Michael Shannon's Sundance Neo-Noir Film

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Thursday, 24 December 2009 01:28

Written by Brad Balfour

At 6' 3", the tall, lumbering Michael Shannon doesn't look like a leading man with his rumpled character-actor looks. Sometimes, Shannon's so quiet and reserved in person you wonder how he made the leap to stage acting. Yet when unleashed by a role, his presentation can be so overpowering that it often overwhelms other performances. Such was the case with his characterization of John Givings in Revolutionary Road, which won him a 2009 Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his dark philosophizing on the state of the world in 1950s America.
 
Aligning with his arch, pained performance in Sam Mendes' film, Shannon is now to be seen in Person, in which he plays private eye John Rosow, who's hired to tail a man on a train from Chicago to Los Angeles. For years, the former New York City cop had been drinking to self-medicate over the loss of his wife, who was working in the World Trade Center's North Tower on 9/11. Rosow gradually discovers that the man was one of the thousands presumed dead after the 9/11 attack. Persuaded by a large reward, Rosow is charged with bringing him back to his wife in New York, a journey that compels him to finally address his own trauma, making the film something more than just a cinematic homage.
 
Debuting in the States at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, this neo-noir film, co-starring Oscar nominee Amy Ryan, is directed by director Noah Buschel who also directed the intriguing Neal Cassady (a film about the late Jack Kerouac's traveling buddy and inspiration). Not only that, he's also been featured in the two recent Werner Herzog films, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done and The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans.
 
The Lexington, Kentucky-born Shannon first came to wide critical attention through his uncanny, twisted performance in 2004, appearing Off-Broadway in Bug at New York's Barrow Street Theater; it later became a film directed by William Friedkin starring Ashley Judd and Shannon. He had established his role initially in Chicago, where he did it at Chicago's A Red Orchid Theatre and got nominated for a 2002 Joseph Jefferson Award for Actor in a Principal Role in a Play. Shannon discusses finding himself through his characters in this exclusive interview.
 
Q: You play a detective, one of those prime roles that every actor looks to do. Had you read a lot before? Had you seen all those movies like John Huston's The Maltese Falcon or Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye?
 
MS: The movies I've seen hardly any of at all. I consciously didn't want to look at them going into shooting the film because I didn't want to feel like I was imitating somebody else the whole time.
 
In terms of the books, I've read a lot of Jim Thompson books, I've read a bit of Raymond Chandler, but I took all my clues basically from the script and the director. He was clear about what he wanted and I just went with that.
 
Q: It was a good opportunity for you, taking that detective character and updating it into a contemporary context. I think that must have been interesting to you as well.
 
MS: Oh, yeah, definitely. It seemed appropriate; it never seemed ham-handed to me.
 
Q: What did he tell you he wanted, and why did he feel you had those qualities?
 
MS: I did a reading of the screenplay, which I guess wound up being an audition. I applied my natural sense of things to the reading, and he was pretty happy with that. Actually, he was much more interested not so much in the detective aspect of it or the classic noir aspect of it, but in the fact that [this] man was severely traumatized by 9/11 — pretty much incapacitated by it. The film was really about seeing if this person could come back into the realm of the living. That was more the journey that we were exploring, I think.
 
Q: Where were you when 9/11 happened?
 
MS: I was in Chicago. I was doing a play called Bug, which later became a film. Apart from it being a devastating experience, it was also an incredibly bizarre experience, because I was playing that character at the time. He was very skeptical of things to begin with, and so to have that kind of event happen in the middle of telling that kind of story was really, really intense.
 
Q: If you had to say something about your character in terms of 9/11 — who he was, or how that resonated — what would you think is the truth there? What will people take away that is that truth?
 
MS: I think the truth in this film is a deeply personal one. In the other two instances you mentioned, it's much more directed at society or the world at large. But this is very personal. I think at the beginning of the film, John is pretty delusional and not in touch with the truth of what's actually happening around him. The journey of his character in the film is towards a truth. It may not be a truth that involves anyone other than himself, but it's important nonetheless.
 
Q: Obviously, you have some ability to play traumatized characters. Yes, you have a look, but also an understanding as well. Does coming from Kentucky do that to you?
 
MS: It's tough to figure. I was telling somebody, inevitably when you watch somebody in a movie, no matter how much craft or acting is happening — however much or little of that is happening — you're essentially drawn to who the person is innately, because you can't escape the fact that you are who you are. I think that comes through. That's why people are fans of certain actors.
 
That's why some people say, "I really love Christopher Walken." I mean, as great an actor as Christopher Walken is, you love him because he's Christopher Walken. When you go to a movie, you go to see him, even if he has funny glasses on or a mustache or something. You know that that's him and you know that you like him, regardless of what character he's playing.
 
I think who I innately am, for whatever reason, translates into the things I do and makes it so that you can buy me as a certain type of person. Whatever my life experiences are that allow me to give off that sense of understanding, that's private.
 
Q: Did you realize that director Noah Buschel made that movie on Neal Cassady?

MS: I saw [Neal Cassady]. That was the first time I met him, actually. I was having coffee with Amy Ryan, and she said, "I have to go see this film that I'm in because the director wants me to give my input." And she said, "You could probably tag along if you wanted."
 
So next thing I know I'm sitting in a little editing suite with Amy and Noah, who are watching Neal Cassady. I loved that movie; I thought it was so fantastic. It really baffles me that more people haven't seen it. I thought it was beautiful. But Noah has a very eccentric style to what he does. He has a very unique style, and it's something that leaves some people scratching their heads.
 
Q: He certainly applied that style to this movie. What was your experience with him like?
 
MS: We shot the film in about four weeks, so it's all kind of a blur. It was a very intense schedule, we had to work very quickly. We shot two weeks in New York and two weeks in LA. And we shot all this super heavy stuff in New York first, and then we went to LA and did the more whimsical part. It was an interesting order of sequence.
 
Q: Was that just a logistical choice, or was that also a choice in helping you?
 
MS: It was purely logistical; it was very low-budget. We couldn't start in New York and go out to LA and then come back to New York; we couldn't keep going back and forth. We basically shot the beginning and the ending of the film first, and then went out and shot the middle in LA, just because that's the way it had to be. That didn't wind up really bothering me. I enjoyed that order, it made shooting in LA a lot of fun.
 
Q: So when you saw the movie assembled, did it work in the way you expected it or did it surprise you in certain ways?
 
MS: I was real tickled with it. I had seen a variety of different cuts, actually. I was a little bit worried to see the final cut, because I know that Noah had been under pressure to maybe make some choices that he wasn't entirely convinced were right. He had been getting notes from a lot of different sources. At one point, after almost starting to lose interest a little bit — it was just too difficult to make everybody happy — he kind of sucked it up and got to the end of it. I was really proud of both the film and him for surviving that process.
 
Editing a film can be very arduous, particularly if there are a lot of people with opinions looking over your shoulder. I think in the end he was able to find a way to make everybody happy, but still hold on to his vision of things, which is quite an accomplishment.

[continued, next page]

Q: Though you were the one awarded the Oscar nomination, you were still just a supporting character in Revolutionary Road. In Bug, you're really the driving force, but you weren't thought of as the lead. But here you're really the lead; it's a movie about reaction to you, and you reacting.

MS: It's an opportunity for me. I'm not shaping these stories really, I'm just getting the opportunity to show up and participate. At the end of the day, at least from my perspective and my experience of things, the actor in a film is not a real power position. What the audience ultimately winds up watching is a lot more about the vision of the director and of the other artists involved--the cinematographer, editor. Film is a very technical medium, and the actor gets this opportunity to contribute their portion of it, but it's not like it's my vision.
 
Q: As an interpreter of the director's vision, you are the truth-teller. In Revolutionary Road your character was a truth-teller. In Bug, as crazy as he was, he was a truth-teller as well.
 
MS: Maybe there's something about me. It's hard to be aware of yourself to that degree. I'm not even necessarily sure that I look at what I do as an act of self-expression, really. It's more about trying to serve the story. I guess I express myself basically in what I decide to get involved in. But once I'm there, it's like [I'm] a servant of the story and director.
 
Q: In a funny way, Kim Fowley, your character in The Runaways — the upcoming bio-pic of the legendary girl rockers — is the ultimate manipulator, truth-teller or truth-hider. He also fits into the set of characters that you should play. That must have been interesting; what was that like?
 
MS: That was very daunting, very intimidating. I met him. [He and I ], Joan Jett and Kristen Stewart [who plays Jett in the film] had dinner one night at a Denny's. He told me that he hoped I did a good job in the movie, because when he died that was how he was going to be remembered, was by my performance. I said, "Well, thanks for the pressure, I really appreciate that."
 
He was very sweet, actually. He really is a character. I watched as much footage as I could. I don't think I pulled off a spot-on impersonation of Kim Fowley, but that's never been my forte to begin with. I never claimed to be able to do that. But I certainly think what I did will honor his legacy and his memory. Hopefully, when he sees it, he'll agree.

Q: Were you much of a rock and roll fan?
 
MS: Oh, yeah. I love rock and roll; I love music in general. That was a really fun era for music.
 
Q: Besides getting to work with some great first-time directors, you've also worked with the legends — from John Waters (Cecil B. DeMented) and Cameron Crowe (Vanilla Sky) to Sidney Lumet (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead). How do you resist wanting to watch all their movies and talk to them about it?
 
MS: Well, fortunately, most of the time you're just there to work, you don't have too much time. If I'm working with someone for awhile, we make an opportunity to have dinner or something, and that's when you get to hear all the stories. But when you're at work, it's all about the work. I'm not a Chatty Cathy on the set anyway. I generally tend to not talk unless I'm saying one of my lines, because I'm trying to concentrate and conserve my energy.
 
Q: You were initially a theater actor, and because you're a tall person with an imposing quality you can really have a power on a stage. In film, you pull it back or you control it differently. How is that contrast for you?
 
MS: I don't know, I don't see them as being as different. I think that's largely because a lot of the theaters I have worked in have been very small, very intimate. I think the difference was larger maybe back in the old days when you would do a play in an 800-seat theater and then go do a movie with Hitchcock or something; that was a bigger discrepancy. But nowadays, a lot of the theaters are very intimate. Even some of the larger theaters, they've found a way to make them incredibly intimate. It's not as big a discrepancy as it used to be.
 
Q: You worked with a great ensemble in Werner Herzog's re-think of Abel Ferrera's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.
 
MS: That was a lot of fun. I got to do two scenes with Nic Cage, one of the biggest movie stars in the world — also a very inventive actor to work with. My scenes were just with Nic. Both the days I was working with him, I think he was feeling particularly inspired. It's an older kind of Nic Cage performance, not so much the leading man roles where he has to rein it in or something. He gets to let loose and have fun. He does such an incredible job. When he gets an opportunity to do what he's good at, he really knocks it out of the park.
 
Q: Give me a quick take on working Jonah Hex, based on the DC Comics character. Even though you're not Hex, it must be fun to work in a comic book film where these characters are a little larger than life.
 
MS: I had a lot of fun on Jonah Hex. I was only there a couple of days; my character's just in a couple of scenes. But they tell me that if there's a sequel, I would be back in a larger capacity — which would be fun, because it's a really fun character. I had never heard of the comic series before, but when I was there and looking at the artwork, [I thought] it's really strong.
 
Q: Are you working on something now, beside being in Herzog's My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done and Gela Babluani's 13?
 
MS: I'm working on a TV show right now called Boardwalk Empire, which is going to be on HBO. We shot the pilot this summer, and now we're shooting the series.
 
Q: And that will be the Atlantic City boardwalk?
 
MS: The first episode is right at the start of Prohibition in Atlantic City. Very gritty.
 
Q: You don't think you'll do a superhero someday like, Nic Cage has done
 
MS: I'd play a superhero if there was good writing. I'd play Oscar the Grouch if it was good writing. I like good writing, and a lot of times the writing is more complicated and interesting when you're dealing with characters that are [somewhat] damaged. That's just the way it is.
 

Brittany Murphy Lives On in Her Work

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Monday, 21 December 2009 22:57

Written by Frank Lovece - intro/Q&A - Brad Balfour

The tragic, far-too-young death of the talented Brittany Murphy, who proved as capable in drama as in comedy, cut short the arc of a performer whose humor and humanity came out whether playing the spunky tag-along girl in Clueless (1995); the sexually abused Daisy, who pathologically cuts herself, in Girl, Interrupted (1999); or the wide-eyed, well-meaning hottie, Luann Platter, that she voiced for years on TV's King of the Hill, earning an Annie nomination in the process.

The 32-year-old actress and sometime singer let her good nature and all-around adorableness shine through — nowhere more apparent than in USO shows in which she performed for American troops overseas.

At 8 a.m. local time on Sunday, December 20, 2009, the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to a 911 call from the home of Murphy and her husband, British screenwriter Simon Monjack. She had apparently collapsed in a bathroom, and despite the efforts of emergency crews, was pronounced dead on arrival at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center at 10:04 a.m., following cardiac arrest. As of the evening of Monday, December 21, 2009, the cause of death remains unknown. 

She is scheduled to appear in a film completed before her death: the psychological thriller Abandoned , opposite Dean Cain, Mimi Rogers, Peter Bogdanovich and Tim Thomerson.

In the meantime, in what might be a macabre coincidence, she spoke with Brad Balfour for a 2006 drama directed by Karen Moncreif in which, with a cast that included such luminaries as Toni Collette, Piper Laurie, Giovanni Ribisi, Rose Byrne, James Franco, Mary Steenburgen and Bruce Davison, she played the title role: The Dead Girl.

With respect and sympathy to her family, friends and fans, FFTrav offer a rare, little-seen Q & A (from a roundtable transcript) with the much-beloved actress — who, as her upbeat and carefree words then show, was a woman, not interrupted, who lived her life with energy and joy.  --Frank Lovece

Q: Were you attached to this role from the beginning?

BM: I was the second person attached to the film, second or third, after Giovanni [Ribisi].

Q: What attracted you to it?

BM: Karen asked me to be a part of it and I was a huge fan of hers from Blue Car. I loved the honesty and truth and rawness of that film. Then I was really intrigued that she was doing another picture. I read it, [and] thought I was reading a psychological thriller. It’s called The Dead Girl, and it started reading like a psychological thriller from the first act. After getting past The Stranger and then moving on to The Sister… you know, they say the journey is the destination.

As clichéd as that is, it really was true with this because all I did was, while I was trying to figure out who did this – which character was it? – I started to just not care [who actually did it]. I started to get completely engrossed in the lives [of the characters], and in being a voyeur of the lives of these really richly written characters with so many layers and so much depth, and how highly unusual that is to see so many of them in one script.

I adored the script. So I met with Karen, then heard her vision and what she was going to do with it, and then signed on to be a part of it.

Q: How did she pitch the part to you? It all builds up to Krista, so what did she say to you about what she wanted the character to be like and what ideas didi you bring to it?

BM: I wish I could be more specific about it because neither one of us can really remember because it all happened so quickly. I have said this before, and I’m sorry to be redundant.

I am very visceral when it comes to choosing material, or characters choosing me, or me choosing them. My job is strange. My job is to believe I’m someone else more hours of the day than I am myself. That’s a really weird job, OK?

So one wants to make sure that while one is doing is doing that, first of all, I like to make sure I’m a part of a story that I think is imperative that it’s told or (is) extraordinarily entertaining. The older I get the more particular I’ve become about that. Then, who’s telling the story? Through what eyes? a/k/a/ Karen’s.

Then, okay, who is this person that I am going to be? And does that make sense for me? Immediately, when it comes to characters, once the story is something that I’d love to be a part of, it’s a very visceral feeling and I always just kind of connect and know. When Karen also told me that she thought of me because of the information she received in some work that I’d done prior in different other films, and her being a juror and how she came about this project, I also then sort of felt it was a responsibility to Krista’s life, because she was a real person.

Q: The character here, Krista, shares a lot in common with your Girl, Interrupted character and even your 8 Mile character -- they express a gritty, outward appearance but want to do better for themselves. Did you find yourself drawing on your previous roles in portraying Krista and what kind of research did you do?

BM: what I explained to you is the research that I did. And anything else… I spoke with some recovered addicts. I spoke with a counselor or two, but I like to keep my resources private, to respect their privacy. And people really helped explain things to me.

I also saw some footage, and that helped. But really the breakdown of the chemical composition was the biggest help. As far as everything in life – sorry to be so broad – but it really does cover everything. For me, everything in life is a learning experience. Everything. This is. Whether we choose to make it one or not, anything can be, I believe.

Q: There was an inevitability of her death. Did that help inform your performance?

BM: You know, interestingly enough, no. There was no foreboding feeling because she didn’t have a foreboding feeling, I don’t think, of her death. [That’s] not how I saw it or felt it. I didn’t feel that she had a foreboding feeling of her death.

But I will say, if you saw Girl, Interrupted, that was one experience where a character killed herself. Daisy killed herself, but how we shot that film was Daisy’s death completely backwards to the first scenes in the film. So I actually did shoot, in Girl, Interrupted, just Daisy, and they blocked me in a certain period of time and shot me out in three weeks. They shot her completely from her death to the beginning of the story, and that helped me a lot in understanding who she was.

So I have had that experience before, and I didn’t feel that here, because Krista loved life so much. She was very much about, they say, "Live in the moment," she was about the second or maybe the millisecond.

Q: Do you worry about doing too good a job that results in glamorizing this lifestyle?

No, I would hope the very, very opposite. If I’m ever a part of something like this it would be to… I mean, this film particularly… to help be a very small part of [imparting] a very large, large message, much larger than any of us involved, which is that violence is wrong and atrocious. So many people’s lives in this film, every character’s life, was changed by this violent act that occurred, and why can’t we just notice things instead?

Why do we have to have something that tragic happen to kick us in the rear to be able to actually life-altering decisions for the best, to better ourselves? I don’t understand that. And I wish more people would. I think we all could start trying. And I think this is a great message as far as stopping violence or at least helping to garner awareness towards stopping violence.

Q: Was there a line or something else that helped you figure out who Krista was?

BM: It was very evident to me. I don’t know how else to… I did ask Karen a lot of questions. "How would you like her to sound?" "Exactly what kind of drugs is she on and how much of them?"

"OK, she’s bi-polar," Karen told me. "She’s self-medicating."

Well, I figured she’s self-medicating, so I spoke with some counselors and had them break down exactly the types of drugs Karen told me Krista was on and break down what the chemical reaction with any human being’s body would be. And these reactions are absolutely atrocious, and that’s why she behaves so mercurially; just what it depletes one’s body of is so sad and tragic.

Also she was a chain smoker, and I asked [Karen] how she envisioned her always sounding and she said, "Kind of gravelly."  I said, "Kind of like this?" I did her voice and she said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly like that." So I said, "Okay, I’ll keep that." Karen and I had a really easy shorthand.

Q: What was Krista on?

BM: Crack.

Q: How was Karen different from other directors you’ve worked with?

BM: Quite obviously, seeing the film, she is a chameleon when it comes to actors. There’s such a broad cast, and how she changed her… It wasn’t the Karen way. Karen molded to each person she worked with as opposed to the people molding to Karen’s way, which was really fantastic.

Yet, she still stood very strong in herself, very grounded and still had so much respect, the utmost respect from everyone and the entire crew, and ran the show, yet still, again, adapted to all of these different styles of acting, people, egos, you name it. I think that that’s miraculous. She never lost her cool.

This was one of the happiest sets I have ever stepped foot on in my life, and it definitely was not light fare. People were there because they wanted to be, from our costume designer to hair and makeup to the actors to our whole entire crew, [and] I mean grip, cinematographer; everyone there had an opportunity to be the artist that they are.

Karen allowed everyone to be creatively rewarded and allowed us – us meaning myself and the crew and the other actors – to be able to express our own art. She did not ever try to stifle that, and that’s a great feeling. People need that… artists need that to replenish the soul. So everyone felt very free there, and that allotted for a very happy place because no one felt stifled.

Q: Your fellow actress Kerry Washington said you taught her how to smoke.

BM: That is true

Q: So, is she a good smoker?

BM: I don’t know. You saw the film. What’d you think? I hope I did okay. She was practicing and showing me. We met for dinner. Because of the short preparation time, how Karen wanted Kerry and I to rehearse was to just familiarize ourselves with each other.

We went for dinner. And I had to be chain smoking for the role. As you could see, I had to learn to do that. And she taught me how to curse, so… I’m kidding [giggles loudly]!!!!

Q: Going forward, are you looking to keep mixing it up, doing indies like this and bigger films that may have a worthwhile message?

BM: For me it’s extraordinarily important to be a part of films that have messages that, as an artist, I can help communicate, and messages that I find important because that is what I do. So if I’m going to try to be a part of getting any sort of point across I think I should stick to my job and do it that way.

The next film I’m working on is The White Hotel, and I’m excited. That is a film that has a very large message behind it and hopefully it will make people extraordinarily aware of how wrong genocide is.

Carey Mulligan Gets "An Education"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Saturday, 19 December 2009 23:24

Written by Brad Balfour

Q: Did you identify with your character?

CM: I think mainly in the way she feels about school. I got quite bored with school towards the end. When I was 14, I was really academic, and then I slowly lost interest in it towards the more important parts. It was just that I felt like I was doing things to tick boxes and to get on another level, and to just pass that exam so that I could get onto that exam, and I just thought, “This isn’t interesting and I’m not learning anything that I’m interested in.”

I just felt like I was doing it for other people, and I was doing it to please other people. But then I didn’t take advantage of my education, and that’s quite sad. I admire Jenny, in that she really does want to learn and feel passionately about things. [I attended] a really nice school in Surrey, and we went on really amazing school trips to really amazing places, even just museums in London or concerts and things. But it was just an opportunity for us to run out and find a Pizza Hut that serves alcohol, like where can we get drunk in 45 minutes before we have to be at this thing. So I related to her in the fact that she wanted to escape all of that, because I thought it must be better somewhere else.

Q: You and the other actors have a lot of theater experience. With this movie that would contribute to making some of the set pieces in the house and some of the other interactions work because you’re really familiar with that kind of interplay of dialogue, that talk back and forth. Did the film have a theatrical, on the stage quality to you?

CM: When you do a play you come away from it feeling like you’ve really acted for a bit. But it pretty much would have come out of lots of people who are brilliant and have done a lot of film. It’s the cast [that matters] —  when you get a group of people together who genuinely like each other a lot, and make each other feel comfortable. Those sort of things work when everyone feels at ease with each other, and so you don’t feel nervous about making mistakes or are embarrassed.

Because I was probably the least experienced person, [that was] certainly the case for me. I never felt embarrassed, and that was because I was around a lot of people who don’t worry about perceptions of themselves like that. So it had more to do with that; I’ve not done that much theater [actually]. We didn’t have a huge amount of time [for rehearsal]; we had 6½ weeks and then two days in Paris.

Q: Did you enjoy having a chance to live through the experience of the ‘60s — especially with the clothes, and hair?

CM: It was great; I loved all that. It’s always helpful to put on the shoes of the character you’re playing, and it certainly helps wearing a school uniform. And then being surrounded by girls who really were 16 or 17 years old; all the extras that age were really helpful. When you wear no makeup, or film no makeup — which is lots of makeup to make it look like you’re not wearing anything — and a school uniform, and then someone puts on a nice dress and does your makeup, you do feel like you’ve been done up and transformed. 

You walk around and don’t feel so horrible in front of the crew; all those things make you feel generally better about yourself. It was great and it was fun, with girls false eyelashes are always fun.

Q: Was the '60s music a revelation?

CM: Lone [Scherfig, the director] made me lots of CDs before we started shooting. Also they’d written this sort of soundtrack, or the piano piece that goes over the whole film, and I had a minute of that, it was put on one of the CDs. And then it was on my iTunes and I didn’t know what it was, and six months later I was going through it and played it.

I had no memory of where it had come from, so I labeled it because I was going through a labeling phase. I labeled it as “Pretty Song." It wasn’t until I went to Sundance and heard the song that I realized it was from this. I love the music in the film; the Duffy track at the end is cracking.

Q: What was Lone's direction like?

CM: she doesn’t see the task of making a film as stressful. I’m sure she has enormous stress, but you never feel that stress from her, and she sees it as a really joyful thing that we’ve all be given this gift of a script. So it does feel very measured really.

Q: Do you think that 16-year-old girls nowadays could fall in love as easily as a girl in the ‘60s?

CM: Yeah, definitely. Probably the only difference is that I wouldn’t advocate getting in the car in 2009. Don’t get in the car. But then, my dad would tell me that when he played on the streets — he'd played football in Liverpool when he was growing up — if you got thirsty you just knocked on the door and asked someone for a glass of water.

You just wouldn’t do that now. So I think the only difference is she wouldn’t have got in the car. God, girls at my school would just go crazy, and instantly, and I don’t even think Jenny ever falls in love with him; I think she loves him and finds him endearing and he introduces her to a different world, but I don’t think she’s in love. I don’t think the sex would be so calculated. But I think she does love him.

Q: Is she more in love with her projection of herself in that world?

CM: Absolutely. She’s becoming who she thinks she wants to be, and then realizes of course she’s not. There’s one good thing that someone said the other day, there are a few shots in the film where the lighting changes, or moments when she’s realizing stuff about herself that she doesn’t particularly like, and every time there’s a shot like that, in the car when she reads and she finds out that he’s married, and there’s another moment as well, the makeup suddenly doesn’t sit on her face anymore; it looks like she’s put on her mum’s shoes and done her makeup.

The lips look wrong and the eyes look wrong, and I like that. I think the lighting suddenly becomes harsh and you see a really young face with too much makeup on it, and you suddenly see her, and those are the moments when she realizes that she’s just gone way too far.

Q: It wasn't a problem for a girl that young to get involved with a guy that old? Not a problem conceptually, but did it seem realistic?

CM: Oh absolutely; definitely.

Q: You get a chance to live 16 again, so were there things you've thought about or learned or reflected on so that you say, "At least I didn’t do that," or "Oh yeah, I didn’t think about that?"

CM: She’s more rebellious than I was; I wasn’t that interesting. And I wasn’t that bold either; I would never have got in the car, and not even in the ‘60s, I would have just walked away and waited for the bus. I think I wish I’d taken more advantage of the stuff I got to at school. I think I wasted quite a lot of time. I had fun, but I didn’t do very much.

We went on a choir trip once to Washington and we spent the whole time being like, “Oh it’s so hot.” Like, come on; we had amazing opportunities and threw them away, and I feel a bit guilty about that.

Every time I do a job I’m always amazed by how knowledgeable people are, and on Wall Street, the amount that Oliver [Stone, the director] and Shia [LeBouf] and Frank [Langella] and Michael [Douglas] have all learned about, they already knew so much, but the amount they know about finance and the economy, and I kind of come in a go, “God, give me a copy of The Economist, I need to figure out what the hell you’re all talking about.” So I think I’m trying to learn more for myself than I was before. I was kind of coasting along before, quite happily ignorant.

Q: Have you ever tried singing?

CM: I sang a lot at school but I’ve never done it professionally.

Q: Who are your role models as actresses?

CM: I think people who’ve had interesting, varied, gone back and done plays and lots of different things. Like Samantha Morton, Emma Thompson obviously, Kate Winslet, Toni Collette, Claudie Blakley, but lots of American actresses as well. Penelope Cruz; I met her in Toronto and almost cried.

Q: [Actor] Dominic Cooper [of An Education] said you went to lots of readings and auditions together but never got the role. What do you remember from that time?

CM: I love how he’s telling that story. The reason Dominic and I know each other is that, when [the production company] Working Title has a new film they have a big roundtable read and they just ring up actors to come play the parts, not necessarily the people who will play the parts, and in our case, definitely not.

So we’ve been in, a fair few times where we’ve been called in to play very small parts in big films, and we sit around and we get really horribly nervous because we’ve got like three lines and then we just make a complete mess of it and then they never call us.

Then you find out when you watch the film that everybody else around the table ended up playing those parts, apart from me and Dominic. So that’s how Dominic and I met basically, by being rejected together.

Q: Dominic made it sound much more glamorous when he was telling it.

CM: He does.

Q: After all that rejection how do you feel about everybody saying this movie is a big vehicle for you?

CM: I’m amazed by the reviews. I’m not amazed [in that] I think it’s a lovely film, but I think it’s been wonderful to be part of something that people seem to genuinely like. But it hasn’t come out yet, so. It hasn’t been years and years of rejection; I’ve a had a really lucky, nice career so far, Dominic’s just made it sound like we lived in hovels and occasionally sang songs for people.

Q: Well he did.

CM: He did; yeah that’s true. But I can’t say enough about what this has all meant to me. But really the best thing that’s come out of this has been spending time with the people we made it with.

Nick just gave me this, and when we were about to do a Q&A and showed me the dedication at the beginning and I just burst into tears. I’ve got so much love for all the people that we did this with, and the fact that I get to spend all this time around them again is just great. But if these nice things mean that more people will see the film, that’s nice, because it won’t just be your aunt and my Welsh granny.

Q: How are things on Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps?

CM: Good, they’re good, yeah.

Q: How did you land the role in Wall Street 2? How is it working for the first time here?

CM: This is not the first time I worked here; I did a film here last summer, The Greatest — which was also at Sundance — and then I did the play here. But someone slipped Oliver a copy of An Education and my agent rang me when I was still shooting Never Let Me Go and said, “Oliver Stone’s going to give you a call.” 

What a strange phone call to have. I was sitting with Andrew Garfield, who was in Never Let Me Go with me, and he just went mental. I went and got a hands-free [phone] so we could both lean over the table and listen, because we just wanted to hear Oliver Stone speaking, which I’ve never told Oliver and now he’ll know.

Then he offered me the job and I went over to LA a couple of weeks later and read it and loved it. I had versions of the script since July and we started rehearsal; we had about three weeks of rehearsals about two months ago, and then we’ve done about four weeks of shooting. I haven’t had to do very much yet, they’ve been kind to me and [scheduled] all of my big stuff for after I’ve released this. But it’s great; it’s an amazing cast.

Q: You’ve seen the original movie?

CM: Yeah. It was weird actually because the day before I was going to meet Oliver to read it, and I still didn’t know if it was something that I, I didn’t know what to do really, I didn’t know what the part would be like and I didn’t know if I should just dive in regardless of the part because it’s Oliver.

I was staying at this hotel and I was doing this thing with The New York Times and I went to rent a DVD the night before I left, and I opened the dvd player to put in the one I’d got — I got Risky Business — and Wall Street was in there. And then when I was flying to LA I was reading this magazine and my horoscope said, “blah blah blah blah blah, rubbish rubbish rubbish, like Gordon Gekko said in Wall Street, "Greed is good.” And I thought, “Why is the universe telling me to do this film?”

Q: Who do you play in the movie?

CM: I play Gordon Gekko’s daughter.

Q: Working with Oliver Stone, and all the good reviews and award notices for this movie, it is a big break in a sense of global domination. How you feel about that, because everyone wants a piece of you; there’s also the bad side of fame and the paparazzi and of course once everyone recognizes you on the street...

CM: I mean, I’ve been recognized twice [laughs].

Q: That could change.

CM: Well, I don’t really look like I do in this film. My years so far, and my life so far, and even to do with Wall Street, and there are paparazzi and it is distracting because you’re trying to film a scene on the street and you’re trying to think about your character or the other person you’re acting with, and you have 20 people taking other images of you.

When you think there should be just one image of you there are all these images of you, and so you have to try and not think about any of that, so it’s distracting for your work. But ultimately, you can get upset about it, but it’s not a bad position to be in. I’m doing the job that I love with people that I really respect, so it’s like a 98 percent good situation with a 2 percent downside. I’m so absurdly lucky to be working, let alone working with the people I’m working with. I don’t even know if it will enter my world, but if it does it’s not bad in the grand scheme of things.

Q: Are you irritated that when you’re out with Shia that everybody’s is clicking cameras and, everybody surrounds you? He’s probably stalked by people.

CM: At work there are always paparazzi there, but there are always paparazzi on the set of Sex and the City and everything else that shoots in New York or any major city, so it comes with the territory.

it’s irritating at work really because you don’t want to think about it, but then they’re doing their job and ’re earning their living for their families. You just have to block it out.

For more by Brad Balfour: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-balfour