm not getting on the horse again just just and then and then one of the uh the the native americans said oh nick's just gonna you know get off the horse we'll get arms okay fine i'll do it i'll do it so i got on the horse and literally again he kept going around trying to throw me off and i was like that's it that was my last shot and you had to make it almost like a stunt you did make it a stunt you almost killed me on my last shot yeah well yours was a good experience as you can tell i've got post-traumatic stress disorder from what you're talking about montana with i think a man named scotty do you know rain man i know raymond i've written rain man are you written rainbow scotty did you play the boys black foot reservation with rain man yeah no he came down to santa fe i think he's been around rain man i've ridden right now i've been thinking so was he nice to you was rain man nice i think you may be a little older when i got it [Laughter] older doesn't mean we get nicer no that was i just rapped like three weeks ago and that's right yeah then yeah he's fine he's fine with you he likes it and that's it no seriously if this it was a clear decision on rayman's part that you wanted to kill me yeah yeah and it didn't stop and they wouldn't give me another horse so every day and then we were being chased by a herd of literally bison and i'm on rayman i'm not sure he's going to get me out of there i'll stop talking please please don't yes i oh my goodness did not anticipate this would be the topic that you would bond over but i'm so glad we got out we bring rain man to the class yes rain man comes to class but [ __ ] up that classroom peter you're singing in sierra no what was that like for you trying to sing singing beautifully doing trying you were singing brother there's singers and then there's people who can sing um you know getting back to that thing i'm going to see how i'm just the same thing i don't want to talk about it because it's embarrassing that the first time directors i think they get so much pressure to get it right again and they they have so many things that they have to juggle but what i feel like what the great directors realize is you get you can get so much more done if you just slow down um it just i know that sounds very zen but i feel like there's they're they're they're given like five everything when the first time directors are compartmentalizing everything too much and they're giving very little attention to each thing then therefore as opposed to slowing it down and absorbing everything and but singing um um um is is uh very weird did you have to take lessons or did you already know how to carry a note um uh uh i took some lessons well you have a beautiful voice you don't you don't like listening yeah what are you a baritone right there's if you yeah they're you know when you listen to people like matt berninger who is the singer for the national who wrote who wrote the lyrics for our our film and you know nina simone and leonard cohen and all the greats that just have just everything a bit of their soul and their voice that's what you try to do because you can't do an imitation of another singer which a lot of people who don't usually sing do and i had to stop listening to the national for a few months so i wouldn't do an imitation of matt there's just that because nobody's going to sound like freddie mercury no one ever will sound like freddie mercury but we all want to sound like him when we're singing along to him um so you just sing from your soul whatever you have of it andrew was that your experience then there's real singers no come on i love you but you know what it's cool though about that you don't want a bunch of really good singers you want like just a mixed bag of them and we're not opera singers you want you know it's just like you want that sort of difference in all the different voices and we had that in syria now you guys have that yeah but i'm not willing to co-sign anything you just said about your own voice i'm not i'm not going to enable this [ __ ] dinklage um it's beautiful dude like it is singing from your soul that's that's that's it you just gotta jump off that cliff and do something you've never done before and i was like never done a musical since i was a kid you know so i'll try that well it's vulnerable it's like going back to the vulnerability compensated it's like i found it to be yeah another another chamber of myself that i didn't know was there that i was pretty scared to know existed because it and and and i had a great teacher a great woman called liz kaplan who basically does what you do what what you just said you what you described it's not about imitation it's not about being a singer it's about just unveiling your voice yeah how your soul is expressed through your heart it's going to work right but she just kind of peels the onion she just she's just doing wacky weird kind of woo-woo [ __ ] just to kind of get you in touch with you and get and increase your range i don't know if you found this but i had to increase i'd never sung before and i had to increase my range a lot and as as i was going up the scale like i would just have these i would just sob in the middle of her um like workshop space it was just me and her with her like beetles posters and her purple glasses and she's like it's good this is good this is this means that we're doing the words it's great and i'm just like fully sobbing just because i've reached another octave or another note in my body like there's a part of my body that had been shut off wow you know and because she was what she wants you to get to is that ultimately that place of when you're born and you're just screaming and there's no um there's no tension it's all again going back to total freedom letting the unconscious come through letting the dreams come through like just being fully holy completely in touch with the self which is we're never going to get to until if we're lucky the last breath of our lives and that's what keeps us in that divine dissatisfaction place with our voice or otherwise with our craft sounds like therapy oh yeah it is oh no all of this this is this is all therapy i remember i went to an acting class in new york and i was very new to the class and i was like first-timer and it was some real serious broadway you know theater actors and i was the new guy and i remember having this really challenging thing i had to pretend that my dad was dead in my arms and i just couldn't get the tears to come and i remember snapping on the teacher saying is this acting or [ __ ] therapy and i remember a student said bite your tongue i was like all right this is like therapy well yeah for me uh karaoke was like therapy i i until someone videotaped my punk rock version of princess purple rain and it went everywhere and i said i'm not going to karaoke that is don't steal the gift yeah from the world right you need to keep giving karaoke singing is therapy i think absolutely but i just yeah karaoke is supposed to be private you know it's like a prayer exactly you're not supposed to get videotaped with somebody's cell phone and have it nick is just using this platform to get out of his gripes against that karaoke video [ __ ] rain man was clearly behind the ladder crane man was behind yeah jonathan larson if you look at footage of him singing this one man show it's like and he wasn't a great singer but like he was singing for his life it was life and death and he was literally singing for the lives of everyone around him who were getting sick and in a lot of cases dying because of the aids epidemic so like he wasn't someone that you know he was like struck with this feeling of well how do i heal a broken world is writing and singing a song enough because i don't think i can build houses for people i don't think i can figure out what this cocktail is supposed to be for my friends i have to just be the piano and write and sing that's what i have to do but but in action it became uh it became life and death it became an attempt to kind of create enough ripples to revolutionize and wake up a generation of people into creating the change that needed to happen in order for his friends not to die it was literally that important and when you see him singing he is singing to the back row of the galaxy so i knew i knew i needed to get to the place where i felt confident enough whether i sounded good or not was kind of immaterial it was more like i have to be able to act as if i'm going to reach and confidently kind of reach the back row well you're ringing the bell in a town they'd ring a bell and everyone would hear it and that tone would put everybody in the same frequency and so if you're singing to save lives as you're seeking to make change those notes you hit live in a certain place in you and because we're all the same species we hear them resonates and we understand what that is exactly um it's interesting because it's again to to the you know the masculinity question so many so many things happen to young boys that cut us off from those parts of expression where i mean i grew up in texas i'm a black man from from dallas texas you know i'm supposed my voice supposed to be worry down here i'm not supposed to sing i'm not supposed to cry you know all these things you know this is probably too shiny though i love it um thanks bro thanks bro but but there's the beauty of like of of the characters you know and of the work we do you know you said that's why we're we're the phrase you know we're grappling you know to live those are the characters we play you jonathan has to experience those things and unfortunately so there's andrew oh fortunately so does andrew oh yeah i mean like like as you move cyrano moves you know like that's for me that's the gift of being an artist you kind of try to find the things that are uncomfortable you know in a role in order to grow personally otherwise you just hang it up you know and singing singing to me represents you know it's it's thought you know you actually you've actually gone to a place where you can no longer say it something has transcended this place of conversation not enough and now we're it's not enough and now we're here and we've got to sing it you know and sometimes it's rage sometimes it's heartache sometimes you're trying to get indicated on that love try to get married to understand i love you you know don't leave me you know all these things but yeah i want to ask you guys a few industry questions one of them is there's about 600 movie theaters that closed in north america that have still been closed since the pandemic and yet there's incredible movies out this year as reflected around this table i mean just an absolute bumper crop and i'm curious how do you think the movie industry sort of pushes through this moment there's tons of talent there's great stuff being made but will the industry come out on the other side of this i think the industry is actually going to be fine i think there's uh you know when i when some of my movies first started going to the quote-unquote video on demand or you know straight to video what really happened was the streaming started building and you know through the pandemic people did watch movies at home and they were enjoying watching the movies at home and revisiting movies and re-watching movies and sometimes movies need two or three viewings before it really sinks in and it's also given a life or sort of a um a tenure to movies where they're going to be there forever and so that's good that part of it is good but i don't think the church that is the movie theater is gone i really don't i think what we we love being in the cinema with other folks and we love laughing at the screen and hearing other people in the audience talking throwing our popcorn or whatever it is i think that's still gonna be there it may be there maybe the balances now will be more streaming and less out actually going to the cinema but i think whereas first it was going to the movie theater and then streaming it's more like this now but i think both are going to be intact yeah i would have given anything to live in this time when i was young watching movies and i could watch any movie i wanted that's incredible but the thing is i don't think movies should be watched in installments and that's what everybody's doing now they're pausing going after some dinner come back into it the next day picking up you got to go in i know our days are busy but go in with your hours an hour and a half watch it as one thing just from beginning to end because you know and that you can get that movie yeah and that's where you have it because now it's like the cell phone and the kids are going like that which i get it everybody's complicated their lives they have stuff to do but just set aside an hour and a half top to bottom and yeah it's a better experience but should we be should we be that complicated no we shouldn't but we're not going to speak to other people's lives yeah as a species where we i mean i think i think the pendulum i think it's going to i think it's a developing culture you know the streaming aspect is i think it's a necessary act to gather to witness something together to feel something together this is catharsis this is the essence of theater film it's a collective experience i think it's better shared than just being yeah i think you're right oh that's true stopping and playing it ruins the flow you know being in a room with other people sharing it like uh i've been loving going back to the theater i miss it i didn't realize you know until it's been taken away how how much i missed sitting in a movie theater with a group of people and laughing together you know you don't realize until it's gone how magic that is nothing will ever compare to 1972 on 42nd street in manhattan watching death race 2000 and people going yo kung fu just screaming at each other i love that energy one topic that people are talking about a lot in the industry right now is safety because of the tragedy that happened on rust and there's some discussion of whether there should be guns on sets at all it's so easy to use a rubber gun or a wooden gun and have a muzzle flash put in post what do you think i mean should we move toward that that should never happen again so anything we can do to move away from that then we should that's our responsibility yeah it's kind of a no-brainer like clearly it can be avoided yeah and it can be avoided because look at what you can do with movies um you know but that also calls into question are there too many guns in movies we've all held guns in movies probably you know and as i always think about that being anti-gun myself but the character isn't so you know it's a very complicated thing but that made it very clear that there has to be change like now 100 percent nick i know the armor i don't want to cast blame anywhere um but i do think and i'm i'm not talking about anybody but you know people don't like the word movie star they they you know we want to be like humble actors but a movie star is a bit of a different kind of uh presentation because you need to know how to ride a horse you need to know how to fight you're going to do fight scenes you need to know how to ride a motorcycle you need to know how to use a stick shift and drive sports cars and you do need to know how to use a gun you do you need to take the time to know what the procedure is those are part of the job profiles now the stunt man and the movie star are two jobs that coexist they coexist every stuntman needs to be a movie star and every movie star needs to be a stunt man that's just part of the profile and that's all i'm going to say about it we're going to what's that bro one question i have for all of you the movie i would love to make and no one would let me is uh it was called uh well it starred dustin hoffman and tom cruise it was called rain man and and what did you just joke you're still dealing with you're still dealing with the horse you were the tom cruise no wait yeah you're right and then your voice would be the top cruise no i'm taking you next to you you know that's a great question i'm just so excited because i feel like this movie is going to you know propel me to take chances and do roles that i didn't even know i could do and i'm uh you know it's this is also uh so new for me to even be like at the table with these guys and this move the movie i just did was that for me it was like the one that shouldn't happen but did kind of like a happy accident so i'll take it yeah it's a good thing when that that's feeling unset it shouldn't be happening but they're letting us do this yeah that's really exciting it's a way that's kind of a similar response to that question because like because tic-tac-boom was that for me as well so i'm feeling in this i just feel a little like overwhelmingly grateful that i got to work on something that was so personal to me and the time where i really needed it um that character that group of people and so i feel a little bit like i'm not gonna i'm not gonna ask for anything else from the universe right i'm just i just want to kind of absorb exactly because it i really allow myself to harvest a little bit like you know i i'm until now i've just been kind of like well where do i go where why never enough never enough never enough just in terms of my own creativity or my own like longings whatever it is but there's a moment right now where i'm i don't know when things have happened in my life that have kind of created that for me as well like there's been a loss that i've been through and so every like the world has shifted and my priorities have shifted and i'm i'm my dreams have shifted and so so i'm just very very i just feel lucky that i've i've managed to to make some stuff over the past 20 years thank you and i'm going to answer your question honestly okay i'm sorry this is a very embarrassing answer to your question okay because it involves family okay so uncle was doing godfather three and i said i really think i'm gonna be in your movie uncle i really think is a good idea if you would cast me i think i could play this part and he was going to cast andy garcia and i said but i i just i just see myself more as james khan's sonnet he's playing sonny's son he's not he's not playing michael's son he's sonny's on i just feel a little more james khan you know and just wasn't gonna happen just nope not gonna happen so that was a movie i didn't get let in that i really wanted to be in there amazing i'll just speak to that briefly uh not not the godfather but the other bit um about just like the gratitude of what it is um i've been fortunate to do um in my in my very short career um i loved drama school six years ago um watched as i said to you watch these you know from my dormitory you know seen all your films watched all your tv and films so i used spiderman so you mean like i mean i i just so i'm extremely grateful um and the projects i've done you know felt very um in my own way avant-garde uh but for uh for for peculiar reason in so far that um to lead a sci-fi drama on hbo as a young black man is not commonplace it still isn't commonplace to do a black western it's not commonplace but still it's not commonplace so what i what i say to that is i'm very grateful but there's only one of me you know and i'm i'm looking forward to the time where i can be doing that and uh a young latinx gentleman can be doing that um a trans actor can be doing this you know that type of thing works out you know where it's like i'm not necessarily focused on going this way but moving it this way and just making more space so we all can coexist that's what i'm looking forward to that's the movie or that's the um industry that i hope to be a part of um and continue to you know talk and meet wonderful fellows and yourself like this yeah well said that feels like a nice place to end it thank you so much guys this has been a great conversation thank you for the moderation and your thoughtful interview thank you thank you thank you very much [Music] you

Channel: The Hollywood Reporter

Views: 1,420,985

Keywords: thr, the hollywood reporter, hollywood reporter, entertainment, hollywood, the hollywood reporter roundtable, thr roundtable, the hollywood reporter roundtables, thr roundtables, andrew garfield, andrew garfield interview, andrew garfield tick tick boom, jonathan majors, jonathan majors interview, jonathan majors the harder they fall, peter dinklage, peter dinklage interview, nicolas cage, nicolas cage interview, nicolas cage pig, simon rex, simon rex interview

Id: tPXHSuJWOqk

Length: 53min 22sec (3202 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 05 2022