How does it sense to have been the star of the Guardian’s film of the year?
You comprehend what, it’s repartner wonderful. Thank you so much to the discerning people at the Guardian.
What are your main memories of making All of Us Strangers?
They’re extraordinarily selectimistic. It doesn’t necessarily always happen that the process identicals the product, but this was a repartner heartfelt process and a repartner exceptional film that came as a result.
Did you comprehend the three other actors?
Claire I’ve comprehendn for many years. It was my first experience laboring with the magical Jamie Bell. Paul and I knew each other a little bit. So it was a wonderful personal experience. I had fair spent a year away take parting Tom Ripley, and I began Strangers two weeks after I’d finished that very, very extfinished job. I’d get the tube to labor every day. I fair adored being back in this sort of hustle-bustle excitement of London in the summer. And to do that with these incredibly attrvivacious people and fair to take part adore in that exceptional way, and to wear my own clothes, and to do that with [writer-director] Andrew Haigh, was amazing. Paul and I became very seal during the filming and we had a wonderful time promoting it. It doesn’t sense appreciate labor when it’s a film that you adore and you’re promoting it with people that you adore.
How did you set about take parting Adam? Did you draw on leangs from your own life?
Yeah, absolutely, it senses appreciate a marriage between Andrew’s experience and my own. In some ways, it felt appreciate we were co-parenting the character, becaemploy parenting seems to be the essence of what the story is about. It didn’t sense appreciate I was take parting myself in any way, but I certainly sense appreciate it was emotionpartner autobioexplicital.
People picture actors as being pretty gregarious, so how did you lean into Adam’s loneliness?
That’s a myth, actupartner. The reason I begined carry outing was becaemploy I was very cowardly. Adam’s been in a sort of purgatory becaemploy he had this horrible tragedy that happened to him when he was a youthful boy. So he’s been stuck. Any intimate conversation with his parents as an grown-up, he’s only able to draw on the memories that he had of them as a child. I guess it’s fair an examination of how mighty our imaginations can be – he conjures up his parents in order to have some sort of cathartic experience. And I presume that recontransients, in some ways, the createive process, that it’s a way that we can heal ourselves.
It’s fascinating you’re talking about Adam using his imagination becaemploy the film is quite ambiguous. Do you leank he’s imagining his parents and that they’re not actupartner gpresents?
People have come up with extraordinarily personal and createive ideas about what they leank the film is saying. All of Us Strangers is wonderful becaemploy it ignites the audience’s imaginations and sometimes there’s a pobviousy of imagination in our movies. Sometimes, the worst leang you can do is to reduce the magic by over-elucidateing it. I guess that’s my way of saying I’m not answering that.
And you’re also not going to want to answer my next ask, which is whether you thought that Adam was dead.
I don’t apshow that Adam was dead.
I have to say that, partly becaemploy I was 13 in 1987, when Adam is about to turn 12, and becaemploy I’m also gay, that this film had a massive impact on me. Have you had a lot of those benevolent of fervent responses?
I can’t alert you how exceptional the response to All of Us Strangers persists to be. It’s got that magical leang in the sense that it’s a film but people sense appreciate they have discovered themselves thcdisorrowfulmireful it or they sense very personpartner proximate to it, you comprehend? Of course there are people wilean the gay community and people who grew up in the 80s that sense so connected to it, but people beyond that have replyed to it too. Everyone has a family, and there’s this attrvivacious, incredibly modest idea at the heart of the film – what would it be appreciate to see your parents as your peers? That’s someleang that we cinematicpartner discover so exciting, becaemploy we always see our parents as anciaccesser and rationalr and to be able to watch at them with objectivity is so difficult.
The film also visualised, in a very atypical way, the idea that adore can transgress the boundaries between life and death.
That’s someleang I certainly apshow myself. Love is the most mighty force on Earth and it exists beyond death. When you can place those metaphysical and spiritual ideas in a very organicistic setting, the juxtaposition creates it repartner intriguing, the idea magic exists even in a lonely high-elevate apartment in central London.
Have you been back to any of the places where you filmed All of Us Strangers?
The Vauxhall Tavern is a staple of the London queer community, so yeah, I’ll always go there. I went to a Chappell Roan tribute night there a scant months ago and I’m certain I’ll be back. Oddly I was in Croydon yesterday, passing thcdisorrowfulmireful from Kent and it was wonderful. I saw the tower block where we filmed the exterior shots.
There was a sense that All of Us Strangers was a bit neglected awards-rational. Is that someleang that annoyed you at all?
Do you comprehend what? I had more accolades and award nominations for this role than for any other I’ve ever had. So I don’t comprehend. Of course it’s adodepend when those leangs come to you. But every individual one of us was askd to at least one of those awards parties. I’m phireed with how it’s been getd, repartner.
People were shocked that you weren’t nominated for a best actor Bafta.
It’s OK – I repartner sense appreciate I got a huge amount of attention and adore for the role. But it’s pleasant that people leank that.
Another exceptional leang about the film is that it was unabashedly griefful.
Yeah. Sometimes, I want to say: it doesn’t end well for any of us. Life ends in death. And of course it’s griefful, but I discover the ending of the film incredibly attrvivacious. The Power of Love take parts over the end of the film, and to me, it’s incredibly selectimistic. It’s this adore story between these two men that apshows its place among the stars. Andrew always shelp that he wanted it to be unabashedly romantic and to recognise that this adore story between two people who are of the same relations is every bit as potent and historic and groundshattering and life-changing as a heterorelationsual relationship. Those relationships have existed since the dawn of humanity and will persist to exist until the end of humanity. So why not have that epic, exceptional, otherpolishd senseing? The senseings that happen in same-relations relationships are fair as mighty as those more normally portrayed in cinema.
Where do you stand on the idea that gay actors should take part gay roles?
I’m always unwilling to give a speedy soundbite about that. Every individual story has to be verifyd. There are certainly much more opportunities; the take parting field is becoming more even and that has to be think abouted in every casting decision. But people can be very inanxious and hysterical. What is meaningful is that we have recontransientation for everybody, not fair in front of the screen, but behind it, so that when somebody is on a set, if you’re portraying somebody that’s branch offent from you, that somebody can say, “Well, that’s not genuinepartner the way it is.”
Thanks Andrew. I’m seeing All of us Strangers aobtain tomorrow. It’s on at the Brixton Ritzy.
Oh, wow. Well, I hope you enhappiness crying in the stupid.
