AVC: What's the hardest part of film acting for you?
CE: I'd say it's the very early starts. You're trying to arrive on set basically at sun-up. It sounds ridiculous, but they are very early starts. So the hardest thing for a film actor, especially if you are in a lot of the film, is sustaining energy for the entire length of a production. It's quite tough. With acting, it's not the same as directing. Directors work the exact same hours; directing is incredibly exhausting. The only difference is that directors aren't required to have bursts of energy and focus. They're probably focused the entire day. Actors have this thing of "stop/start." That can be quite draining, actually. This sounds so ridiculous, almost like a complaint, "Why they got to go and make us get up so early?" And I don't mean it like that. I'm just seriously trying to answer your question. It does make me laugh sometimes that people watch their favorite actors doing scenes and whatever, and I don't think they realize that 90 percent of the time, they're watching people that are exhausted. Absolutely exhausted. It's kind of a funny reflection. They are long, grueling days. As much as it's enjoyable, it's managing tiredness sometimes that's kind of tricky.
AVC: What would you say is the most grueling shoot you've been on?
CE: Well, I suppose in different ways, it's different pictures. This one was tiring, because we did all the fight stuff in the middle of the shoot. And that was quite tough, because the last couple of weeks of the shoot, I was really tired, because I had expended so much energy doing all the fight stuff in the middle. If I had done it in the end, it maybe would have been a little easier. It was quite tough and I got tired. American Gangster was quite tiring, but for a completely different reason, which was that the cinematography of the film was extraordinary, and a lot of the times they were doing something very complex indeed, which was shooting from three cameras at the same time, which meant that the lighting rigs would have to be set up to encompass three different angles at the same time, which would mean that the time on set would actually be quite short. You would readjust to get a close-up and readjust to turn around. But the time in between would actually be quite extended. I remember finding that quite difficult after a period of time. Just the idea of being on set for a short period of time, and then being in the trailer for a long period of time. I remember finding that draining in a peculiar way. But on the whole, it's a very exciting job.
AVC: What's your preferred way of spending that downtime? Do you read a lot, socialize with other people on the set, rehearse?
CE: Well, I try to do all those things, mainly reading and so on. But eventually, over a period of time, you lose the will to do anything. Especially if it's over a period of months, into the second or third month of that, you're sort of zoning out. Getting up to do the thing, then zoning out again. It's a weird sort of a paradigm. But most of the time, that doesn't happen. Turnovers and cameras sometimes set up quick, or fairly quick. You're in and out, and you're doing your thing, and there's this sense of constant movement. On Redbelt, there was so much to do, there really wasn't much time to hang out, and any downtime, I was in the gym, trying to get the fight sequences down. So this was an exciting, moving, innovative production to be involved with.
AVC: How did your first film role come about, in Amistad?
CE: I was doing Othello for the National Youth Theater, and somebody in the audience was a casting agent who was aware that there was another agent, who wasn't in the audience, casting for Spielberg's film. They got in contact with me, so I went in and did some auditions on tape.
AVC: Years ago, you told The Guardian that the experience was really scary for you—that you constantly felt you were going to be found out as a fraud, because film was above your level as an actor. Did you ever have that experience again, of feeling in over your head?
CE: Well, I think a lot of acting is about the removal of self-consciousness. The actor is going to be in front of a lot of people, and will naturally feel self-conscious. So a lot of the preparation for that is the removal of that idea. Like you embody or are connected to this character, therefore you can present this character in a way that eventually, when you come back to see it, you feel not exactly ashamed of. Those learning experiences were just that for me, learning how to make sure I don't feel self-conscious.
AVC: Have there been other, similar milestones along the way like that one, places where you've consciously thought, "I'm overcoming something here, this is making me a better actor"?
CE: Yeah, I think so. But I think the main thing that happens is life. I think just experiencing life improves your work as an artist, as an actor. I feel I get better as I get older. Not necessarily because I'm working more, or working as much as I was. I just feel my connection to the world is getting deeper and richer as I get older.
AVC: You've often said in interviews that what's good in acting for you is disappearing into a character. Is that largely an instinctive process for you, or is there an intellectual process as well?
CE: I think it's sort of both. I think it's intellectual to begin with, and then it's instinctual in emotion. When you're no longer seeing yourself, in some ways. You're not performing. You're as close to being as you can be. And I suppose that's consistent with the moment that the mind actually turns off, and is no longer questioning what you're doing. When the questions stop, that's when the real acting takes over. And trying to get to the point where the questions stop, "Would I do this? Would I do that? How do I feel about this? How do I feel about that as a character?" When those stop, and it's just doing X, Y, and zed, because that's what you'd do as this character, because you're inside this character somehow—that's when it really kicks off.
AVC: That disappearing act is presumably harder on film, with the big downtimes, than when you're in a play, telling one story straight through.
CE: Once you click into a character, to a certain degree, you can do a lot else. You can do other stuff, then come back and click right into the character. It's sort of funny that way, the way the mind works. Once it's there, it's sort of there. For the stage, for example, all through the day, you're not onstage. You're living your life, la-la-la, then the lights go down, then boom! All of a sudden, you're in this thing. There's a kind of reflex muscle trigger that happens, and all of a sudden you're back into the role. It's just getting there in the first place that's tricky. That's that thing of sort of swimming, if you're not there and you don't know where you are, you've taken a few days off and you're not back, and you never really connected with your character, that's when acting becomes sort of tough.
AVC: If it's that reflexive, if it's that much clicking into somebody and being part of them, do pieces of characters ever stick with you? With Redbelt, for instance, do you think any of the philosophy or practice of martial arts will stay with you?
CE: In a sense, no. I would like it to, in a number of ways, but Mike Terry is not who I am. For me, it tends to disappear, which is good, because, you know, I've just been playing Othello, and I'm not prone to psychopathic, jealous rages, which is fortunate. It can be a positive and a negative. You want the good things in the good characters to stay with you, but lose the bad things with the bad ones. When I finish a project, I walk away, I just go back to being me, and looking at scripts like I was before the project. There may be some inherent lessons learned, things that I know, and blah-blah-blah, through experiences, but it would be trying to be a character, and I'd be very aware that I was doing that. It would be very clear to me that I would be trying to be Mike Terry, and I would find it ridiculous.
AVC: Are there any actors or directors that you've worked with in the past that you're particularly eager to work with again?
CE: Yeah, practically everybody I've ever worked with, I'd like to work with again. I had a great time with the people that I've worked with, and the directors, and a lot of the casts. There's really nobody where you'd say, "Oh, I got X, Y, and zed again! Gahhh, no!" It really brings a smile to my face, because in 95 percent of the cases, people I've worked with, I'd be thrilled to work with again.
AVC: Is there anybody out there that you haven't worked with yet that you really want to?
CE: Loads of people, really. It's sort of hard to know. It's funny in a sense that I spent my teenage years writing about, quoting, and watching David Mamet plays and films. Some of the David Mamet films, I knew back to front. Yet if somebody asked me two years ago who I'd really like to work with, I probably wouldn't have said David Mamet. It just never occurred to me that that was a possibility. I just didn't think. Yet when the opportunity came up to work with David Mamet, I was, of course, completely thrilled. "Of course, I always wanted to work with David Mamet! Why else would I have been studying his work in this way for so long?" I think it's funny, it's impossible to really know how much you want to work with someone until it happens, and then you judge it.
AVC: So you've never gone after a role because of the people involved in the project?
CE: I don't think so. I think I've done things that I got excited about because of a kind of package. Like in Dirty Pretty Things, I was a great fan of Stephen Frears' films, but the decision was still because of Stephen Frears' films in connection with the part itself, and the screenplay. It was kind of irresistible. It is true that I hadn't read Redbelt. When I heard that David was going to send me a script and he wanted me to play the lead, I was aware that I was going to do it, regardless of what it was. It would have been a very peculiar set of circumstances that would have led me to say, "No, I'm not going to do this." It so happened that I loved the part and the script, so it worked out.
AVC: You've made films in Britain and here. Do you find them different at all in terms of production?
CE: It's funny, I was thinking about this the other day. It's been a couple of years since I actually shot a film in England. I think the last film I shot in England was Children Of Men. That's not to say that's the last film I've done with an English production, but the last film physically shot in England. At any rate, things aren't much different. I think it's just a question of money. I think the only thing that separates, in most ways, styles of filmmaking, is how much money there is in the production. So a big-budget movie will be very different anywhere, I think.
AVC: What about stage work? You have extensive UK stage experience, but have you done plays here?
CE: No, I haven't, actually.
AVC: Is there any particular reason?
CE: No, not really. I find theatre sort of synonymous with London for me. But I'd love to do plays here. I'd love to do plays in New York. I would be thrilled to come out here and do some plays.
AVC: The media seems to want to present you as a package: "stage actor who broke into film," or "British actor who works in America," or "breakout black actor." Is that kind of labeling a problem for you?
CE: I don't actually notice it that much. It certainly doesn't bother me. Certainly what constitutes a stage actor, what constitutes a film actor, I don't even know what that is. And both things are very accurate, in a sense. In terms of people's needs to concentrate on race, I wonder if it's completely necessary, but it's not something that is so dynamically relevant to me that I feel it should be one thing or another.
AVC: Do you feel race has ever been an issue, in terms of roles you get or don't get, or in terms of how people treat you?
CE: No, I haven't, actually. I don't feel like it's a massive thing in terms of my working life at all, thankfully. I've felt like I've been able to work on a number of different things. I work on a career, and it's not something I particularly notice or feel that I have to adjust my thought processes around or something.
AVC: What about being labeled as an American actor? You've been doing so many films with American accents lately. Are people surprised when they meet you and hear what you actually sound like?
CE: Yeah, actually. It was funny, I was doing a radio show the other day, and the host said "We have here a great American actor…" I think here more than anywhere, there is some kind of ownership sense that America has. I moved to New York for a while, and somebody who lived in New York said, "The true New Yorker really feels that anybody talented who says they're from somewhere else is just kidding. Everybody's really a New Yorker deep down." I think that's something that can probably be applied to America in general. There's a sense of ownership to anybody on American soil. "They're really Americans, really."
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