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Compiled by: Jack Foley
Q. What was the appeal to you in playing this role?
Charlie: Well I hadn't worked for a while. And I weas
just eager to find something. I was looking for a serious film-maker
that wanted to make a serious film. I'm at the point in my career
where I don't have the juice to be able to work with the very
established, great film-makers that we all know, like Peter Weir
or the Coppolas of the world, so I have instead been looking to
find the next generation of great film-makers and try to find
an opportunity to go and work with them on their first project,
which is generally pretty exciting.
I really liked the script but it was more about meeting Lexi and
thinking that we'd have a good time and a unified vision of what
we wanted to go and do with this film. It turned out to be exactly
that; it was just hands down the best acting experience I've had
so far.
Q. You've said that you hadn't seen a football match
before doing this film. Did going to your first game therefore
feel a bit like a lamb going to the slaughter? And are you a fan
of the game now?
Charlie: When I was there I still wasn't at all compelled
by the game itself, but as Elijah said the human aspect of it
was incredible. You really get that now feeling of life. I think
that a lot of the time, unfortunately, we're trying to go about
our business and are just wrapped up in the tediousness of everyday
life. When you're there, everybody in that stadium doesn't want
to be anywhere else. The humour and the wit involved, you know.
Leo took me to my first football match and it was Tottenham versus
Newcastle. As I walked in, all the Tottenham fans were singing
to Newcastle 'your kids have got no food, your kids have got no
food, you're all wearing product but your kids have got no food'.
I thought, ah, I understand football now!
Q. How would you fare in a fight, do you think?
Charlie: If I was in it presumably I would enjoy fighting
more than I do. And presumably I know myself well enough that
anything that I want to do I pursue with vigour, so I would become
very good at it.
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Q. When you were doing the
preparation, were you actually mixing with gang members? Did you
go undercover and infiltrate these guys? Did you feel threatened
at all?
Elijah: As undercover as we could be, I guess.
Charlie: When we would go to the pubs before
the matches it was very much undercover and I tried as much as
possible to look like I belonged there. But it's very difficult
when you don't know the songs and aren't true.. But Lexi made
a group of guys available to us that were there basically from
the moment we stepped off the plane, all the way through filming,
which was incredible.
And that's one of the most incredible things about being an actor
- the opportunity to have access to a world that, ordinarily,
you would never be allowed into. And Lexi is a genius film-maker
in that it's a style of direction that enabled her to make a group
of guys like that accessible to us so that we can go and then
take advantage of that and educate ourselves, rather than coming
to set with a predetermined notion of how these scenes should
exactly be and then try and micro-manage it. She planted the seeds
and then created an environment for us to go and then do what
we do.
Q. You come from Newcastle with its unique accent. How
did you get into the geezer mentality?
Charlie: Well, you know, I do come from Newcastle, but
I've lived in the Lake District and I've lived briefly in London
and then for the last seven and a half years I've been living
in LA. I just have an inately maliable accent which is slightly
unfortunate but does allow me to more easily step into other accents.
So my accent now, as is, doesn't exist anywhere else in the world.
So I found myself in a situation where, as a basic part of my
preparation, I always have to figure out where this guy is coming
from. It was easy on this, there was no question, but in other
jobs that I've done I've had to figure out exactly where this
guy came from and what he would sound like.
Q. Did you have a voice coach?
A. Yes. I find it much easier to work with a dialect
coach than to go and try and make it up for myself.
Lexi: Unfortunately on this, because we had a
very tight budget, we could not provide him with an accent coach
for longer than 10 days. Also, what happens on bigger budget movies,
sometimes when the acting coach says that take was no good, what
happens is they do another take - which I also couldn't afford
to do. So I feel Charlie actually got a bit fucked - sorry!
Related stories: Our
verdict on the film
Feature: Lexi Alexander
defends content of film amid controversy
Elijah Wood interview
Lexi Alexander interview
Marc Warren interview
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