How did you get involved with the project?
Baillie Walsh is a friend of mine. He wrote this script five or six years ago, with me in mind. It's a kind of biography for him, but he wanted to include me in the film. We've been discussing it ever since! Fortunately things came together in 18 months.

Why did you want to work with Baillie?
I've always wanted to see Baillie make movies. I've always had a great deal of confidence in him. It's just one of those things of saying: Let's try and see what happens if we can put together a movie! One of the hardest things about putting a movie together is raising the money, and luckily enough, since I had a bit of success last year with some other movie, people decided to start spending some money on us.

Tell us about your character Joe Scott...
Joe is a washed out movie-star. He's comfortably well off and lives in a very nice place, but his stars are starting to fade... He takes to drugs and doesn't have his feet on the ground. He has lost contact with himself. The one person that really cares for him is Ophilia, and probably she's the love of his life. But she's sitting in front of him, and he doesn't even notice. So their relationship is almost sibling like... He was a very hard person for me to play...

Can you relate to your character?
I had a very happy upbringing; I was very protected and looked after. But you feel the guilt about leaving home, and moving on. For parents it's an awful thing. On one hand you want to see your children succeed and go on, on the other hand you want to protect them. Children succeed because they have confidence, and that confidence is your own doing as a parent. You don't get to understand that until later on in life. And when you're young things matter much less, because all you are trying to do is get on and survive. Yes, I can relate to this character by empathising that maybe he wasn't as lucky as I have been so far.

How was is working with Eve Jeffers?
We were really fortunate to get Eve on board. We were really struggling, because you are asking someone to come all the way to South Africa, it's a long journey to make and also on paper, the part doesn't appear to be huge. But she understood immediately that the relationship between Joe and Ophilia, the character she is playing, is the most important part of the movie. They are all they've got for each other and that's why they are together. Eve's incredibly beautiful, she's a really good actress and we have to be grateful that she agreed to play the part.

Why would you recreate England in South Africa?
We shot on a beach in South Africa that was about 20 km long, it was sand dunes all the way. In Devon, there might be a beautiful beach like that, but it'd be only five miles long... This one went that extra yard. For Baillie it was important to get that epic proportion on screen, and that wouldn't be delivered by any of our beautiful English beaches.

What appealed to you about the film?
I connected very deeply with it, and for that very reason I think other people will too, because I'm not that unusual. And I wouldn't do the film unless I thought it had a universal theme within it. Beyond that, I think it looks stunning.

Источник: http://24 Sep, 2008 05:40 am ISTlINDIATIMES MOVIES