The worst day on a movie set is still better than the best day in the real world.
And that's bullshit.
I just got on the train and I never got off until the train crashed, basically.
So you win an Academy Award.
And what did you do straight after that?
You know, quit, I guess.
It's so nice to be here talking to you.
Nice to talk to you too.
My children are very jealous, both of them.
My son looks up to you.
My daughter is in love with you like every That is so lovely.
Yeah, and I probably will be too by the end of this conversation.
Well, that's the thing.
Every single person ever says oh, my mom loves you, or my daughter loves you, or my girlfriend loves you.
It's never, I love you.
Jacob, I love you.
Jacob, I love you.
I'm in love with you.
It's always a degree of separation.
It's true.
I get that a lot now, like, oh, my mom.
Yeah, and it's like, well, did you enjoy it?
Yeah, it's true.
Well, thank you for that.
That's very nice.
They actually introduced me to you.
My first entree to you and your incredible talent was in Euphoria, of course.
Thank you.
It's really like I was just blown away when I saw you and you're so talented.
Thank you for saying so.
You really are.
Was it alarming?
As parents always say, it's like, but I've never been able to see because it seems so extreme to me when I watch the show that I don't know how it's relatable.
I wasn't alarmed.
Yeah.
My kids are, they sort of weren't going down those paths.
Right.
So, but I think there were things that they felt were right, like were depicted really accurately.
Yeah.
You know, not the extremes, but I think in the relational stuff.
The idea, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the social media stuff.
Yeah, that's an alarming thing.
Yeah.
And there's gonna be another one, right?
There's another one.
I finished filming just recently.
And it's a completely different thing.
Is your character nicer?
I actually think so.
I really do think so.
Whether it works or not, I don't know.
There's a chance that whatever we've done is just not good.
Well, what I've done is not good.
I doubt that.
I'm not sure.
I doubt that.
It was such a sort of truncated experience, but it's cool.
Cool.
It's cool.
Yeah.
Oh, that's very, very exciting.
So, Mighty Supreme.
Yes.
Very good movie.
Thank you.
I'm not available.
Oh, yeah?
What do you got going on?
Actually, I have a big promotional event to attend to for my husband.
Oh, OK.
What's he promoting?
Pens.
How does that process work for you?
Because I would love to work with Josh.
It comes across your desk and you know his films, so you you're familiar with Uncut Gems and that and you want to work with him.
Why that movie?
Why that one?
Yeah.
I mean, if I'm completely honest, you know, I had been kind of not involved in the world of cinema for I'd been taking kind of a break.
Like I wasn't that up on who were the great new people.
And my brother's a filmmaker.
And when I when I told him that this guy, Josh Safdie, wanted to meet me, my brother was like you're doing that movie, like whatever it is, you're doing it.
And I was like who is this guy?
And then I watched Uncut Gems and I was like wow, I just thought, And he, it's so bold.
Like he has such a specific style as a filmmaker.
And then I met with him and he's just awesome.
And like, like creating worlds in his head and just the kind of artist that's like exciting.
I thought, okay, you know, it's been, it's been a minute.
Timothy is incredible in this movie.
Genuinely unbelievable.
And there's like the final frame of him in the hospital is such a committed performance.
What is it?
Because I guess you've worked with some of the greatest male movie stars in the history of cinema.
How is that experience working with someone?
I guess that is sort of the age of these guys that you worked with in the 90s and stuff like that.
Like the sort of what is it like working with someone with that kind of intensity, I guess as a performer?
It was great.
You know, he, I also like hadn't, I wasn't so familiar with his work either.
So I did a, you know, a little bit of a deep dive and, and he's, he's very, very good.
And in this movie, he, he, he absolutely blew me away.
I just like again the bravery around playing somebody with no moral center.
You know, it's like a lot of times actors, when they're playing someone who's not likable yeah, you can see them kind of like couching it a bit.
You know, like not wanting to, he just drives through it.
Yeah, he's very committed you said that's really the right word like it's always inspiring to work with anybody who takes it that seriously and who loves it that much.
And you know, because then I'm like, oh yeah, I used to really love it like this.
It's a reminder thing that it is, that it can be important and it does have and it does have value.
That's how I feel when I watch it, when I watch his work.
He makes me feel good about the state of everything.
Yeah, because it makes you feel like you're not just in the echo chamber, like there is something happening, there's a conversation happening in movies and And people do still care.
Because I think as long as people care about them and if people keep putting care in generation by generation, you can kind of keep them alive.
My great fear is that movies lose their currency or something and we don't have that form of storytelling anymore.
Well, I think it's, you know, it's changed quite a bit.
And you know, like the, the business models have changed and the way it's all commercialized seems wild.
And that feels, does that feel specifically different to like the 90s?
Yes, it feels very different, because i feel like we we grew up looking at your generation of of actors and all those movies and devoured them and it was like that was the dream.
Yeah, that was the movies that like we wanted to make and then i feel like we all kind of finally got the audition, got the thing, and we we've like stepped out into hollywood and it's like Where did they all go?
This is not at all what it felt like watching.
So you can feel a definite sort of shift.
Yes, although I have to say this year, like this year I was like, hey, what's going on?
Yeah, there's a lot of good movies.
Really good movies.
It feels like the first time in a while that it's kind of going back to.
And I think that happens.
You know, in the face of like hyper commercialization, that you start to have real artists coming through like punching through.
And I feel like that's what's happening this year, which is pretty cool.
I agree with you.
That makes me glad.
Have you always approached movies that way, in that, if the filmmaker isn't because you've worked with, Like your list is?
I mean you have Paul Thomas Anderson, Alfonso Cuaron, Steven Spielberg, David Fincher who did Ripley
Anthony Minghella.
Minghella.
Wes Anderson.
Wes Anderson.
No one has...
No one has that list.
That's like, is it a conscious thing or is it something that happens naturally?
Is it something that you seek out?
Because I don't really know what your relationship is to movies because you grew up around them.
Sort of very much around them.
How do you end up in a spot where not only are you making movies because you can get in the industry and just make movies but you've worked with every single person in the sort of recent history of cinema who has had something specific to say, sort of beyond the movie business?
You know putting it.
I mean i think i got really lucky.
Like paul thomas anderson never made a movie.
Yeah, you know what's his heart is his first first, first film.
How does that?
The film geek in me.
How does that?
How do you end up there?
Because I don't know the timeline of all these movies.
I've just seen all your movies as like I've seen them 10 years after they were made or the year that you know they're all over the place for me.
So I must have been probably like 20.
I think he saw me in the first kind of breakout part that I had, which was a movie called Flesh and Bone, which was not a successful movie, but I kind of I had this great role in it and I was, you know, young and he, he saw me and he just kind of like we became friends and I don't know.
There was just something about him that was so, so interesting and like he was so passionate and also it wasn't like a lot of other people were asking me to be in movies at the time.
So it just kind of worked out and he ended up raising the money after some fits and starts and then we all went to Reno and made this movie and it was like John C Reilly.
It's an amazing movie. all these really cool people.
And I think I was in a lot of, like Alfonso Cuaron, that was his first American movie.
I was in Fincher's first movie.
Yeah, there were like a lot of firsts or kind of early in careers and like, Like Wes, for example, I was almost in Rushmore and it didn't work out for some reason.
And I was very excited to be in Tenenbaums with that amazing cast and I feel like that- The character that you played is like stamped forever.
She's pretty cool, she's unbelievably cool.
She is the cool like she defined a certain genre of of like cool girl smoking in the bathtub.
You know writing and play.
It's amazing, thank you.
So just a natural sort of Yeah.
And then I also, you know, made a bunch of weird choices too and made some not so good movies, you know.
How does that come about?
Just the nature of.
Do you feel like you've had a specific thing that you've wanted to like?
When you so, how did you start making movies?
Because you say flesh and bone, is that your?
Yes.
My first movie was actually, I had one line in Hook, a Steven Spielberg movie.
So that was my first one.
I love that movie.
It's cute.
So cute.
But Flesh and Bone was my first like real part.
And I played somebody very, very different to myself.
Like she was a real grifter in Texas and a thief and kind of this amoral. chick.
And when that came out, you know, it's like a lot of sort of good reviews and stuff and that's it started to build and then I didn't work and I was like I thought it was going to happen.
It's not going to happen.
What about you?
What was your first?
I'd sort of studied theater for a while, and then I went to drama school.
And then I was auditioning for Things in America while I was in drama school after class.
And then I booked this movie in Australia called Swinging Safari and it's about the 70s in Australia.
And it's like Guy P.S. and who else is it?
Just a bunch of Australian legends.
And then I was auditioning for things and I auditioned for like a hundred and something times just all self-tapes, because this is right when self-tapes were starting.
And then I booked this Netflix film called The Kissing Booth when I was 18, I think.
And then I went and shot that movie and then came to America and then had the same sort of thing.
I thought that because I had made a movie...
And I wore a leather jacket and I was in this thing that I was.
I really thought I was about to do something.
And then I got to Los Angeles and kind of got, you know, smacked in the face.
It can be sobering.
Yeah, it was like, you know, two years after that, which is not a long time in the scheme of things.
But for me, it was like, you know, nails on a chalkboard.
I had the same kind of thing.
I just thought, oh, my gosh, I guess this is maybe not going to.
Yeah, this is not going to be, you know, and you had an opportunity and it didn't do what you thought it would do, you know, and then it was just auditioning and going through things.
And then I got Euphoria.
And then from there, it's kind of been just a snowball thing.
Yeah, understandably.
Each year, too, every time I think, oh, I've got it now.
I understand.
I know what's happening.
Something else will happen.
That gives me a whole new experience of the.
And how did you?
Who gave you the idea that, you know, a movie career in Hollywood was possible?
You said, you know, you had quite a normal upbringing.
Yeah.
I was quite loud.
I was very noisy, which is every actor's thing is like you know, they didn't know what to do with me.
So they put me, which I hate, but it is true.
Like I was obnoxious.
And there was a teacher at school, Mrs McMahon, decided to put me in this play, to play Cat in the Hat in Seussical the Musical.
And I just, yeah.
You nailed it.
Yeah, as soon as I did it, I was singing and dancing.
I had the big hat on and I knew that that was the thing that I wanted to do.
And then I watched I've said this a million times on this sort of press tour, but I saw Heath Ledger and I think, in The Dark Knight and I knew him from Knight's Tale and all these things that I'd grown up watching.
And I think that when I was about 12, I realized he was from Australia.
And then the cog started turning that it was a viable, it was a thing that you could do.
And it was something that I could do that.
And then from that point, it just became an obsession.
Just movies have been every bit of my life from then to now.
I get very, very excited by the idea of them.
And I had very supportive parents as well.
That's awesome.
Which is such a luxury in that when I said it, they said, sure, you know, go for it.
So are you kind of like... in a pinch me moment right now with this film.
Cause you're, you are so fantastic in Frankenstein and I was so impressed by your physicality.
It was almost like watching a ballet dancer or something like that.
How you emerged into this creature and just the physicality was like, really beautiful, and the dynamic between this incredible tenderness and this violence which you like seem to have.
You know such facility with like the depths of each direction.
I was really impressed.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You know, my sister is a ballet dancer.
She was my whole life.
So she danced from when she was two till about 26.
She danced in Germany.
So I've grown up around that kind of movement.
It definitely was like a reference point for sort of how to use your body.
I've always been sort of enamored by ballet. by ballet, but thank you for saying so.
And it is a pinch me moment, because the dream that I had, really when I was laying in my bed and I had these little like a lot of people do, those little glow in the dark stars on my roof and I would lay there and stare at them.
And part of that dream was literally working with Guillermo del Toro.
Was it really?
Because I'd seen Pan's Labyrinth when I was maybe 13 or 14 or something.
And there was the pale man was in that.
Who is this creep?
And I was into monsters and all these sorts of things.
And I remember seeing that film and keeping it with me somewhere, like the idea of that movie.
So then, now to be on a plane with him and to even to watch the film and see his name come up and then sort of pop up on the screen as the creature is, it's absolutely surreal.
It's an impossible thing to.
You manifested it.
In a way, but in a very sort of subconscious sort of indirect kind of way.
Like how did it come about?
Did you just get the call that?
Yeah, I was shooting Priscilla, this movie where I play Elvis Presley.
Oh yeah.
With Sofia Coppola.
Yeah, beautiful.
She's amazing.
She's incredible.
And the hair team, hair and makeup team from that were going to make Frankenstein after we were done.
And while I was playing Elvis, I had this kind of unnatural sort of pluck. and confidence.
I remember I said to her, I said, I'm supposed to be in that movie.
And she was like, no, you're not.
And she's like, did you audition for it?
And I was like, no, no, I'm meant to be in it though.
And she goes, well, we have an actor, so you're not meant to be in it.
And I kind of laughed.
It was just a passing joke.
And then a year later, the actor dropped out and the hair person went to Guillermo and said I don't know if you know who this is, but maybe you should think about he has a great sort of physicality or something for it.
And at the same time, Ted Sarandos at Netflix emailed a link to this other film I'd made called Salt Berm.
And so Guillermo had this sort of influx of information about me.
A triangulation of Jacob Velarde.
Yeah, which was strange because I'd never said anything like that before.
And then, yeah, I got an email to read the script.
And then the next morning we FaceTimed.
Were you so excited?
I was beyond excited, which was I was getting to a point too where I wasn't really very excited, like work was becoming work in a way, and nothing was really moving anything.
And I was starting to face it like maybe I'll just keep working or take a break, or I was sort of losing passion or something a little bit.
And as soon as I read the screenplay it was, I knew, I knew how I wanted to say that line.
I knew I had a picture of how he would move in my head.
It was just sort of an immediate kind of, And I turned all the lights off in my house and lit everything with candles when I read the script, because I just had a feeling that I needed to.
I needed to do something to get a spark back.
Stir it.
Yeah, so I'm not just reading screenplays on my laptop because they've been sent in and you have they need to know by the end of the day and you're like kind of just going through it and not really reacting to what's in front of you.
So I really made a meal out of it.
And then I had this six-day excruciating wait to find out if I was viable.
What was he ruminating on?
It was something to do with the studio or something.
Something that I had no idea.
And in my head I created every single reason why I had ruined my life and that I wouldn't be in this movie and how I had messed up and all these things.
And then eventually...
I got the phone call that, you know, I had to go.
That's so exciting.
Yeah, put all the stuff on.
It's interesting what you were saying about, like when you just touched on you know you had been kind of working as work and you had to take a minute to get the spark back.
Because I always think that's so interesting about being an artist that if you're lucky enough to start to make a living at your art, like what we do out of love and dream and passion, like that, it can become work, you know.
Yeah, and there is something about that too.
You are so lucky that somebody's paying the rent on the building for you to go in and do your silly little song and dance yeah, in there.
So the fact that i was sitting there kind of laboring over it like it was a, that's where i knew something was wrong, right with what, whatever was, because the thing is you should be able to find joy in it in any sort of scenario, whether the script is incredible or not incredible.
But it does start to become i don't know, it does start to become a job.
And then it's because i used to be one of those people that was like um, you know, the the worst day on a movie set is still better than the best day in the real world.
And that's bullshit, that's a fucking lie, like it's not true.
The best day in the real world absolutely trumps and devours you know the worst day, because the worst day on a film set is like It's really demoralizing.
Really.
And you can't quite figure out why.
Because you've still got your latte and everything is there and you've been driven.
But you know it's not working.
But there's something that's just so.
You've got egg on your face.
Yeah.
And there is that moment.
I was standing there and I was saying words and something that I had somehow ended up in.
And I felt like my bones were like on fire.
Like I was like, I love you or something like that.
And I was like, oh.
I was looking at myself from the outside on these sets like just go home, like you should have tomatoes thrown at you, like you're an embarrassment.
You know those moments are so excruciating.
So yeah, so it was.
It was nice to to have something come in that sort of reignited that feeling that it could the worst day could be the best day.
Yeah, you know um, did you feel when you when?
How long is the break that you?
It's like seven years, seven years.
And was it?
Is that a conscious thing from like, from a similar kind of feeling?
Or is it just something that life you have focused on something else, or is it something I have to get away from this, or?
Yeah, I think it was a combination of things.
I think you know when I was doing it in my twenties like I never took a break and I kind of burned myself out a little bit.
And so when I had my daughter, I was like, I'm just going to take a minute.
And luckily I could afford to take a break.
And then I had my son and then I was like, I think I want to approach this in a different way.
And have a little bit more of a life.
I think I felt, you know, a lot of loneliness when I was doing it in my 20s.
I didn't know myself really well yet and I was traveling all the time and so I just kind of wanted to take a break.
And then I started to do kind of more supporting parts and things like the Iron Man movies, and I felt like there was a part of myself that I needed to.
I kind of needed to grow up and understand really who I was.
And I got a lot of those answers through my family and then I started a business and then it became really hard to contemplate, you know, doing something, and I also, for me, like didn't want to go on location while my kids were still home.
And so this kind of came about in the most incredible way because our boys I have a son and a stepson who are the same age and they were going off.
I was left with this feeling of like shock and disbelief, like these boys are going to go and like who am I?
And it was just then that I met Josh and became familiar with his work.
And he reminded me of some of those people you mentioned, like in the early days of their career.
And I was like, I think this is going to be really worthwhile.
It might work or not because it's so ambitious and so original.
It's unbelievable.
Yeah.
I'm not agreeing to anything.
All right, we don't have to agree to anything.
I'm going to do it anyway, OK?
One, two, three.
I thought, this is the kind of thing I like to do.
Like, I want to take a risk.
And so, and it was gonna shoot in New York so I could be near all the kids and so.
So I said yes.
It's an amazing movie for that because it is so niche and quite peculiar.
The performances are peculiar, the story is peculiar, but it's totally universal.
Yeah.
Like you go with each character.
When he came to you with the movie, was it as it was?
Yeah.
It was just fully.
It was long.
It was like 160 pages or something like that.
Yeah, it was a long.
And I was like, there's no way they're going to be able to.
Did you shoot 160 pages?
I mean.
I feel like no, because I think we started just not making days and then things would sort of fall away.
But I think it was a lot of pages that were shot.
On a film like that, because their films are like long lenses set up in the street.
Steal a shot, get this.
If you can, don't need the permit.
You know, there's something like Herzoggy about it.
Was that the case on this movie?
Because this is obviously so much more, Because Uncut Gems is its own thing and Heaven Knows What, and all these films are there and Good Time, but they're a lot messier in a good way, in the way that they are shot on the street, whereas this felt a lot more like a big movie.
This is like a bigger...
This movie felt to me like the movies that we used to make in the 90s.
Yeah, because it reminds me of your films from the 90s in a way.
Just the size and the scale of the shots and the depth of the performance.
Everyone is great in that movie.
Everyone is perfect in your movie.
And you have this one moment which I told you before.
But when you step out on the stage and are facing away from the audience and the light comes up and you say that first line, And the audience erupts.
I just started weeping.
I just started crying.
But the look on your face was so sincere and so beautiful and sad.
At the same time it was a combination of this whole person's life was in the chair of that audience.
And you absolutely just like it was flawless.
Thank you so much.
And also are you doing because I wasn't sure, because I have your voice in my head is a combination of all the films that you've made.
And now I'm hearing you speak for real.
Was there like an old movie star transatlantic thing on her?
How does that come about, the voice of her and stuff like that?
I was just watching.
You know, like Hitchcock movies and movies from the time, like movies in the 50s.
And people really did speak with that kind of transatlantic thing.
So I brought that in a little bit.
It's great.
It's absolutely.
And yours is English in the movie.
English and the guy that teaches the creature to speak, David Bradley.
He's from Yorkshire, so he's Northern England.
And then Oscar did this sort of heightened RP accent.
So the creature's somewhere in the middle.
And then maybe whatever memory he has from a different body part, maybe the way that person sounds.
The thing with the creature is, it seems specific, but he is so vague because he's created from so many different things.
So I had so many places to go and look.
There was also a lot of practical stuff too, like standing in the mirror and going like.
I was gonna ask you about that, because I think whenever there are, like Whenever I see a performance that has those aspects of bravery, I think how do they do that?
In the mirror, or do you?
The mirror was a massive part because I pretty much made myself alone for the six months of shooting, because he's kind of the loneliest thing in the whole world.
Yeah, it's so sad.
Yeah, it is.
And reading him and playing him, I was like, oh, you poor thing.
You know, you're so alone.
So I kind of isolated myself and I spent just so much time at the house I had in Toronto.
I had mirrors everywhere and I would just walk around and mutter to myself over there and then try something over here.
I'd call my sister and be like, do you like this or do you like this?
It was something very practical and deliberate, but then also something...
That was about exploring and just trying.
But I listened to this podcast recently with Joaquin Phoenix and he said James Gray, you also worked with him.
Two Lovers.
See, you have a crazy filmography.
It's unbelievable.
But there was something in the master and it was a scene where I was like, oh my God, that's impossible performance.
How did you do that?
And then in this podcast he said he just held his breath, like he really just held his breath until he couldn't.
And I'm like oh, of course that's exactly what is happening in that frame.
You can't.
So there's a lot of stuff like that as well.
Just get your body to the extreme point physically right, and then he'll say action, and then sort of something happens as you unfold.
So like practical and spiritual, there was this weird combination of the.
Do you often do that sort of like?
Take the fundamental elements of a character and have that be the kind of atmosphere in your real life?
To a degree, but I'm also I I don't.
I can't go so far down that path, that like, but I can still acknowledge that there's lights there and cameras, so there's.
If I went fully into the thing of like I am method living in this thing, it's just bullshit because You're not.
You got an SUV and you went to the thing.
But there's little things like the voice is really hard to do if I'm like talking in the voice.
And then I go, can I just have a latte?
So stuff like that I cut out.
Like foods that I liked I would get rid of.
Like just little habits that I have as myself.
I would get rid of them so I felt kind of foreign in my own environment, I suppose.
Wow, that's very committed.
But nothing like, nothing...
I also I'll do anything to have like a small departure from the everyday as well.
Like I love, I just love, I've always loved, and again, this is such a dicky actor thing, but I like the idea of um being able to fully just be like not dealing with that.
Right sorry, I gotta make a movie.
Not dealing.
Not dealing with that It's like denial as a profession.
Making a movie is a great excuse to get, because you can't argue with it.
It's like, oh, well, I guess I've got to go to Istanbul now for this many weeks.
Sorry.
Right, right.
So maybe, yeah, maybe.
But do you feel like there's stuff you want to escape from in your real life, or is it more just...
No, I think there's some kind of an indulgent thing.
I love indulging in the other life or something like that.
It's not necessarily like anything to do with running as opposed to enjoying the holiday or something like that.
I'm not sure.
I'm kind of reevaluating the whole thing. now as well after this movie.
So do you think, did you enjoy it the same way coming back after the break?
Did it do, did it feel how you thought it would feel?
I enjoyed it so much more.
Like I felt very.
It was like a fresh start in a way.
You know.
It felt like I don't know.
I felt like I just came to it with all this life lived like tucked away into my body and with more you know.
I think that always makes you more layered as a person.
There's been through so much stuff and before I just got on the train and I never got off until the train crashed basically.
And and I feel like I sort of fell out of love with it, you know, because I I wasn't even sort of contemplating do I love this?
Like, you know, I was just like going, going, going.
And I had taken such a long break that I was really able to feel everything and just perceive, actually give the information that's coming.
I wonder why that is that the train has to derail for you to.
I'm not even asking.
I genuinely, why is it that it has to in this thing?
It's just, you can't just go, I'm gonna just, I'm gonna just get off now.
Because I think we feel like, as actors, we're so lucky to be in a position where we're able to do it and get paid for it, and it doesn't.
I mean, i can just speak for myself.
I never thought like hey, like maybe you should take a break or just say no to this one thing or slow down.
It was like this, i don't know.
Breathless ferociousness around, like if i, what if i don't get another job?
And yeah, as opposed to being more strategic and like and taking some time.
But it's hard to be strategic when it's your first time experiencing something as well.
All these experiences are brand new things, so you can't have a plan for how you're supposed to do them.
How old were you when you started acting, like the first time?
Because you grew up in it or around it or adjacent.
What was the calling of it?
Did you get bitten by that bug?
That you knew you had to do this thing, or was it and sort of a natural Progress and was it how you thought it would be?
You're like entrance into it doesn't make sense.
Absolutely So I always wanted to do it because my mom is an incredible Actor and on the stage.
She's like a legend.
So I grew up watching her rehearse and do plays my whole life and I just wanted to do what she did like she was so powerful on stage and so mesmerizing.
And so I always wanted to act.
My parents were kind of discouraging of it.
You know, they thought I should try to pursue something a bit more, I don't know, maybe steady.
And like after school one day in high school in New York City like I was smoking cigarettes in the coffee shop and And then a casting director came up to me and didn't know who my parents were or anything.
And she was like, do you want to audition for a movie?
And, you know, so like, I got a call back to that.
And then, you know, then I was, I used to do plays at the Williamstown Theater Festival.
Every I was an apprentice and someone saw me and it was just sort of like little bits, you know, and I was sort of like my parents were like are you going to go to college?
Are you going to do this?
Like, what's happening?
Do you think they knew that you were going to do it?
I think they knew.
And it was just like, keep it at bay for as long as you could.
I think so.
But my first thing ever, I think was when I was in Hook, I was probably 17.
No way.
Yeah unbelievable, but it was just one line.
Yeah, but you're in.
You're in the spielberg movie.
It still, it still gets added to the list of the rings.
It still counts.
When i read salt burn, my thought on it was i was like i have to be like jude law in this movie because of ripley.
But then my association to it.
I was like oh, these aren't similar at all.
I shouldn't use that as a, as a, as a reference, I think.
Before making the film, I thought it was gonna be like a Talents of Mr Ripley sort of structure.
And then as I went to make the film, I think I realized it wasn't.
And it's the same director that is doing Wuthering Heights?
She's doing this movie.
Well, we did this movie, Wuthering Heights, after that.
I'm very excited for this movie.
I think you'll like it.
I saw it last week.
How is it?
It's really good, I think.
She's an amazing filmmaker, and Margot is so good.
Oh, wow.
And she's Australian too, right?
Yeah, we're literally from like 20 minutes from each other.
Oh, that's great.
Is that nice?
Does it feel sort of like a homecoming?
There was this shorthand that we got to have, based on just childhood experience, like certain smells and sounds and a certain kind of a brand of cracker that you guys don't have, or a biscuit.
You know, just those things made it all sort of so much easier.
But it's a cool movie.
I hope.
We'll see.
I'm excited.
We'll see what happens with it.
I think the internet is abuzz about Wuthering Heights.
So they should be.
Someone will pull their phone up and I'm like, get that away from me.
When was the last time you were on stage?
The last time I was on stage was too long ago.
It was when I did Proof in London.
Oh, really?
Which was 2002.
Do you think, this is such a journalist question, do you think you'll ever make it back?
I would love to actually.
I promised my mother I would do a play at some point.
I would love to watch you on stage.
Thank you.
Especially after that frame in the movie.
I feel like it would be a similar, there'd be a similar reception.
Hopefully my reviews wouldn't be as bad as my character.
Oh, that's crippling when it cuts to you crying in that room.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, I remember.
And I remember putting the, I was sitting there, I put the, I went, oh no.
Oh no.
Oh no, no, no, no, no, no.
And Josh and Ronnie, the writers, actually wrote out the entire review.
It's so brutal.
It's so brutal.
I was like, yeah, this would make me sob.
Yeah.
I guess that's what you put yourself up for if you go back.
I know.
That's the risk.
Especially if it's like a comeback or something as well, which is crazy.
I have one more question.
Okay.
So you win an Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love.
Did that have any bearing before you had gotten into that position?
And did it change anything in terms of how you view movies or the way that you do the work?
Because that moment is... this is a thing of like, oh, it means nothing.
It's all just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But there is a thing where it does mean a great deal.
And even just in a business sense as like as an actor, there is something that happens and changes just in people's perception of you and your work.
And I imagine pressure, like, did it feel like something had happened or did it feel like nothing?
Oh my God.
It felt like something immense had happened.
Yeah.
And there was this massive energetic shift.
It was very, very overwhelming.
I mean, I was young, I was only 26, so.
So crazy.
You know, of course, it's like the ultimate the ultimate prize, right?
It's like the.
And so there was this incredible sense of like pride, but also overwhelm.
And then like do I deserve this?
A little shame, yeah.
You know, it was like... And I was so... young that i feel like i didn't have the tools yet to sort of metabolize it so it was pretty overwhelming and i think it also just kind of gave me pause like wait what does this mean and like how am i supposed to do something else what do you do after that what do you do after That's it.
And what did you do straight after that?
You know, quit, I guess.
Good, good, good, good, good, good.
You know, pretty much like a few years later.
And then you take that, take that break after that.
Yeah.
I just, I just needed, like, I needed to, I did a big life change.
You know, I moved to England for at least a decade and It is interesting that there's such an emphasis on taking a break and coming back from something.
But there's no rule book that says you need to make three movies every year and keep delivering a thing.
It is, at the end of the day, an art or a craft.
And some painters only put out three paintings every year.
20 years, or a musician might put out one album every like.
A real sort of conceptual musician might put out one album every 15 years or something like that.
But there is this strange sort of commercial expectation that an actor has you're only as good as your last movie or you do have to keep feeding this thing.
But if you And it's not true
Not at all.
No.
And I think that's the thing.
Like if I, if I could go back and talk to myself at that age, I would just say, just just take your time, you know, just really get in touch with who you are to the greatest extent possible and make decisions from that place.
Like you know, I would just say slow down and work with great people and, you know, don't beat yourself up so much along the way.
And yeah yeah, because it can feel like a decision like yes or no to a movie is like saying yes or no to being alive, like do I want to live or do I want to die, if that's what the stakes can feel like sometimes, and it's just so clearly not the case, because if you step outside of Los Angeles or New York for like 20 minutes, you realize it's such a, it's such a concentrated bubble.
Yeah, that this stuff is important and that it has some kind of major bearing on the world.
Totally, totally.
Jacob, this was a pleasure.
Thank you, it was my pleasure.
It was great to get to sit with you.
Yeah, here in this setting.
Yeah. you
