BD: When I was preparing for this and looking at things on the internet, I found something you said about acting in a piece about playing Steerpike in Gormenghast:
“There is a space that you can get into sometimes – and you get one or two moments during a job that you do or a script that you do, where the world just disappears and it is nothingness and it is emptiness and it is fantastic. And it is almost like you are elevated off the ground a couple of inches, and you can’t feel the clothes you are wearing, you can’t even feel yourself.†Can you relate any specific moments like that?
JRM: No I can’t. What it basically is is you’re doing something so much at the point in the day it becomes natural. Say you’re a 20 year old boy and it’s your new job right and you’re punching this code into the computer and you do it 20 times and you’re constantly thinking about it and always making one or two mistakes. And then somebody asks you something or you’re having a cup of coffee, and then o yeah, — click, click, click, click, click – that’s it. That’s done. That’s a natural moment. Usually acting is a technical thing, you’ve got to walk here, do this, do that.
Those natural moments are very few and far between.
You have to be able to be strong like water and be able to be weak like water. You’ve got to be able to flow, rush, you’ve got to have rapids, but you also have to have the calm and cool.
BD: What is it about your acting that has drawn so many top directors?
JRM: I suppose physicality has a lot to do with it. When I met Ang Lee [for 1999’s Ride with the Devil], I met him for the part that Toby Maguire played – I didn’t have what he was after. You to be an Everyman and he says there’s something “quite poetic” about the way I look. Todd Haynes was definitely interested in that for the Velvet Goldmine. I look the way I look, but nobody looks the way I look, and that’s good and bad. It would probably be a hell of a lot more fun and easier, and get more girls I suppose, if I looked more like a generic mutation of something that’s already there. When you look like nothing else, they have to really get to love you.
BD: I was impressed with your broad American accent in Ride with the Devil.
JRM: I find acting incredibly difficult and I’m sure most of the directors I work with find directing a difficult process, and to have to do the auditioning process between roles can be very damaging and you have so much time taken up with that.
If entertainment doesn’t happen, who cares? If bread doesn’t happen, everybody cares.
BD: What new projects do you have going?
JRM: The Magnificent Ambersons. It’s going to be very vibrant and very beautiful.
BD: Tell me a little about dealing with the press?
JRM: You have to. You have to make the press your friends. Sometimes I wasn’t in the proper vein to do interviews. I remember I did one interview in England, and because I was so sad at the time, the interview came out incredibly sad. I know that press determines what people think of you because this what they read – to always keep it fresh, always keep it interesting. I remember I did an interview once and I read almost exactly the same interview a few months later, and I thought, “Wow I must have given the same answers.” I’d like to make it really new and vibrant.
BD: So what would you like to talk about? What’s on your mind that you’re never asked about?
JRM: There are always thousands of things on my mind.
BD: I can tell.
JRM: But whether they’re things that will interest people from the point of view of a magazine is different. I like to write, I like to play music. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to do them because what’s really in my life is work, all the time, traveling from one place to another. I was in North Wales two days ago and it’s an incredibly beautiful and inspirational place because the people are so quiet. This town is like a ghost town, and it was a great comfort to hang around the amusement park on the beach when there’s nobody there. They look like the ugliest things in the world, but in the summer they look so bright and romantic and fabulous. Fairgrounds in the winter with all the rain coming in from the sea – to see the amusement park which is usually alive now all dull and gray. It looked awful, but I found a certain peace in it because there was no one there.
BD: Why North Wales?
JRM: I was shooting there. I had a very small part in a very small low budget film. It’s very difficult to get lead roles.
BD: Like which ones?
JRM: There were a couple of films that I really wanted to do. I’d love to make films in America, because they’re very clever in America. They have a lot of money to make films, so I have to overcome not being an American first of all. Matt, Leo . . .
BD: You also said you like to write –
JRM: I’m writing a short story about the 1904-05 Russo Japanese War.I want to articulate it in a way that keeps people interested – because there’s a way, there’s a method. In the time I did The Maker, Velvet Goldmine, and The Governess, I’ve become a better actor because I’ve learned tricks and there are tricks with writing. I don’t want the characters to see each other as prey. It’s not about animal instinct. They shatter the illusion of what they’ve been brought up with.
BD: You’ve talked about admiring Daniel Day Lewis and Toshiro Mifune — other actors you admire?
JRM: The one I admire more than anyone else in the world – and who has inspired me as an actor more than any other — is Peter O’Toole. From watching him I’ve learned a lot about my own performance. He was incredibly cinematic.
BD: Do you aspire to do things they way he does them?
JRM: No, I do things the way that I do them, and he’s very inspiring. But I get inspired by Dostoevsky too, or Nijinsky. I can read about Nijinsky dancing, or look at photographs of Nijinsky, and be inspired to act.
BD: Any particularly early moviegoing experiences that stand out?
JRM: No. I remember when I was 9 years old I thought that Johnny Depp was incredibly cool and that was when I was watching 21 Jumpstreet. At 9 years old, I thought that he was the coolest guy in the world.
BD: What was it like being asked to audition the first time? [An agent convinced JRM to audition for the 1994 film War of the Buttons, but he was not cast.]
JRM: “Oh wow somebody wants me to do something.” I thought it was for a play that was going on in Galway, and then I found out that it was a film with Warner Brothers, and I’m like, “No, things like this never happen to kids like me.â€
BD: Do you want fame?
JRM: I want to do a performance that’s extraordinary as a route to fame. Maybe that’s the wrong way to go about it. I need a media war on anonymity. I need a general.
I wouldn’t like to get into it too much anyway.
BD: You have a remarkable vulnerability on screen – how do you make those tough characters vulnerable? [Note that in his response JRM refers to a role he didn’t get.]
JRM: For one role, what they wanted was a plain bad guy, not a bad guy who is at heart emotional. I would have played a bad guy who would have had all these emotions behind him. That’s not always what Hollywood wants. They don’t always want the vulnerability to come from the character – sometimes I have to understand that. [He lights a cigarette.]
BD: I’m thinking about those vulnerable sex scenes in The Governess.
JRM: I hate people who go “I won’t go naked.†You think there’s something so special about your body that we can’t see it? What is so fantastic that you’re hiding? I hate that shite. If a character needs to be  naked, I’ll insist that he be naked.
BD: What kind of roles do you hope to get from here?
JRM: I’d rather be a small part in a good film than a big part in a bad one. All the films I’ve looked at they want older boys. I wanted to do Ridley Scott’s Blackhawk Down. Holden Caulfield.
But I’m shit in the movies I make. Maybe I’d think different if I made a film that was a huge hit, a performance where everyone goes wow.
BD: Is there ever a performance where everyone goes wow?
JRM: Haley Joel Osment did it, and he’s only 11.
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