“I take my work enormously seriously. When I do something it has to feel right. Everything has to be right. I’m not ambitious about my career, but I am ambitious with each job. I can be fairly annoying to work with. No compromises. Let’s put it this way: compromises are from hell.”
“From Sense and Sensibility, Emma Thompson became my mentor. I don’t think I even realised it at the time but still now I thank her and we’ve always remained close. Can you imagine how grateful I am to have had that so young? I could have turned into a right little shit, especially after Titanic, if I hadn’t been shown by her on the set of Sensibility the way to behave. Even though my family is solid and would have never allowed me to become that way, I was so lucky that she was there as an example to me.”
Stay excellent, Emma Thompson:
If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know?
I wasn’t sure how to answer this one so I discussed it with my 12-year-old daughter. She suggested Plato. I was impressed. So Plato it is. I think I’d want to ask him how he’d imagine life had changed by 2012.
Have you ever written to an author? Did he or she write back?
I wrote to René Goscinny when I was 7 or 8, a fan letter about Asterix. He wrote back, saying that he was very proud to have made a little English girl laugh.
You’re organizing a literary dinner party and inviting three writers. Who’s on the list?
Sappho, for a bit of ancient gender politics; Aphra Behn for theater gossip; and George Eliot because everyone who knew her said she was fascinating. All women, because they know how to get talking about the nitty-gritty so quickly and are less prone to telling anecdotes. I’d have gone for Jane Austen if I weren’t convinced she’d just have a soft-boiled egg and leave early.
Definitely click through to see what books she’s got on her nightstand.
![[on what he would do if he wasn’t an actor]: I have no skills. There’s absolutely nothing I know how to do. So I’d be fucked otherwise. I’m very fortunate to be an actor. I know I’m very lucky to be doing this. And though I’m not sure where I’m going to end up - whether it’s in major films, independents, or theater work - I’m just happy getting to do roles that are really juicy, meaningful and allow me to keep adventuring the way I have been.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_maihclFatm1qidyw2o1_500.png)
[on what he would do if he wasn’t an actor]: I have no skills. There’s absolutely nothing I know how to do. So I’d be fucked otherwise. I’m very fortunate to be an actor. I know I’m very lucky to be doing this. And though I’m not sure where I’m going to end up - whether it’s in major films, independents, or theater work - I’m just happy getting to do roles that are really juicy, meaningful and allow me to keep adventuring the way I have been.
THR: You co-hosted the Oscars in 2010 with Steve Martin. What did you think of the reaction to Seth MacFarlane’s performance?
Baldwin: The Oscars is a completely thankless job. It’s really tough.
THR: So you wouldn’t do it again?
Baldwin: No. Never, never, never. And I enjoyed doing it. What the Oscars absolutely, unequivocally should be is a show with a little bit of entertainment and a very reverential overview of movies of that year. And that show would last about two hours, and it would be a very tight show with a lot of serious, cineastic appreciation. But the Oscars is also a television program that raises 90 percent of the Academy’s budget for the year in a single night. When the Oscars is three hours — when they bullshit you and say that the Oscars is running long, and that’s a problem — that’s not a problem. They’re making more money. So ABC and the Academy, they have no interest in doing a tight, better-produced show. They are forced, because of economic constraints, to have a flabby, tired show.
THR: And everyone who does it gets raked over the coals.
Baldwin: They need to gamble on the show, and they’re not gambling. I am a member of the Academy, but everyone who has done it lately has been crucified. So they’re not going to get anybody who is reasonably talented or special to take that chance anymore. They don’t pay you any money; the Oscars pay you like chicken feed. It’s all about the honor of helping to extol film achievement. But they’re going to have a tough time. I’m dying to see who they get to do it next year. They’re going to have to go dig someone up from a cemetery. They’re going to have to go dig up Bob Hope.
"The Fall Behind the Scenes: Lee’s Method Acting
Lee Pace spent the two months it took to film The Fall’s hospital scenes in a wheelchair. Only a select few of the crew knew that he could actually walk.
“It was hard (…) but it was about getting that performance out of Catinca, and making her feel comfortable with me, and putting the mood on set that she would be sensitive to. I do think it was valuable, because it caught a level of realism in those scenes with Catinca, a privacy and sensitivity that I don’t know we would have gotten without doing it.”
It’s really vitally important to me the way women are portrayed. As someone who has always felt at times pretty genderless because of my size, it interests me to challenge ideas of prejudice and femininity and what it is to be a woman. It’s still something that I don’t have all the answers for but I would like to make a bit of a difference; do something, anything, that causes people to have more sense of equality….
Imagine; I used to have really long blonde hair, always wearing heels, lots of make-up. I had been someone who was highly feminised and had chosen to look that way, partly because I was 6ft 3in but also I was into that aesthetic. I knew it had to be stripped away. I knew this would be an important part not just for my work but in terms of my own development, because I would be confronting elements of myself that I didn’t want to confront. It was actor’s vanity and personal vanity. To see yourself displayed as unattractive, large, masculine, it’s quite tough… But I know it’s just perspective. A social conditioning that causes us to view these traits in a woman in a negative way, but it’s still hard to watch myself even now. (x)
LOTR extras
→ ”He proceeded to sort of talk about some very clandestine part of WW2…
He seemed to have expert knowledge of exactly the sort of noise that they make so I just sort of didn’t push the subject any further, I just said ”Well you obviously know what to do, Christopher, so I’m sure you’ll do it great” and he did.”i am dubious of the ‘a man’ bit.
