Jude Law Breaks Down His Career, from 'The Holiday' to 'The New Pope' | Vanity Fair

well there is a pressure but you dissolve the pressure by working hard if you feel the pressure and you buckle you feel the pressure and you don't put in the time or the prep we're gonna choke you use the pressure you use the fear or challenged just put in the time you know and it's up to you to fly with it or try to sow the Ragged child it was a televised version of a play that I had appeared in with the National Youth Music Theatre which was a young people's theatre company it pulled together from auditions all around Great Britain and kids from all types of backgrounds it was an interesting experience I guess it was one of the first times I had ever done the sort of the stop-start process of filming it was very much an ensemble piece so each of us sort of shared the weight of the responsibility the piece although the lead was played by Jonny Lee Miller who obviously has gone on to have a wonderful career so I view my time in the my MT is a big part of my training actually I mean your training never stops but that was a real part of like stepping up and taking responsibility as an actor it's my name I can't beat you without it what makes you think you can be me at all so I'd done a couple of other films but Gattaca felt like a huge huge break first of all to work with Ethan and uma alan arkin ernest borgnine gore vidal this extraordinary group of highly regarded and talented individuals I guess I was spoiled looking back because also to work on something that I just so believed in unique resonant timely political a great style but my memories of it were wow yeah moving to LA for the first time I was staying in one of these little kind of self-contained Suites just up off Sunset renting a Ford Mustang driving around hanging out a lot with Ethan Ethan and I got on very very well I remember we film some of it in Marin County we did that drive up the highway together which took us a weekend I mean it really felt like him first time I come to Hollywood and I was making a movie and it was a it was a true moment of Destiny and dreamz it's great that that film that early on in my career was a film that also stood the test of time it's still a film I mean I've made about God knows thirty 40 films since then that's still a film people talk about which is really it really meant something there are a couple of others I did around that time which they'd people don't talk about so much but she's no bad thing I can just imagine the homely dick he would settle down doesn't every parent deserve a grandchild oh never never it's swear on your ring Marge never gone back a talented mr. Ripley I was making a film in London produced by Carolyn Troy I was aware that Carolyn was married to Anthony Minghella Antony by all accounts was watching the rushes of this film come in and decided to offer me Dickie Greenleaf in my insane arrogance is a 20-something year old hostile to the idea that I'll be cast as the sort of pretty boy turned it down as thinking light at the time that what I should really be doing is just playing like character roles and hunched back just trying to find real weird twisty characters I've luckily came to my senses and realized that he was putting together than this extraordinary group of young actors and that he himself obviously having just won a 50 Oscars or whatever it was for the English Patient was probably gonna be good safe hands to put myself in my experience of that particular film was absolutely golden but it was also somewhat misleading in that I was sent first of all down to Ischia to get a suntan learn to sail and practice my saxophone I've never since been given that I did carp blush or invitation on any other job sadly I was overwhelmed with nerves because suddenly you know you have Gwyneth and Kate and Philip and Matt turning up alongside all these other great actors I used the the bravado and the confidence and the swagger of Dickie as a kind of way of pulling my way through that and I think I sort of pretended I was Dickie basically for the whole time which which worked it was very well received it was the first time I got a nomination by the Academy and so in many ways it was a huge turning point in my life it still sits in my heart as one of the most wonderful memories hmm many a mecha has gone to the end of the world never to come back that is why they call the end of the world my memories of a Island well I mean there are so many so I went from the the Sunkiss coast of Italy to East Germany where I was filming enemy at the gates I get this phone call from Steven Spielberg which is the phone called most actors sort of been a lifetime waiting for and he was developing AI alongside Stanley Kubrick who sadly passed away early early on in the development of this particular version of the film I would finish work in Berlin fly to Paris get on the Concorde flight in New York and land before I left get met on the runway at JFK with a helicopter and flown to Stevens house this is like to rehearse if that doesn't make your head spin nothing will that kind of treatment is well for me otherworldly it was a really interesting experience in the hands of this extraordinarily powerful director he was incredibly collaborative and we came up with this idea of the dancing and the music and that the guy was like a walking jukebox and he could play old classics and dance to them and seduce whoever he had to seduce he was open so many ideas and it was sort of in a way the challenge was just be as imaginative and as creative as you can and I'll see if we can do it and mostly most of time you play yeah we can do that the makeup was an extraordinary journey initially we they wanted to make a fake me so they took a mold of my face and stuck the mask of me on my face first we made my head way too big and secondly it meant that you couldn't actually register anything I was doing so we ended up just built these tiny little pieces that just made every line on my face perfectly symmetrical and straight and then I also remember because unfortunately it all grew back tenfold they shaved almost all my hair off everything was shaved every morning and they kind of sprayed me like a doll every one of them polished me sitting in a chair for four hours and being transformed does help because you go in as one thing and you come out really looking and feeling as another I had a rigorous routine that I went through every day with the choreographer that discipline was also very important to sort of setting this physical neutral zone for gigolo Joe to operate out of and getting the walk right he walked because he was a robot we wanted certain thing as a certain moves to be repetitive and if you watch the way he walks he doesn't you know people walk like he actually walked with a rhythm he did this thing where he turns his head every other move and so getting into that and locking that was an important Ground Zero to start at every day finding the character is is finding the right look the clothes the makeup the hair all of that and then you end up with what just feels right and what do you do I would would mostly work would well cold mountain so I'd start this extraordinary relationship with Anthony Minghella and I remember him saying come on the Odyssey with me this is gonna be this huge physical journey and it was we we battled the seasons and the elements every single day it was deeply emotional too because a lot of my characters the journey was physical I remember also I had the big relationship with animals in that Anthony wanted all the animals to be real so I was always fishing and learning that cows open and pull chickens heads off and all of that stuff it was very hands-on if you're up a mountain in six foot of snow you're up there with a crew if you're in a bog or if you're in a swamp with Gators you know six feet away they're in there with you so it's a very bonding experience to go from baking heaters sub-zero temperatures and everything in between it's all about the people around you if you're with a really wonderful group of people and the pot requires it and they they're there with you then then absolutely you do it again please tell the truth why because I'm addicted to it because without it we're animals I'd seen closer on stage in London and in New York again Mike Nichol the director just a legend a dream team I mean how lucky am I you know suddenly I'm in the room with these other three wonderful wonderful actors I remember the rehearsal process was really interesting we were Hurst it in New York we read through the script but most of the time we really just listen to Mike recounting stories of his love life I remember halfway through saying to each other Mike maybe we're not going to input anything and what I realized he was doing was he was sort of laying his life bare in order to feel safe it was like he was it's like he was in confession and so suddenly anything we discussed anything we shared because the piece is about meeting and breaking up with the loves of your life so it's always dealing with the most raw the most intimate the most revealing and vulnerable moments and in a way he was going through this process of confession of and allowing the conversation to always be safe which worked we shot it in and around London which was a real treat because I was at home so much of London now I Drive past I think I filmed there oh gosh and so suddenly these little landmarks in my hometown are also touchstones of memories you know but sadly does this the one strip the scene at the very beginning when I spy Natalie Portman coming through the crowd Spitalfields market has been completely demolished the shops have all gone and it struck me the other day how sad that was because I have such vivid memories of shooting that scene the play those who know the play will know that the ending in the play is very different or at least it goes a little further and we filmed that ending although it's quite an eccentric ending my character Dan calls the other two together and sort of has this breakdown where he describes the Alice nataly's character has died and he goes through this whole confessional where he discovers that she's stolen her name from the memorial of this young woman back in the Victorian age the only way I could make sense of this scene was to play it like he had kind of gone a little crazy and then they cut the scene quite rightly the them works much better the way it is but I've always taken it must be because I was really awful in this scene because I do remember making quite a bold decision to play him slightly wacky that he'd kind of call these two people together and was confessing something but hopefully that's not the case I cry all the time you do not yeah I do you don't have to be this nice it happens to be the truth a good book great film a birthday card that weep I'm a major leap up the films we've mentioned the holiday is one that is reminded to me most often I guess because it's seasonal a lot of people come to me every year say oh we watch that every holiday we watch that every Christmas that's a favorite Christmas film and there are a few funny memories I have of that the first is that we shot the exteriors in the UK first it was freezing for whatever reason all the interiors the UK interiors - were filmed in the studios here in LA so we all moved to LA Nancy has the or I don't know if she does anymore but he has the reputation for taking her time I'm sat in my house waiting for five weeks before they get to me as you can probably see if I look at the Sun I go very brown very quickly my father is very dark-skinned and if you watch that film carefully when I'm outside in England I'm really white pasty soon as I go inside I'm like hey look at this sunset no one really notices but if you watch I darkened by about two shades every time I step inside and out I've worked with Kate three or four times and that was I think the second it was a wonderful time we our kids were both very little and we would laugh a lot getting low Cameron was a great experience she's so much fun it was a very happy time it was hard work I mean not a lot of my scenes and with the kids we can only shoot with him to lunch so in the morning I was behind the camera just trying to make these children laugh and sticking like dolls in my mouth pulling funny faces and putting things on my head to make them keep attention with me and and then they would go it's time and you'd be exhausted feel like you've been running a crash all morning right and then they turn around and they're like right you've got to do the same thing now and like Oh God bringing a clown next time for the kid for the kids close-ups I think it was one of the first times I've done an out-and-out comedy well no I'd done comedy but I wanted to do it because Nancy related it to some of my favorite old rom-coms you wanted it to be sort of Arsenic and Old Lace kind of slightly goofy funny but romantic and heartfelt and they're tricky there must their very technical a lot of its rhythm may we say actually doing drama is sometimes more fun than doing communists in comedies if I do it again maybe funny this time as hard [Music] so Sherlock Holmes I get this phone call I just remember being really curious I mean it's a partner consider playing John Watson dr. Watson in a Holmes but of course they mentioned downy and guy and this bizarre equation suddenly I thought god this could this could be disastrous or this could be absolutely genius I spend this afternoon with Robert I really don't want to be one of these actors who just says ha I just fell in love with his actor but honestly memorable fell in love but there's afternoon and we were like these children giggling and we just had a very compatibility I think a sense of humor our view on the world he's the most brilliant eccentric quick-witted and lovely man you have to realize that I'm them had only just come out in fact I don't even know whether it had been released he'd shot it and it was pretty obvious what was gonna happen the whole thing became honestly a really enjoyable experience we would run the pages in the morning improvise a whole bunch I kept this thing called the Bible which was all these quotes from the Conan Doyle books you know swap out lines that we'd improvise with lines actually by Conan Doyle and rewrite stuff and then we go shoot it would shoot it really quickly and obviously alongside that there was all this incredible physical stuff stunts horse riding fights but it was a very happy very very happy job and fun to be beset that scale you know it had a lot of money behind it guy runs a very happy set what a music being played I think while we were cooking that when we were already thinking about the second [Music] well Hugo so I'd already work with Marty on the Aviator to work with someone of his caliber an import is just kind of dream come true really so to be asked to go back and do it play another part was wonderful real compliment I'd read the book to my children it was a really important book actually I mean I read to my children anymore I used to read to my children all the time this particular book had really impact on them because there are pages of text and then there are all the wonderful illustrations that go on for pages and pages and pages of whichever quite either you can interpret and the story sort of takes on the dream quality that the children can comment on so I had a real attachment to it just just being able to sit back and observe Martin Scorsese's energy on a set you know a great way to learn and a great way to be inspired about the art form passion he has insight and the knowledge he has of the history of film it's really infectious who's this interesting old firm I inquired of Monsieur Jean to my surprise he was distinctly taken aback don't you know he asked don't you recognize him like so many other people I had just been a huge fan of where's Anderson's for years and years right back to bottle rocket I would turn to his films like holidays Life Aquatic was a film I would disappear in and life always felt better in a Wes Anderson film even if you were going through a breakup there was just something about the aesthetic and the the worlds he created that you wanted to be in and I wrote to him it's just something I do quite a lot but I wrote to him just you know thanking him and dropping huge hints that if he ever wanted a cast for me I'd be more than happy to work with him and we ended up meeting in a very where's Anderson place where we went for tea at Claridge's and he quite rightly turned up in a sinner in a tweed suit and tie and slippers he then this is a funny story though he said said you know there is a path you I'm gonna send you this script and I there's the characters called the author so I turned the first page it says first thing author I'm like oh my god next page author author what I'm thinking oh my god the lead six pages he goes cut back 15 year no basically I bookend it but you know it was still it was still a wonderful opportunity and I flew out to all this little border town up in the mountains of Germany and Poland literally rut I go running a lot and I'd go running in the morning when it wasn't we stayed all of us together in this little hotel which they use in the film and and all the cast was saying they would all have dinner together at night we go and watch reference films and what-have-you in in in wears is sweet and then they took over this old communist department store which became the the lobby and one of my earliest memories of that was they built a little gym for those who wanted to use one and I went in and I was training in the morning and if Murray Abraham came in and he said do you mind if I warm up come on do you know what I didn't think was talking about vocally oh I'm sorry I do sit up so don't I'm just here and he gestured because of course F Murray Abraham you know has this incredible voice and he judged so he was warming up vocally well I mean what it's like this fantastic however long you keep me and my friends under surveillance you're not going to discover plots against your Travers because we want the same thing the defeat of Grindle vault I read my children Harry Potter to him to see the films and I loved fantastic beasts and where to find them I don't remember at what point but someone suddenly said oh you know you're gonna want to Dumbledore I went through an audition process and it was a process I hadn't done in a while it was it was fun to do because you also felt like you're did to make sure you were married to this part you didn't want to get it let him buckle because there's a great responsibility that comes with playing Albus Dumbledore I think one of the beautiful moments in preparation was working with JK Rowling and I spent an afternoon where she just gave me the entire history of this great character and remember she I went in and she was having tea she had his incredible heels on she said okay she said if you don't mind I'm gonna stand up and she stood up knew three hours and just walked up and down tall tall it just came out of him I mean it's just living in her and I'm sitting there scribbling down notes and getting all this incredible insight into this character which you know I had a little opportunity to use in this one and then next year I go ahead and we do another chapter so there's more to come with that there's something wonderful about embodying someone with magical power and trying to understand what that might be like but there's also something painful about Albus something sad just a beautiful literary character that that was a real it's a real privilege to be able to bring to life there are two of us John you're gonna have to deal with me there is no dealing with the devil you are a danger to others a rash unreasonable child it doesn't matter I I was coming to the end of a job really trying to get a sense of what do I want to do and who's out there and what's happening and you know I'm one of these people I'm always making lists and I try and see as much as I can because I'm also a big film fan I'd seen el Divo and I'd seen the grande ballets and Paolo is absolutely the top of this list and then you sort of sit there thinking like well how do I make that work maybe I need to learn Italian and I promise you within a week I get a letter from Paolo saying I have an idea will you meet me we sit down and he's written this two-page document about this young American Pope who drinks Cherry Coke Zero and smoked Marlboro Lights this conservative dogmatic terrifying reformist who doesn't believe in God I had to stop myself salivating I think in front of him he started writing and this extraordinary web of intriguing character and politics and social economic politics in the back rooms of the Vatican we started to come together and I started learning Latin that was my greatest fear when the speeches in Latin I started learning those months before because well I found them very hard to learn I do a lot of theater so I don't find lines are hard to learn but learning another life it's very hard it was an extrordinary experience living in Rome for nine months working with this team who have made almost every film with Paolo that work Clockwerk in silence around him it's like you know he is famous for these extraordinary set pieces but he comes on set he makes his decision and we there's no hanging around he's not like you sat waiting for him to work it out or practice it out and it's a very Swift process I mean there was also a strange with a sense of Zen because 99% of time they were speaking Italian Lenny Lenny has this sort of was insular world that he that he operates from and so people speaking another language around me helped me kind of disappear into this world behind this veneer and I work with this acting coach I've been working with around 10 years and she's always saying to me you are enough you are enough what she means by that is you do the work and you need to show everyone how hard you're working somebody does do but you know I think it's more effective when you do the work and you're just then present and Lenny was a real great opportunity to put that to practice to try and have faith in stillness and faith in presents over projection let the presents be the projection and then you know we had the keys to the city it was extraordinary but we were filming in Palazzo xand gardens that no one ever gets to see they were like opening up treasure troves it was extraordinary don't go to work every day and see these historical significant spaces and wonders we completed it and to me that was the beginning in the end of Lenny Bilardo and then about seven months eight months later Paola called me and said that he's got an idea maybe how to take the story further he told me at in Venice the day we premiered the young Pope and I would not have been interested had it not been anything other really than what he's done I would consider myself an existentialist I was turned on to it first by David Cronenberg when I made existense and he turned me on to Dostoyevsky Kierkegaard Camus what I realized was that it was a kind of natural state of mind one that I'd been living in and by since I was a teenager really it's this idea of taking responsibility to trying to live in the present it's like a kind of faith in a way that I think you need to mature it because every time you shift in your life where you take on board something else or you have a new relationship or your world expands it needs applying too but I've always been intrigued by it and it's it's not something I necessarily conquered or achieve but it's something that I've been drawn to and then I find spiritually fulfilling that's interesting I not necessarily seen it that clearly in my work but I think you're right it's a good observation I'm thrilled you said that I'm gonna steal it if ever asked to sum up my career to folks is still true

Channel: Vanity Fair

Views: 675,313

Keywords: jude law, career timeline, jude law career, jude law career timeline, jude law career break down, jude law the new pope, jude law new pope, the new pope hbo, new pope hbo, jude law roles, jude law interview, jude law actor, jude law ai, sherlock holmes, the new pope, new pope, gattaca, the ragged child, fantastic beasts, grand budapest hotel, jude law closer, jude law mr ripley, the talented mr ripley, jude law hugo, jude law the holiday, the holiday, vanity fair

Id: dBxy0X53kyw

Length: 24min 23sec (1463 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 13 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/asamshah]

It’s a shame they didn’t include Road to Perdition or Anna Karenina. Great watch though. Comes across as someone who really appreciates the experiences he’s had.

[u/opiatesmile]

That's weird since his career started a long time before he was in Sherlock Holmes.

[u/trimonkeys]

I love Law's performance in AI his character is really charming.

[u/OB1_kenobi]

Jude Law acting in the Captain Marvel movie...

Like taking a Mercedes SLR to 7-11 to get a Slurpee.

[u/xela_sj]

for some reason I need to see Dennis Quaid on one of these

[u/BlastoiseRules]

Only care if he talks about the prep he did for his oscar worthy role as Mr. Napkin Head

[u/enigma2g]

Was hoping to see Dom Hemingway in there, such a fun movie.

[u/Zachyice21]

Gattaca is a masterpiece. I watch it once or twice every year, it still holds up really well. Shoutout to my sophomore year science teacher for showing our class this movie.

[u/TheReelMan]

Hey Joe, what do ya know?