CONSIDERING CONSIDINE

an interview with Paddy Considine, star of Jim Sheridan’s In America, at the 2003 Edinburgh Film Festival

The character is based in part on Sheridan himself, which must have made it a little tough to play. Or is it wrong to say that it’s to some extent Sheridan you’re playing.

Er, It’s ok to say… but I had no idea that it was about Jim’s life, so I just read it, and loved it as a script, and thought “I wanna play this, I’m gonna play this.” But when I met Jim he filled me in on the family background and what it was about, and he said, straight away, “You’re not playing me” and it was never an issue for me. I never felt that I was playing Jim Sheridan, I felt that I was playing this guy, and I brought certain baggage to it, and Jim brought his thing to it. When I see the film I see my dad in it, and Jim’s commented that he’s seen his father in it in some of the scenes. Jim turned to me at one point and said “I had one idea about this character, but you’re playing it more as a kind of Jimmy Stewart character”. It seemed to work, there was always surprising things popping up.

So it wasn’t like when you played an explicitly real person, Rob Gretton, in 24 Hour Party People?

Not at all. Nothing like that at all. To me, Johnny was just a character, and Jim was treating him like he was just a character.

Did you get to meet Gretton before he died? Was there any effort to make the performance a kind of impersonation?

Rob died before the filming. I didn’t meet him. I got sent the script and read it, and I thought “What the fuck is this all about?!” It was thick, like the fuckin’ bible, man! I thought, “What is this about?” I’d never read one of Frank’s scripts before, and I thought, “I don’t know any of these people.” Then I met the casting-director Wendy in Manchester, and she reeled off all these names: I’d heard of Tony Wilson. Then she’s mention Rob Gretton and these people, and I thought “Who the fuck are these people, I’ve never heard of them.” I just nodded my head anyway, and carried on and went “Yeah, yeah” because I just wanted to work! And then I met Michael Winterbottom for 15 minutes, and that was that, off went Michael. I got sent a video to see if I thought I could play it or not, so I watched it, rang them up and said “Yeah, I can play him.”

Gretton was much more of an edgy character than Johnny in In America, who’s fairly easy-going for the most part.

Yeah, very edgy, Rob – I think he was on a few different substances that didn’t help his disposition much. I liked him a lot, from this interview that I saw on video, he was very dry and to-the-point?

Very “Manchester”?

Very Manchester… I thought “He’s great”, yeah.

Rob is a little volatile in 24 Hour Party People, and here you have a two-hander scene with Matteo [Dimon Hounsou] that gets very intense. What was that like to play?

I watched that scene back and I thought “I’m an actor!” It was one of the them things when I thought, “That’s a movie.” We worked on that scene, we just kept going and going, and banging at it, and Djimon had just come off the plane straight from LA and was completely off his head, knackered and jet-lagged. It was great – within the context of the story this guy has got all these emotions with nowhere to go, so he’s just venting them at this… man.

Were there lots of takes?

We just kept going, ploughing and ploughing, loads of variations.

So you didn’t have to stick to the script?

No – but I wouldn’t say we improvised because Jim’s very on the ball, he’ll come in and tweak, and he gets involved in the scene like no director I’ve ever worked with before.

Was he ever an actor himself?

I think he might have tried to be – he’s a frustrated actor! He was a theatre director. But those scenes you just get yourself up for… Johnny was never gonna hit Matteo – it’s quite cowardly, in a funny way. Johnny was going to walk out the door – he can’t punch this guy, he’s about six foot six, probably knock his fuckin’ head off! At that point, Johnny’s like “I don’t care – I don’t fuckin’ care! I don’t care if someone sticks a knife in me, because I’m just going off my lid!” And it’s Matteo that challenges him – just as he’s about to walk out the door, and it’s Matteo who says “You don’t believe” – and Johnny’s like “What did you fuckin’ say to me? How dare you, man!” Matteo just pressed the right buttons, and opened him.

Which is what he does for everyone in the film.

For everyone, yeah, and he needed opening up, and that’s Johnny’s first step to recovery – that scene is his first step back to being himself.

One of the best scenes is the fairground, where Johnny nearly loses all the family’s money when he’s suckered into a con-game.

It was great. Some people think he’s doing that out of bravado, that it’s a “Dad thing” to do, “I’m gonna win the teddy” – it ain’t that. It’s about my kids… I want my children to believe in me. I don’t believe in me and I’m not going to fail in front of these children. And it was all about that – your parents are such a pillar to you, you need them to be so strong. So if your dad break down and cry it’s probably one of the most disturbing things you can ever see. It’s like, parents shouldn’t have them emotions – they’re stable. From his point of view it was a matter of, “I’ve got to do this, because if I don’t my kids will think I am a total loser, and I need them to believe in me.” Because Sarah and Johnny would have gotten over it – if he’d lost the money they would have gotten over it, ‘cause that’s how they are as a family, but for him personally he needed that ball to go in, needed to do that again. Otherwise, “Daddy’s a loser, he’s lost the rent money.”

The two children give terrific performances – you’ve worked with some remarkable young actors like Andrew Shim in A Room For Romeo Brass and Artiom Strelniakov in Last Resort. Now these two – is it just a coincidence?

I’ve always been around kids – I’ve got all these nieces and nephews, there’s about 17 or 18 of them, and two others coming this week, then there’s my kid coming in five weeks’ time, my first kid. I’ve always been around kids anyway, and I find them just incredible – they’re amazing.

Do you treat them as adults, what is it?

I just see something in them – it’s not a Michael Jackson thing, you know. It’s not that kind of ‘wonderment’, it’s something that’s very hard to describe. They’re just great to bounce off – all the young people I’ve worked with they’ve been their first films. It’s not like working with a precocious kid who’s been mollycoddled to death. The kids in this film – I just think they dropped out the sky, I don’t know where they came from. I know they’ve got a mum and dad, but I think they’re made from special dust or something! Incredible!

Does it involve doing lots of takes?

It’s like everything, you’ve gotta work at it – I’m a worker, and you’ve gotta keep working at a job. I don’t believe in all this bullshit: where actors fall down on themselves is that they think they’ve got to be great all the time. Well that’s fucking impossible. You cannot be great all the time – you do good takes, you do bad takes, you do half a good take on one, then you’ve the good bit on the other take so you chop between the two. It’s a process – you keep working and working. If you’re doing an accent in a film, and it’s slipping, you keep working. Everything to improve the film. I’m not one for making a film and doing it for kind-of personal gains while I’m making it. I hate this mentality of “scene stealers” because I know people do go into scenes, thinking, “I can get this scene”. I hate that – we’re making a film, do a great performance and you’ll walk away with it anyway. Just do what you do!

Do you turn down many films? You always seem to work with a particular kind of director – you don’t seem to do many bad or overtly mainstream projects.

Well I’ve tried those other kinds of films. I’ve done them, and I’ll never do them films again. They’re only small roles, but I did a film before I did In America, and if you put the films back-to-back you think “fuckin’ ell” how did he make that and go on and do that. It’s like the worst of acting, then the best of acting, in some respects.

You’ve worked with the likes of Chris Morris – but how easy is it to resist the temptation to work with lesser talents for more money?

It’s easy to do, it’s easy to say “I’ll take the cheque,” – I’ve got a kid coming, and how’s that going to be, when we get to Christmas and there’s only a couple o’ Gs in the bank, are we just gonna have a few fuckin’ roasted horse-chestnuts this year. It’s hard. “The gift of love will get us through! God will provide!!”

In America is your first film made ‘in America’ – do you want to do more?

I don’t want to limit myself to just making films in England, or with British directors, that’d be stupid of me. I want to work in America, but whether I want to work in America and play Spiderman’s… arch-enemy… is another thing altogether.

There must be American directors you’d be keen to work with.

Paul Thomas Anderson I’d die to work for. The Coens, they’re the wish-list.

Did you feel pressure because in three of Jim’s previous four films the leading man was Oscar-nominated: Day-Lewis in My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, and Richard Harris in The Field?

My biggest thing was like, “Jim Sheridan’s picked me to do this, okay, he’s seen a couple of my films, he’s obviously seen something, don’t worry, just go on – but he’s worked with Day-Lewis! What can I show this guy that Day-Lewis hasn’t shown him, tenfold! What the fuckin’ ‘ell am I gonna show this guy?” I realised that you provide him with what’s necessary – and don’t try and be anything, don’t deviate from what it’s about, don’t try and do anything extraordinary. Just go in and let your head and your heart lead it, that’s how you’ve gotta go about these things – and forget all that stuff. If you make a film to win an award… you’re dead. It’s nice to be rewarded, but don’t make films with that intention, make films to make films. Everything else is just fuckin’ icin’ on the cake – the film is the thing that’s important.

At one point Johnny remarks that there’s a lot more to acting than just getting the accent right – how important was getting the accent right in your performance?

Some actors do get an accent and think they’ve cracked it, but it’s not about that. It’s like “Look, if I stand up there and do the performance nobody’s gonna give a fuck if I’m talking Swahili – because you’ve got that audience caring about you. It’s obviously got to be an accent of sorts but, you know.

So you aren’t one of these actors who goes into deep research?

Get the accent generically, get the accent and do it, don’t get bogged down in it, and go and perform. The accent is not the be-all and end-all, it should be like a bit of your costume.

What’s coming next?

I did another film with Shane, something that we wrote together and made in three months. We wrote it, raised the money with our producer Mark Herbert, and shot it all in three months – it was an experiment in that way, to just go out and do it.

Then this long-awaited project King of the Gypsies

Hopefully yeah. It could end up being like a Gangs of New York, where we’re always saying we’ll make it, then we’ll end up 50!

Your relationship with Shane is sometimes spoken about in terms of a De Niro / Scorsese partnership.

It’s nice isn’t it. As long as we can keep surprising each other we’ll work together. We’re very honest with each other – we didn’t work together on Midlands because it wasn’t right for us, there wasn’t a part for me.

And will the next film be made on film or video?

Film – Optimum are distributing it. When we started in the early days we did them on video. We didn’t make them for anybody, it’s not like we sat and studied, we just literally would put a wig on and go out and make films. Shane’d ring up and say “What you doin’ this afternoon, let’s go out with a camera.” I’d turn up and he’d have some teeth and that, and I’d say come on, let’s get the kids involved, we’ll do a football film. And it was just for us – then somebody said “What a great idea, you should show them.” To me, they’re just like little snapshots in a photo album, little things that me and Shane do for fun. I sometimes think they should remain that way.

What’s the difference working with DV as opposed to film?

It’s quicker. The film looks fantastic, ‘cause Declan Quinn did a wicked job lighting it. DV’s quicker, that’s all it is. When we were shooting Party People there was no hanging around, it was just in, out…

Does it change the acting technique you use?

You just keep riffing all day on DV. It only suits a certain aesthetic – we couldn’t have shot In America on DV – the film was movie, it wasn’t supposed to look like a dogme film.

So if somebody sees this film’s coming up, just the title and the fact that you’re in it with Samantha Morton, how would you sum it up?

Fuckin’ ‘ell! I don’t know, mate! I’m terrible at things like that… I’m not good at summing up. I’d say it’s a human story about… a family… rediscovering… I don’t fuckin’ know!!!”

For the review of In America click here.

by Neil Young

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