WATCH: Tom Hiddleston & Josie Rourke in Conversation – AH / JW3 Speaker Series

I was thinking about where to begin this and I think about when I first heard of you and I think I first heard of you I was showing a flap with a director called Robert hasty who is the artistic director of Sheffield theaters now and Rob was training then as an act at Rada and I said to Rob I was starting my Chris director come on who's good in Rada like who do you thinks great who's gonna be you know the best actors from your year in the above and he said well there's this guy called Tom Hiddleston right and the thing about him is that he comes in before everybody else of the working day at Rodman it's a pretty punishing drama school I think it's got you know it's a hard tough training world we can talk about that and he comes and he warms up properly and then he stays behind everybody else and it's the last person to leave and not only is incredibly talented but he's incredibly hard-working and I was like wow he sounds really great no definitely check not but I was I was wondering I think this there's a sort of question I always have for actors which is what they take with them from their training and their practice into their life and I know that you were well you're an athlete weren't you as well I mean you ask someone who is very physically that's very generous you're always whenever I call you you're always running but but did you when you went to drama school do you think okay this is an athletic exercise as well as an intellectual one or what you know you know you'd already been the Cambridge right yeah and what did you read their classics classics yeah so what made you think right what I wants to do is go and do three years Conservatoire training was it something if your body your mind was it well I'd always imagined and I and I hope I'm I hope I was correct that that acting is a tote as it requires a total commitment of of a head heart and body and that the art if it is one perhaps it's a craft but if there's an art to acting it's the it's inhabiting characters fully not so it begins with an act of empathy or understanding and then your body has to follow and so I'd always and the actors I'd always admired on stage and and on screen had always had a very great connection to their instinct enormous emotional range and vulnerability but you could always feel that they were real there was something tangible about them physically and I knew I was 21 when I arrived and I knew that I had a this extraordinary and and very fortunate academic training at Cambridge learning how to read learning how to think some extent to be rigorous and to investigate ideas to turn them over not to leave a stone unturned to keep investigating keep searching stay curious but the thing I didn't know I think I didn't have and I knew I needed was the discipline to for example play a big part like Coriolanus or any of those big Shakespearean roles for the length of a 12 week run night after night and not physically break down because those parts require this extraordinary physical commitment so and I thought you know I looked at Rondo and I thought wow couple of interesting people have been through those doors you know they must know something and so part in a way this sort of that's very funny of Rob that he remembers that early starts and the late finish it's just sounds like I got terrible timekeeping need to manage my time better but but part of that was about wanting to soak up the experience and knew it was a unique and privileged experience I was very lucky to get in and I wanted to make the best of it I think it's it's being not just encouraged but but thrown out of my comfort zone doing things that I was afraid of doing things I had never done before the training when I was at was total so it was a Stanislavski based training learning and learning the of the system as he called it grounding a performance in some in naturalistic truth which is all about detail really because we're trying to boil it down as an actor you're trying to represent investigate human reality which is to say that the characters you play you want them to be three-dimensional you want them to feel real you want them to be vulnerable and flawed and courageous and they make mistakes and you just want me but that's the thing we share that's the thing that's why we go to the theater that's why we go to cinema because we need to connect with each other and so you go and see a great film you go and see a great play in Italy we all leave with a shared understanding of something we know to be true about life whatever it is and and so the requirement of the actor is to be as honest and authentic and truthful as possible I'm going to talk you that I had to do that I think those I remember an extraordinary emphasis on truthfulness what they do that thing that they do where they go not true not good I just work with some access he went through Royal Scottish and they said we were taught by Russians and we'd do something they just go I don't believe you yeah yeah yeah people still say that I had he said that in your own head well sometimes I do yeah I have a pretty pretty rough critic who sits on my shoulder and tells me it's not good enough um but there's a tremendous acting teacher who is still at RADA my and I will give him a shout out his name john biscuit sir and he was my first teacher my first two terms at RADA and he would never say it it would never be harsh it would never be personal or critical but what you would do as seen or do an exercise and he would say I didn't believe it do you believe it and he gave niden ring and and very impressive and it was very skillful and it was very it was very courageous they were you know you're doing a lot but I didn't it didn't feel real so let's think about why it didn't feel real why wasn't it honest maybe the truth of that moment is more mundane than you're making it you're making it bigger more theatrical more operatic there needs to be or maybe it's bigger and maybe you need to just investigate how that emotion that this character is going through fields in yourself and risk it and know that you'll be caught and you know but flash forward to the spring of 2015 filming the night manager in Morocco and Susanna be who I love dearly it's not shy of saying after take I don't believe it do it again more real I'm or tree talking about women in Fuhrman she said yet she said what we need to be is more truthful like we need to tell a better truth about the advice I've always found that an interesting paradox about acting is that by and large that commonly held belief is that actors are pretending that they're creating and that whether we are in a way it's it that you're creating an illusion but the greatest compliment you can pay an actor is that their performance was truthful you believed it you recognized maybe you're watching actors go through I'm just trying to invent scenarios [Music] familial struggle fathers and sons arguing a marital breakdown a relationship falling apart somebody grieving all these things that we all go through in life these are all scenarios we find ourselves in and you know you don't have the I don't have to tell you you know when you're watching something and you just it connects to you you think oh I know how that feels that character on stage I don't know that actor I don't never met them in my life but the thing they're representing the shape of human nature that they're inhabiting is something I know is real that's what it's like to grieve that's what it's like to breakup with someone that's what it's like to have a fight with your father or have a fight with your son and so this strange thing about truth I suppose and John biscuit said the same acting teacher used to say acting is being truthful in imaginary circumstances yeah I often think it's actually that the bit of thing that needs making up in theatre is often by the audience yes I just I've just done this production of a Shakespeare play with almost no set no props and I found myself saying for these actors there's a prison scene in it and you know it's the Damaso you can't fly on a prison people are on three sides from star saints and I am so sorry you are going to have to act an imaginary door we're gonna have to agree where the door is you have to come in through that gap where we've gone there's the door yes and I am now that person standing in a room saying will you pretend there's a door there yeah and actually with it yeah because it feels kind of rubbish in a rehearsal room because it's hilarious and embarrassing but as soon as an audience there the two hundred and fifty people in that auditorium are putting that door there do they believe in the door yeah well I five it's become something that's sort of at the centre of the way I that's the thing it's become a part of my instinct is you commit to the illusion of the imaginary circumstance and that's been true of everything I've done as you know I am NOT an ancient Roman soldier but when we did Coriolanus I you have to commit to the illusion that I am you know I'm not climbing a ladder into the roof of the Donmar I'm climbing a ladder into the walls of the city of coriolis this ancient Bastian town I'm not on a back lot in a studio in Albuquerque in New Mexico surrounded by green screen I am hurtling through space and time in the Bifrost on my way to see Thor ice many movies the first time and actually actors have to do more pretending more imagination than they do in theater well I suppose that but it became a I mean people used to say to me when I first made the first author in me no moments off off on the on the set where they're reorganizing the lights of them it is this way is hard for you let's see it's just like being on stage and my I suppose my early experience after Rada was was in the theatre of constantly fueling a tank of imagination and trying to be truthful within it whether it was being in Othello at the Donmar or or even off and forgetting for that moment that you're not in a Theatre in Leicester Square in London in 2008 you're in Russia and you know the commitment is I'm in Russia I'm a doctor I've got to look after a varnas wife she's dying of tuberculosis LaVon of isn't taking this seriously I need to go and tell him I don't I go yeah and can van and I are having an ideological battle about why he's not looking after his dying wife Gina McKee playing on a Petrovna is not dying Ken Branagh and Gina McKee are not married I'm certainly not a doctor but in that scenario you're you we all are committing to this game I suppose and it is a game in one way but it goes back to this thing that my acting teacher said John biscuits are being truthful in imaginary circumstances I am and sometimes it you know yeah it does make you laugh when people you're being so tall that people believe you I would talk about the night manager again we were shooting the first episode and the sixth episode of that series concurrently because they're both they both take place in the in the story at the Nefertiti Hotel in Cairo in Egypt and I spent a lot of time we shot in a real hotel in Marrakech we spent a lot I spent a lot of time behind the actual reception desk of this hotel this lovely hotel in Marrakech and they were doing we were doing nights and we were doing a whole bunch of scenes around all guys and keys or checking reservations or doing lots of hotel managing paraphernalia you could now do that like if it all fell away you like to know what I get for it well what was technology there was one there was that what what on that evening we were we were filming from 8 p.m. to 2 at 2 a.m. or something and we were just doing all the stuff behind the desk and some guests at the hotel came back from dinner didn't see the cameras and they said and they came and said yes sir room 303 please and I said certainly sir so they believed me the circumstances were not imaginary for them they were very real but yes then and then in the same series you know there's a there's a sequence in episode 5 if we're Jonathan pine is demonstrating to some potential buyers the kind of firepower of the weaponry that Richard Roeper played by Hugh Laurie is selling and we're all sitting on the sat on on a crest of a hill and in the distance in the in the in the neighboring Valley there's an extraordinary display of a firepower and on the night well the night we were filming there were no that no gun was fired there were no rockets there were no airplanes there were no drones we were staring into a dark deserted Valley with one or two geckos in it and the explosions were just lights on our faces and we were all having to make sure we were looking in the same part of the sky like so you see that star Hugh ow our Petrie you see that star they want the red one let's pretend that's the the airplane and then when it gets to the plough well this all follow our eyes across to the plough and then I've been explosion everyone good with that okay let's go again being truthful in imaginary circumstances so so yeah the thing that I found really astonishing when I was shooting this film was the the amount of destruction that you have to zone out yeah and I think that's partly about kind of let me kick in my imagination but the thing that I found really surprising is it so in fifth it's obviously so but everyone's there all the time yes so you turn up you warm up together you know I wanted to pop in and see the company at the Donmar yesterday I knew that all be in the auditorium at 6:30 you know stretching their hamstrings and warming up their voices and the thing that I found initially quite distressing about a film set is that you're distant from the actors and you're fragmented from them but then I got completely obsessed with the thing that I had never been able to see before really as a director and this felt very privileged this is kind of weird but you're never there the moment just before someone walks onstage so yes and they're like all parts of your process like I'm backstage you know I might pop back when you kind of you know getting ready to go on and half as we call it like those five minutes old show starts know everything okay but but I had never seen that moment just before someone steps in the wind onto the stage because I'm in the audience then or does it there's a privacy to that actually yeah and the thing that I found really remarkable was to the first and getting to see actors just before they did a take by just within that moment when they had to clear their head and focus that thing and I thought it was tremendously hard when film set because actually I'm very privileged because I'm looking at your I'm looking at the monitor you're looking at all the crap coming in the other direction yeah you know it like just like and it's I don't just mean like cameras and people I mean like they just go just Chuck that make a table over there it'd all be fine ya know it's not the kind of purity of an auditorium like this and it seems to me that the ones who were very very very good at it I mean everyone's great in this movie but the ones who are amazing at it for them it was like a kind of moments of meditation you know there was a sort of it was almost like that the the closest thing this is the sound a little pretentious but you know it's it's like a kind of moments of Prayer or something that's got that kind of internal privacy to it and what I'm dying to ask an actor if before you go on camera and do your tag is that the same feeling as before you go onstage and pretend that it's is it the same thing or does it require a different I'm sure it is I know so that's not meant to be mysterious it I was just thinking about the interesting thing for me what's a really lovely observation you've made us see Josie because I the reason I still find acting fascinating is this is that I've demanded of myself and I also demand it I think of other actors and it's really a gift that's been passed to me by people who've inspired me is that we all I mean we I could we don't have time but we could go around this room and I could ask you to name a performance that you feel you've never forgotten and you found on bet almost unbearably moving it just spoke to you it seemed to explain yourself back to your own soul and I those moments periodically in my life watching other actors and I think it's the gift of that prep that preparatory moment I suppose is you're preparing to give a part of yourself of yourself that is that is something really in the interior of your soul to give flesh and breath to this fictional person because it's the right part of you that fits him or her for that moment and [Music] that's I think what I find so I still find it very humbling when I'm in the presence of great acting because the get is such a generous thing I find the actors are are lending their souls to this story to create an experience of meaning for all of us and that happens at the beginning it happens in theater and it happens in film that's probably sounds really over intellectual and slightly incomprehensible but what am I saying theater film thing is interesting so yeah that's actually similar to have with you making it and what's interesting to me is that what you're what you're talking about really is what you give and the sense of gift and also the sense of discovery exactly and I think I think when people I think when people start cuz you know you're quite grown up now so my when people start actually they don't they don't have that relationship to it yeah you know when you see a young actor bounce into a rehearsal room it's not that they're not serious but but actually that there's this sort of a quality of life and surprise and where a mind but it's quite a long time to get rid of that and actually realize what what the transaction is yeah and and i think i think for me you're an interesting point which is about going look you can kind of pretty much do anything now i'm not saying there are parts that you you want that you don't get but you know if you like I'd quite like to do a one of these I'd quite steal King Lear you know you you'd be allowed to do that like someone would let you do that maybe I don't yet look it would in would book no even right we're gonna do King Lear yeah is everyone there next Tuesday I think which ones every would like but that's some play in this Bearden so I suppose a question that part of for me the quality of maturing as an artist is working out not just what bit of yourself you're giving but also what you're doing yeah what the meaning attached to that thing gave but I recognized it as a young person though I said I you know what I think when I was about 14 15 16 that was when I really got you know I love doing voices and and making people laugh when I was a child but I got taken to the National Theater a lot when I was in my teens and also I got exposed to a different sort of filmmaking different stories and I remember and I've told the story before but I remember going to see Richard Ayers production of John Gabriel Balkman at the National Theatre starring Paul Scofield in his last performance Vanessa Redgrave and Eileen Atkins this great towering scandinavian play about a family in pain and there were all sorts of things about my own experience in my own life that i didn't fully understand and i certainly didn't have the language to articulate in Paul Scofield and I felt him articulated on behalf of the entire Littleton Theatre and that's when I understood the power of acting was I did I thought the theater was just sort of ceremonial thing where people did lots of air kissing and had a gin and tonic in the interval yes she was yeah but I but I had never been sort of you know hit between the eyes like like that before and I realized that that the profundity of all these strangers arriving is sitting in a dark room and up to two hours the lights come up and everybody is crying but none of us know each other because Paul Scofield has done something vital and honest and expressed something about being alive that we all understood and I thought wow that would be something to do with my life well if what if I could it may be sort of an unrealizable dream at that point but then also in film Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Timothy Spall in secrets and lies that last scene I don't know how many of you seen it Mike Lee's film when he's so quiet all the way through and he's just containing everybody else's pain and and just it thought it's sort of being he's absorbing it and managing and then he just says my pain and and he kind of breaks and it expresses something honest about I don't know but and it it was but it's very powerful and profound so even though I perhaps didn't understand how to articulate any of that or how to access it maybe myself I still understood what the what it was so what I'm getting I think a bit is what what now you are established and celebrated how do you now make your choices like what is the responsibility you think you have to going it's that project not that project it's an interesting question I feel it's a almost I respond to material in a very instinctive way because I'm still excited by the challenge of what the story or the piece of work or the writing represents and I think the great privilege of being an actor is that you're often called upon to represent scenarios and behavior that you actually have no experience of and you have to then fill out what limited experience you have with your imagination with your research and then expand and so it's almost like a kind of a spiritual journey of expansion I but you know when we did Coriolanus together I think there were things in playing that part I'd never fully understood but I knew in order for Shakespeare's play though to really sing I had to dig quite deep and expand into it and then I finished the run of that production and I retain the expansion and that's that's the gift of the job for me as I've I've investigated something I didn't perhaps know before that play because I must say it's time but for me that's in as much as we know anything about Shakespeare we know that that was toward the end of his career so that is an older man writing a younger man mmm I think that expansion that you articulate is partly connected to that that there are not necessarily I'm not saying that Coriolanus is Caius Martius is he's called thoughts are immature but there is a sort of playwright ie on youth I think yeah looking at looking at a young man understanding something about a young man of an old man yes the intransigence of it you know my expense of it is that just I think when he wrote it Shakespeare must have been phenomenally cross yes like just really cross it's trying to say it's already just spent the whole you know the whole career with people going you know it'd be really good if we had one of those wouldn't a scene about that be great are you sure about that yeah yeah angry angry character but that's what I love about it's worth having a little mention of Shakespeare because because I in my experience there is no other writer as an actor that demands so much and the the the privilege and challenge of performing Shakespeare is having to align one's mind with his and here's the profundity and breadth of his mind the things he was able to understand the sheer breadth of it requires you to to think about life in a very profound way and it doesn't have to be heavy you know his comedies can be and are hilarious I haven't done it I don't know if I've done a professional production of it over comedy what was your own professional Shakespearean comedy have I even done an unprofessional one I've not yet done much to do it no I remember thinking when I was doing the hollow crown how there's comedy in that early part of Henry the fourth prince our Falstaff yeah poins mistress quickly all of that is it is a kind of show and that there has to be a levity to it very very funny though yeah but like you know the line between comedy and tragedy is very thin and so you're still investigating the same the same things are still investigating you know that should the truth of it I suppose but the demand of Shakespeare if you're going to do it well is that you have to have you have to try and hone the technicality of of delivering the verse and and the words and making sure they can be clearly heard and understood but also there's an intellectual demand there [Music] and to honor the poet a physical one to honor the character and then a kind of spiritual one to honor the profundity of some of the things that he's saying and I've every time I've done a big Shakespearean part I've always found it incredibly there's a sort of best to put this there's an extra dime and clarity to my life at that time that somehow life has I've got this I'm carrying around I've sort of synchronized watches with Shakespeare's mind and and the and the ask is that you go as deeply as you can into the things you're investigating with Coriolanus the corrosive power of Rage what the rage of that man the destruction that his rage wreaks on his family his friends those he loves on the city of Rome but actually this rage was once a useful thing that propelled him into war made him a war machine a fearless soldier and a hero but given full event it only destroys it doesn't build and having to even feel that in my own in myself was a profound experience with Hamlet the depth of his grief and then the conversion of his grief into grievance and how the the the compression of his grief and the fact that his grief was somehow forbidden and curtailed is what it's what turns that morning all that lack of morning into grievance and it showed I think of all legs displays that the utility of retaliation and grieve you know Hamlet has all this grievance and must kill my I must avenge my father kill my uncle and he's angry with everybody he can't see the wood for the trees and it only brings him ruin but he was never allowed but let it go and to investigate that and of course Hamlet is about so much more than that it's about the value of being alive and you have this young man who has lost is connection to the meaning of being alive and having to inhabit that what does it mean to feel that the argument for being has lost that there is a question of the be or not to be but maybe not to be as a better is a better idea of course no the answer is to be profoundly to be but to be on the side of life to be to be to be but he's at them he's at that moment where he's staring into the abyss going well maybe it's not so great life actually and to go to go down there and investigate what that feels like and give that shape of course I'm I'm even in trying to explain the experience of playing these parts I'm somehow reducing it or confining it they are they are they live on you know they live but thing is that you go okay here's one of the greatest things ever written yeah we're gonna have a go yeah you know that's that's the sort of there might say you have to get yourself into to get into a rehearsal room with a Shakespeare play like you feel the gift of it or the privilege of it but you your dream is really really scary like you know and and as a director you let how do I make people not frightened of it well I wanted to ask you about that because I think I think on Coriolanus in a way I say we were having to synchronize watches with that play and it's a very demanding play and you're responsible for I don't know how many people in here saw Coriolanus or anybody watching is on in whatever they're watching it they keep doing any language I've managed to buy a dinner service so if off the royalty if one cuz of again do go because I need a few more fine place but you know this play has to speak to it because it takes bit works on so many levels yes it's about the power of anger and pride in the in the figure of the leading character and family sons and mothers but it's also deeply about politics and and how the state and the individual relate how we relate to to our selves as I put it as a body politic [Music] the common people want to be heard they feel they're not being heard they feel they are being lied to and being mistreated by the Senate these this patrician class and and I remember and I remember but how do you take because you know you're having to do the same psychological work how do you take that on as you approach doing Shakespeare doing measure for measure we're now playing at the Donmar Warehouse I D hence bents and or much ado which you did with David Tennant and Catherine Tate or or Coriolanus how do you run up to doing a Shakespeare production I so I have a bit like you I think a very obsessive method of preparation because you talent with it learned which is not what all actors do and not everybody likes to do that but I think I just think that the way you work you're sort of making the folds in the paper aeroplane that's like kind of feeling to it I thought I was thinking of it I've got my dad a magnificent book on making paper airplanes her birthday presents brilliant go online and get it like a video and there's a guy it's great cuz I thought you just like fold it and do anything in it know you can do all sorts of amazing this now it's thinking of you as I was looking at this book actually just thinking there's a kind of there's a car to the calibration of it and then you can let it fly and I think as a director the calibration is incredibly important so I'm quite nerdy with it so I spend a lot of time looking at the folio if that exists in the play work which was printed comparing the punctuation of different editors because any punctuation that you read in a modern edition of a Shakespeare play is an editor's choice because application works has changed and also it's not consistent so you know and as you know in Shakespeare actually in all theater breath is thought so where you breathe almost tells you everything you need to know about what the meaning and the weight of the line is because like great singers the amount of breath you taking the way you release it releases meaning and phrasing and all of those things so where the punctuation goes is really important and one of the things about this product or measure for measure I've done which is sort of kind of a bit mad but in a cool way is that we do the play twice yeah so you know and it's amazing because in the first half these actors are doing this rather perfect classical reading of the play a user cannot naturalism before and then in the second iteration in the played they're playing it very naturalistically so you know the difference room one of them saying in the first half someone's leaving in hurry may we bring you something on the way and maybe we bring you something on the way like that just yeah like and they mean two completely different things and audiences laugh when they hear at second time slightly differently so the sophistication of listening around it's really important so I did this big nerdy prep where I make sure that I know it backwards and then I cut it very very carefully I should be given some kind of large award I think for cutting probably ninety minutes from Coriolanus yes there's no that's like really that's what I deserve all the credit and more side plates for is that work and it because I you know I got great respect for people to do them on cut but I think you probably need to like take some stuff out of them so and that is part of the preparation as well and then you'd be still in distill so with our production of Coriolanus it was working out how you did ancient Rome the Battle of Crowley's or those things with fourteen chairs and a ladder and that has to be arrived at through distilling and distilling I think so getting is a kind of dual essence of it so you're very confident because you need to be confident because axes are going where do I stand what does this mean I've never done a Shakespeare play before not you but a lot of people or am i as good as the 18,000 people who play Coriolanus before me you know also he's so kid but yes your responsibilities are soak in a lot of anxiety yeah I had to make that to you but no that's your job for sure yeah but I remember there was a very specific note you gave me in previews or in running up to address roses and I should think it was an address just before the opening of a play I'm sure many of you know but you you just you run the thing through you just keep running it iron out the creases get used to the automatic hang on where's my prop I need my sword which got lost got lost going to stage lefty get all that out out of the system but I remember in in after a dress we sort of stayed back are late and he said can I just say something and I said sure say whatever and he said that I really think you need to get angry and it was your perspective on the play like in order for the profundity of Shakespeare's thought as as held in and contained in the structure of that play to be truly brought alive I needed to commit more of myself to make it live and that's the directors responsibility is to be able to say who actors actually this is why I need you know we're instruments and you're essentially the conductor of the orchestra I think the thing about the character of the director isn't there is the kind of megalomania quarter like one of my expenses of making a film but your responsibilities the story no yes but but it's it's also my responsibility to find out how you tick so to look into your craft and your essence and the friction between that and the part that you're playing and how that works with every else in the room what the chemistry of that is in bringing a thing together that would be different if one person was different in one tiny part okay I'm really believing it I really believe it's about my attentiveness the opportunity of what everybody has as much about going this is my vision Coriolanus because it can't be one size fits all because then the works no good you know I hate this if I've transferred shows the Broadway was a disaster cause I was doing with different people and it was awful and I kind of couldn't get one thing out my head and they thought it was bad like I do different yeah what are you doing by the way the paper airplane thing is amazing I'm stealing it that's what it is Israel is an on-set the thing that you noticed about you know in a way before a take you're concentrating on one tiny fold thinking what does this scene right now require from me yeah and I've had that I had that where I thought you know whether it's playing Loki or playing the night manager or or or playing Prince Howell or Henry the fifth or anything you know when you're filming especially they're quite complex characters it you might be in a moment where one of those characters actually applies to all of them is incredibly charming walks into Roman is just blazing radiant energy vitality charm anything I need to be in a play I'm feeling quite playful now you know Loki's about to play a trick or Jonathan pine asked to settle everybody down and you know and then you think right I need to sort of get myself in a place where that's well I'm going to root that's what I'm gonna give in the scene or you have a thing where one of those characters is is isolated on their own very private having a breakdown and you think I need to just quietly fold that corner of the paper aeroplane and find the part of myself that will now have a breakdown on behalf of I think and I think it's my job to be able to watch it you carefully enough I understand what you're doing that I can tell what you're doing so it's so that you can get the room to do it and that's so true on film that's a bit there's a bit in this movie I've done where I just thought for one second this movie which has been elliptically referred to all night is Mary Queen of Scots record that on my phone so I can make that gasp my text message alert that would be so good if we could just do that then that would be great I feel very lucky I've had an exclusive private screening of the finished cut it's absolutely breathtaking January is coming on January here yes sir Ronan Simon will bill reads a death warrant for me yeah great Gemma Chan is amazing an Adrian Lester yeah fantastic fantastic it's really a bits but I found it I found it emotionally overwhelming in a way I didn't expect as well it isn't it's quite Austin so it's quite you know it's Mary Queen of Scots so like not great stuff happens to her so they're fun that's a tagline but but but there aren't many jokes in it and there was a bit this is how it listen I'm learning to be a film director okay and Jack Loudon who's a measure for measure as well at the moment at this there's a moment in the film he's playing Lord Darnley where he's hit in the head by a door and it's about the only decent solid laugh in the film yeah right not because we've messed up all the gags but because there aren't many laughs and it's very simple like character comes through door so you need like what three takes of that and I can see without me talking to Jack and without Jack talking to me I can see what Jack is doing I can see that what Jack is doing is gradually edging himself toward the door so that when the other actor opens it it will hit him in the head and I can't ask Jack Loudoun to be hit in the head with a door Jack loud and can't tell me that it's gonna be hit in the head with the door otherwise the first assistant director will close it down because on the whole you're not meant to bang actors in the head with doors but I know that he wants to do it so I'm there going my first is going you got it because we do open the door now I need one more he goes baby got it I go no I need one more you got it's like AIT's a boom like that oh thank you oh he says it's in the can and Jack's like hyper but it's that it's like understanding just quietly what's going on yeah I remember where Jeremy Irons slapped me across the face in the holocron trying not to prepare myself for it I knew it was coming well I Tom knew was coming but Prince Hal has to be like its complete surprise whack binew is gonna work so it's like after is it's like I was great anyway Mary Queen of Scots January January in the UK yeah January in the UK I think December in America so yeah that's gonna do all of that it's so touching it could only have been made by Josie and I really think so and it's it's you know I think we tell stories from the past to understand something about our present and that's why we always do these Shakespeare plays that so we keep remaking ian's and jane austen and other historical drama i think we keep trying to dig around and what been trying to understand ourselves so why Mary Queen of Scots why now and I won't spoil it but I do think there are some answers like why why do you tell that story now is the story of two very isolated women with a lot of responsibility on their shoulders political disharmony warring factions meddling men the costs of power uneasy lies the head that wears a crown yeah and so I just wants it we'll try it for a sec I just talked to you about your life beyond acting really cuz we're here and well you asked me to come here this is to support laughter yes I remember going to a dinner where I was like he's not masseter yeah see whenever anyone says ambassador it just nothing Pharaoh Roche what does that mean didn't bring any with me sorry disappoint you no no it's a I'm very lucky and I feel very honored that BAFTA have asked me to somehow represent them in this capacity and really it's about something I care very much about which I now go back to do I work with Roger as well in a similar way both charities which I think is less well known and it's about equality of opportunity and representation and BAFTA have been extraordinary in trying to keep the doors open for everyone so that a career in the arts whatever it is you're doing whether you're making films making television games designing games you're a storyboard artist you're a scenic painter you're a carpenter Europe whatever whatever your job is stage manager actor director screenwriter that you feel that we all feel that we are represented in our creative industries and it's a cause I feel very strongly about that that who you are and where you're from should not be a barrier to what you have to give and because otherwise our whole society will be immeasurably impoverished so we just and baton so that's what this is tonight and and so huge thanks to BAFTA for asking me to speak on our behalf they did nothing when we were in pre-production for Mary Queen of Scots word they changed the eligibility for BAFTA Awards which Mundy if there wasn't proper representation yeah within the film we were not eligible and you know it made a tremendous difference like people in the pre production period really noticed that ya know you don't have to compel people to do it but at the same time that said yeah that's a serious and a proper mood yeah well I just think that you know our culture is so rich and deep and broad and diverse and we need to hear voices from every quarter there you know there are as many stories as there are people on this planet and so and that's what the arts are is they're all just telling stories to each other to understand each other and so we need to hear from everyone and and to make sure those of us who are lucky enough that there are no doors which are closed that doesn't matter what life you've had but you know there's a place for your story when I would see your Hamlet in which Lolita Chakrabarti play Gertrude and Lolita is married to Adrian Lester who is in Mary Queen of Scots yeah playing the English ambassador to Scotland and Lolita told me this and actually Adrian did not say this to him into a couple of weeks ago the Adrian Lester who was Peter Brooks Hamlet yeah and you know an amazing rasa line actually for death land he knew it as no she liked it years ago and that great fellow had never played in a period drama on screen like that extraordinary career and he's never been in a costume drama I mean you know it's it's completely not so it's great work okay maybe that's why Hamlet was not seen by that so so we did the production to raise money for Ryder for the same for the same reason you never know and shall we see if there are some questions and you not being completely exhausted by goodness have you made some sense Mercy Me who's pickin hello I think do you want a pickle should I pick you pick okay okay and there is okay so there's a lady there in a nice gold top in between these two ladies with their hands up yes you're gonna stand that's good we encourage that we have my others in microphone hi Tom hi first of all I would like to thank for the opportunity to come here and second of all I want to ask you because I've read the night manager from John McAfee yeah and I've seen the series as well and I have to say that I really liked I thought it was a shame because a Sophie character at the book was so much bit like it was a more three-dimensional character then it was portrayed among the series so I was just wondering for yourself as an actor I don't know if you read the book or not yes it is you know the prep thing we were talking about it really like a peplum is one way I used to sometimes read the book to the crew like come on Tom I gotta get this done before the Sun Goes Down it was a shame that the characters of the character wasn't that well developed on the series because I think like at least for myself as a viewer of the series I thought that after series it felt like she was more of a thing fling to Jonathan rather in the book it felt like he was very much in love with her so it makes sense like that kind of feeling here towards Robert so I was just wondering what was your opinion on that I feel very much the same as you do in in the respect that I do think Jonathan pine was in love with Sophie and I think the loss of Sophie is is very traumatic for him [Music] you know it's it's in a way if you felt it wasn't properly there properly honored in the in the adaptation that's that that the fault is ours but we had the tricky thing without it adapting a novel to screen is that there's all there's with any novel a great deal of interior tea is permitted by the author to the reader the Caray invites the reader inside Jonathon Pines heart and mind and we had very clear we had a very clear time structure and I think Sophie is really she's in a way the leading character of episode 1 at the same time you need to meet Richard Roeper and but I I I tried to convey that there's a scene where Jonathan pine comes across a Sophie's dead body and it is a he he has a breakdown as a it's very traumatic for him and through that wizard was I was trying to convey the the depth of his loss and then it's also something if you look again that Olivia Coleman's character touches on she keeps mentioning Sophie to remind pine of a further reason for his commitment thank you okay so and there's a lady stripy top in the corner there hello this question for both of you about Coriolanus and it seems to me that the mother has an awful lot to answer for she's a real Philip Larkin kind of month and I'd just like your keys about about about my mother but it just came across so well in the playing for Lumia and the relationship and just what it was like actually doing on stage first thing to say is I was just the luckiest man in the world to have Deborah Findlay day that part yes she was she is just the kindest woman with with an incredible a really genuine depth of range within her as a as an actress and we talked a lot about it I I think there's a I think one of the floors of the character of marshes hums Coriolanus is that he has not developed for whatever reason the flexibility and in its it's a fate it's a fault of his mind it's a mental failing a failure of emotional intelligence to to yield that his mother has has he's taken his cue from nurture as a word that there's a singular couplet I can remember in that central scene in act 3 I think it is where he retaliates to her and says would you have me false to my nature rather say I play the man I am and my interpretation was that Martius is doing everything she told him to do she brought him up as a to have no fear of death she brought him up to be enormously courageous fearless dedicated committed this war machine and suddenly she's saying well now what you have to do is to be a politician you have to do things you don't like can you have to say things you don't mean and that goes against everything you've taught me that goes against my integrity my honor and she says well you know times change and things change and and she's a ang and it's his failure of flexibility in the way it's his obstinacy there's something quite childlike about that obstinacy and they never fully get over that until the final scene where her plea and her entreaty to beg him from not to sack the city of Rome is what makes him yield millenias in our production played by Mark Gatiss says he has changed from man to dragon and this dragon weeps sir it isn't a little thing to make mine eyes to sweat compassion the tragedy of Coriolanus is enshrined because this man who has never displayed any vulnerability in that moment learns how to be vulnerable and for that he is executed yeah I think that's a beautiful peaceful answer and I mean I think that just does just got a great flash back to that seeing them which anybody can watch a mentee live for side plates which is the that reduction so so she pivots which is something she's not meant to do is this great Roman mother and then actually the last thing she says is I'm done with you but I'm not almost like you know when toddlers are absolutely losing it and the last thing like your last resort is to go I'm not looking at you yes no it has that kind of quality to it I think it's an amazing piece of writing and I think that you know there's it is a play about rage and there's not a lot of love in any romantic sense within the play but what there is is extraordinary for me portrait of an answerable need like they have an unanswerable I don't mean ancestry but they have an unanswerable need for each other as to people that they've never spoken about really he wants to make her proud yeah and he goes about it the wrong way I think we all want to make our parents proud certainly do okay let's go to the back guess the back is up at the back yes that's that there's a gentleman up at the back there yep everything like great I was just interested what it was like to film a LeFort Alexa which is one of the locations yes it may all get a loaded question why is it a loaded question well I just have my 40th birthday it's a question about place called la Fortaleza in Majorca which was the loke the location for ropers palatial lair in the night manager yeah you know cinema it's an amazing spot [Music] it's a great story well so I was doing my homework at the day before and we had been filming in other parts of New Yorker but principally we were you've been filming in Morocco and then the last three weeks of the shoot were in New Yorker it was already June it was very hot and I'd remember being incredibly hot up on that hill and on the Sunday I wanted to see where this location was and it's across the bay from this is just a geography lesson now it's across the bay from my answer and it was a Sunday afternoon and families on the beach people using ice cream go for walks when surfing and I caught this guy at the end of giving a windsurfing lesson and I said dumb I said in my broken Spanish do you happen to know where LeFort Olathe is and he went he did a sort of extraordinary movie double-take he said did this un la Fortaleza gone office and I and I said well I said we're just you don't know a litany any sort of he again the drama of it was so great because he was in a wet suit and a windsurfer you know looking so macho and he sort of swept his wet hair back and pointed ie laugh potbelly I said wow you know looks very impressive in its sort of came into focus through the trees and and I said have you been have you been to Odessa no anyway it's a very impressive Asus ridiculous stories the excuse to me to be dramatic but but yeah it was great it was great and it was a it's a it's an amazing location for that part of the story and I just remember my memory of it is constantly running around because that's when pine does a lot of his spy work and trying to find the right staircases and locations to do those bits under the under the Summer Sun not too shabby that was probably the best dancing you could have anticipated so let's let's go back against the desert I think there might still up there is this is a lady in a white shirt toward the center there no just say I thank you so you might you might be a bit Scottish is that a lot Scottish I'm sorry and my question to Tom and when you're playing a character it's a really actually kind of question a difficulty when you create your character do you find the voice price or do you find the body like physical body and do you apply them both okay how do you base them I'm struggling to find a physical body of a character hmm so do you I have done that's worth saying can you explain what animals and Lauren are to the group yes so yes I did I did animal study at RADA where you your sub-q it's an exercise in trying to use your body to express some essence that if maybe that if you're if as you might be but but but but if as an actor you're a bit stuck about the character you can think well what kind of animal is this person what was your animal at Roddick as you pick one don't you I I wanted to be a giraffe haha but I was not allowed to be a giraffe because the movement director said the baton you already are a giraffe Rob hey Rob hey see us because it was an officer yeah I used to come downstairs we shared a flat of like a Tuesday morning and find him just in his pants in front of an off to video yeah no there's I was in the same year as Andrea Riseborough and her she did a hyena unforgettable you see even now it was literally like a hey I was in the room I what I I don't know why I did this I I was at the London Zoo trying to find inspiration and I decided I was going to be a black mamba snake credibly difficult invertebrate they can't it really became about the scent that the tongue that he's their tongue is a sort of thing that he's trying to it's like almost like a kind of like a lust or an appetite that expressed by by the snakes time I'd never applied it anything in any kind of it but um and larvan larvan is a language and a vocabulary in a methodology about about finding a way into a fictional human being just using verbs active verbs floating gliding to people glide across to people glide down the street or do they stomp or do they do they have a stomp with an inner float or do they have a this is a way of trying to give physical life to somebody else that is not you to really answer your question I think I think I tried that it's something it's neither it's not quite so deconstructed I suppose for me but but it's certain about the soul of the human and if I study the soul in some way and where MOT where I connect to that character at a deep level it will reveal how they move and how they speak I knew as Coriolanus that this was a decorated Roman warrior a soldier and a warrior somebody whose body was hardened by the practice of warfare and so I sought and so I did a lot of extra physical work just to give myself that sense of feeling fitter feeling stronger feeling more like I could climb that ladder or do a backflip over Hadley for it you know it was it was about sort of a body kind of muscularity that that character needed he's the character it's in there always in the words character was constantly talking about his body talking about the blood he shed talking about the scars he bore and this is someone who's clearly a very physical person [Music] and I hope trying to give other characters I suppose I know the elegance of the night the elegance of Jonathan pine it was something from the novel that that this night manager was had this perfectly inoffensive exterior that he was gentle enough that he could recede into a wall and that if need if he needed to come out and pacify you know if the wedding was still going on in the in the in the ballroom but he needed to pacify the guests in the first floor who were complaining about the music heat both people happy that everything was easy everything was loose everything was graceful no stress no worry no so there was a buried tension that was didn't manifest in the body I'm and you said you having a problem finding a character who's the character yeah no that is hard yeah never played heavenly I suppose it just go it'll be there somewhere go go back and go back to the play and see if you can find something in it that you can connect to it a very personal no one has to know what the personal thing is that you connect to and then see how that informs just the way you walk the way you enter the space I also think there's a lot of dividend of Williams play not for a long time I did I did one when I was at Cambridge I did a streetcar named desire yeah and I think I think I think it's one of those plays it's a bit it's a bit like that's not so great for Yvonne Yvonne if it's a bit like a Chekhov play people think there's a way to do it in their body I mean this is their sort of tropes around the acting of it yeah that can be really really unhelpful because because you go okay so Tennessee Williams play therefore everything I do needs a kind of land or a kind of drawer I'm drunk or it's hot or it's you know so a bit like bad check off is when people are choosing what I would call too many points of concentration you know I'm going to think too hard about Moscow or the samovar or and it's not in a way I think what Tom's saying is something small yeah and it might be a previous circumstance I remember very clearly and I was in a production of Othello at the Donmar in 2007 directed by Michael Grandage and I played Cassio Michael Cassio who is promoted to lieutenant and Iago is marginalized here begins the drama and the beginning vo the first thing of that play is Iago and Roderigo and then and then at some point and then it's Brabantio is woken up but at some point Cassio comes in and he's been looking all night brah fellow that he comes in with news and he's clearly been awake and active for a long time rushing around Venice trying to find people and get them together and I remember in backstage at the Donmar during the first scene of the play running up and down the fire escape stairs because I wanted to come in a bit out of breath because I thought Cassio was so desperate to find where everybody is he can't find anyone and he comes in he's a bit like thank god you're here you know I've got some news and it was a springboard that's that's a fold of the paper aeroplane for me and I didn't want to have to pretend to be out of breath I wanted to actually be out of breath so that I had this I had a very very drama Center if you know any sort of method based out to do that in a play once it was in a war drama and he came on and he did what usually which those three breaths and I've always waiting for news and then he did a four and everybody on stage laughed because they knew that he'd run around so much that he was he was so out of breath he wasn't and be able to get the line out and like twelve access was just rolling around but then the fun thing about it for me was was actually not worrying about the breathlessness because I genuinely was out of breath and they was just trying to get the words out and again no you're good this was a tour so then we were like in a different thief and you just miscalculated yeah goes back to the truthfulness and imaginary circumstances to some extent good luck let's take just a couple how long do we have to meet mom wanna see more very good took you around and up to three then let's go three or drunk quick okay so there's a lady on the end of the row here in a blue shirt let's do that I study acting so I just want to know cuz I'm very interesting about basically how actors and directors are when it comes to certain practitioners so I'm just wondering like what you feel in your career is there certain practitioners that have some sort of influence on you I just want to know how and just any advice on who did you research on the future so write sickness - like to read that stuff for influence you or can I ask you thinking people who are contemporary practitioners now or all really traditional in the Canon of of the craft of acting training yeah I mean I think they're all worth studying because they all have something to give and you know Stannis sort of true Brechtian acting is you know Brett trying to honor Brecht is very different from Jon Delano Stanislavski Brecht was a very political writer he wanted he didn't in his writings it seems bertolt brecht didn't want the audience to feel too much empathy for the characters because the characters were were objects in his mind that he wanted to demonstrate something with narrative Lee and politically particularly I didn't he wants you to feel anything for Arturo he just wants you to watch that sort of chart this man's journey other sorts of stuff there's some slightly more there's less naturalistic things that have come out of the European tradition I think it's really healthy to study European practitioners and and remember I remember studying otto and his vision spell I'll totally a Artie a UD curse that's you know if you can all doodle it oh yeah there we go yeah yeah his first name was Antonin and but that bilities he was him he imagined a different kind of theatrical experience one that was immersive and sensory ah you know so so the naturalism isn't that isn't the end-all be-all it isn't necessarily the thing that you'll always need to draw the door upon because sometimes you're a director might just want to use your body as a as another piece of a jigsaw puzzle of a great picture that he's trying to make on the stage and that's when you just submit to your you become part of the mechanics of something and that's always really thrilling when that happens so I'm trying to think I also contemporary I think Simon McBurney is a genius so so have a read of complicity and and some of the work they've done I think clowning is fantastic I wish I done a proper branch kind of clown in class because that's true imagination traditionally you really only have your body is an instrument there is no set there are no props you just have you know mime and all that sort of stuff so I was doing my lambda exams I was mainly standing mainly looking at ASCII so I just kind of wanted to expand my interests and look at further just to see if there's any more people that could just show me further and give me more other ways to view it and give me more biking interest this is really practical because that's a great list just like go down the national theatre bookshop and look at the acting sector and like you know it doesn't matter if you read something that you think is nonsense at least you will have dismissed it yeah I think and the other thing I would say is that often they get a bit divided those sections between acting and playwriting and there are some brilliant books on like you know a hundred great place for women or you know here's the tradition of modernism in drama and that kinda thing and actually that can be as exciting and as stimulation can send you on as good a journey as a kind of acting textbook and I would say that's hopeful yes don't you pick a question I've gone straight I've just seen you go go yeah there you go I've just been instinctive about it hi so first of all Tom I want to thank you so much because you've inspired me to write my first novel and I'll be forever grateful for that thank you so much and my question is you played so many characters over the last couple of years so I was wondering if any of them some of them regardless of how many times you play them have made a lasting impact on you as an actor in terms of the character traits or surroundings ideals and morals hmm great question [Music] immediately what comes to mind is is the the big Shakespeare wants to be honest because they've I feel like they've demanded a huge amount from me and I've had a very fulfilling time playing them and in a funny way the great Shakespearean parts they're all related to each other and and having played some of them they've talked to each other and echo each other in different ways sometimes Henry the fifth something quite Hamlet Hamlet Ian's about him he's isolated and he feels the weight of his his there is no outlet for his solitude or loneliness and Henry the fifth and Coriolanus talk to each other they're both war heroes they both have to do something very dangerous alone [Music] so I would say certainly the Shakespearean characters and then and then Loki is had a massive impact on my life it just you know no I got a the kind nor it he he has been quite I mean looking at me now there is no way in hell you'd cast me as that character this you know ginger Scottish English guy you know play I'm playing the Norse god of chaos and it's a surprise to me as much as it is to anyone else and and and in the fun I've been able to have with him and how I've expanded that or been able to touch on something very ancient you know Loki's been around in the collective unconscious for two thousand three thousand years there's something about human beings that they need these characters these tricksters to imagine Dionysus was that was with it was the Greco the Greek equivalent in a way and and Loki is up there and the stiffen him this eternal trickster that represents unpredictability and chaos but our lives as human beings are governed by order and chaos and we need a little bit of both and that Loki somehow represents the chaos that sometimes we need I feel really lucky that I got to play thankee gonna pick the left question it's very difficult this to pick somebody [Music] oh okay in a blue so on the ditches you you'll know how much research you do so yes I mean that must be totally different to anybody's life do you do you pick roles that push you all roles that are more familiar do you pick things that actually sort of stretch you because you see them as being something with the strategy I think it's I think it's probably both the great question which is that I try I try to pick roles which will stretch me perhaps into territory I might be afraid of but that within which I can recognize a kernel of familiarity but there is something in there I can relate to [Music] and the truth yeah so with with you always try to find that first I don't think it's a nice divide I don't think it's an intellectual exercise it's a very instinctive thing reading something you find yourself moved by it excited by it it makes you laugh you recognize something in the writing [Music] and you recognize all the bits that are you can quite clearly see the bits that are that are out of your experience I've never been a soldier I've played many soldiers I have played many sons I am a son I know what it's like to be a son I and then I think it's trying to find the parts of yourself that marry the Marriot know with with Loki for example in the very first Thor film he is his emotional pain and his isolation is caused by the trauma of learning that he was adopted I wasn't adopted but it was about extending myself into that imagined circumstance of what that might feel like to be told very late that but in Loki's situation is particularly traumatic because he's he finds that he's the son of his father's mortal sworn enemy with Robert Lang and hi-rise I I could you know as a very interesting detail in Ballard's writing that he moved into the building to get away to get away from grief and in the novel it's a divorce he's just recently got divorced and I've never been married and I've been divorced but but the idea of moving in moving away from pain and actually finding yourself another very difficult situation and I thought they ex with high-rise I found thee what he was trying to say through that story which was part of his own experience if you know anything about Ballard's life his childhood was very complex and he was exposed to extraordinary brutality at a very young age so perhaps he was supposing that behind our civilized manners is something much wilder and and and and less controlled and that what he does with the inhabitants of the high-rises he pushes them into extremity to test them and see where they end up and I was excited by that thought experiment that if the building is a diseased body with royal at the head the architect and and while there is the sort of guts and lying is somewhere in the middle he's sort of caught between the head and the guts and it's you know he's a physiologist a doctor a head doctor somebody who tries to determine why people's brains don't work and he can't work out why the brain of his building doesn't work he just gets steamed in it so so that's a those are two specifics but um there has to be a resonance I think with a role I think so it's trying to to acknowledge that I will have to excavate some part of my own experience and give its shape that it might become an experience of meaning for the audience you very much thank you Tom petals [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Alan Howard / JW3 Speaker Series

Views: 453,436

Keywords: acting, theatre, Tom Hiddleston, stage, drama, plays, film, career, purpose, actor, Loki, Avengers, Josie Rourke, Donmar Warehouse

Id: UBbV34yptsE

Length: 84min 4sec (5044 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 12 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/hsrobin]

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[u/iloveNCIS7]

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