Now, you mentioned working with Dame Helen Mirren, but how did you enjoy working with Tom Hardy?
Tom, I’ve been in the greatest admiration of for many years. Both actors have a quality of passion and performance, which you want to keep seeing, and they always transform. And when you see people transform, when you see someone have such a believability that Dame Helen and Tom do, in some ways he’s… I don’t know. We were trained by similar teachers. We went to the same drama school, so we have a passion for this alchemy of acting, I guess, and the madness of it, that, for me, it is just absolutely invigorating. We don’t know each other that well, I just have a great admiration for his work, his presence on this. But the man creates from his own inner life to performance.
So yes, within the context of the story, I am a father figure [to his character], and this is a story about a family, a family that is mangled, desperate, charismatic, brutal, wily, unpredictable.
Guy Ritchie also takes from the vernacular, the colloquialisms, of Shakespeare, so you have these kinds of Shakespearean characters. The Scottish play, not to name it, but you have a man and a wife who rule a certain kingdom and there’s mistrust. There’s a desperate kind of life involved with violence and wanting to devour anyone who comes into their being. So, you have all that grandiose storytelling and then you have something which is kind of rather cool and chic and the ensemble of characters have a certain sensuality and the look of the show has a casual elegance.
Speaking of sensuality: I was re-watching The Thomas Crown Affair recently. It holds up so well, but it’s also an example of the kind of sexy movies that aren’t made at that scale anymore.
Oh, we live in a time that seems to be so fractured by so many desires and wants and with a heartbeat of anxiety, constant anxiety and disagreement of who we are and what we are, which is definitely perpetuated by, well, media, TikTok. But I think the essence of life and what most people wish and desire is romance and love. And within that, from common sense, that not everything works out the way it should do.
I don’t know, I mean, Thomas Crown Affair is something that I am deeply proud of, and there was a gap to do a remake to enter the arena of Steve McQueen. I think our attention span has sort of diminished [laughs]. So we have to go back. The pendulum has to swing back here at some point to a level of enjoying life moment to moment. Movies are made of dreams. All movies are just dreams essentially. It’s just a dream. It’s just some storytelling of a dream. It’s not real. You don’t believe it. It didn’t happen. The actors… It’s just a dream. It’s just a formula.
