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December 7, 2014 11:24 am  #61


Re: The Interviews Thread


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I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window there. Was there ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?

 

December 8, 2014 8:27 am  #62


Re: The Interviews Thread

Yes, and some very interesting and intelligent questions from the live audience, too. 


___________________________________________________
"Am I the current King of England?

"I see no shame in having an unhealthy obsession with something." - David Tennant
"We did observe." - David Tennant in "Richard II"

 
 

December 8, 2014 9:36 am  #63


Re: The Interviews Thread

A very interesting interview/Q&A indeed. And like he said in one answer he has to prepare a wedding. I'm picturing him as Sherlock doing that. You know "swan" or "Sydney opera house" LOL


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Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from!


 
 

December 8, 2014 5:44 pm  #64


Re: The Interviews Thread

Apparently it will be a very small affair.


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December 8, 2014 7:25 pm  #65


Re: The Interviews Thread

Yeah I know, that's why I'm picturing him sitting on the floor deciding between swan or  Sydney opera house napkins.

It would be really weird if they would do it like the Beckhams.  We really would have to worry then.


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Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from!


 
 

December 8, 2014 7:41 pm  #66


Re: The Interviews Thread

I have no idea what the Beckhams did...a 'Hello' wedding?


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December 8, 2014 8:11 pm  #67


Re: The Interviews Thread

Yes, very over the top like we know them or used to know them, they almost a bit normal these days.

I hope Sophie and Ben won't be bothered by photographers. 

Last edited by Ivy (December 8, 2014 8:12 pm)


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Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from!


 
 

December 8, 2014 8:21 pm  #68


Re: The Interviews Thread

I think it'll be private.


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December 8, 2014 8:59 pm  #69


Re: The Interviews Thread

besleybean wrote:

I think it'll be private.

It does seem more their style--private and small.


____________________

"Oh, you meant 'spectacularly ignorant' in a NICE way."
 

January 28, 2015 3:23 am  #70


Re: The Interviews Thread

I hope this is the right place to put this.  It's a video of an interview that Ben did on November 7/14 in LA with BAFTA Los Angeles.  It's almost an hour long - boy... does he talk!!  :-))  Seriously though, he goes into such details about his early days, he stay in his gap year with Buddhist monks, acting, etc.  It is wonderful to hear him just talking.  It's titled Behind Closed Doors with Benedict Cumberbatch.  I kind of love that title.

Enjoy!

http://vimeo.com/111697759

-Val


"The only shipping I know is shipping containers."
                                           -Benedict Cumberbatch
 

January 28, 2015 8:28 am  #71


Re: The Interviews Thread

Seems very interesting, can´t wait to watch it.


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I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window there. Was there ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?

 

January 28, 2015 4:45 pm  #72


Re: The Interviews Thread

I am sure you will enjoy it! 

When I posted the link I had only listened to about half of it (I was that anxious to get it up) but I went back and finished and I can tell you it is absolutely wonderful. 

Even though it was in LA there seemed to be an international audience (I think there were a lot of acting students in attendance).  He did take questions from the audience over the half way point but I think there were only 3 people who got questions owing to the fact that BC went into some very lengthy answers and tried I think to provide detailed explanations to their quiries.  After one really lengthy answer (which was just amazing in the way he allowed us into his acting approach) the host said "This is reallly like a Master Class in acting!" and Ben replied something like "Yes, I guess it is - isn't supposed to be?" 

He also joked about being so chatty and really taxing people's bladders and tiring folks out.  At one point when the third person asked their question he said "You don't have to stand during my reply. Please sit down, my child." And then he immediately apologised for calling her a child (saying it was obvious she wasn't a child at all, etc.) in such a sincere way - I think it is in his nature to quickly apologise for any thing he says that might be perceived as even unintentionally hurting someone's feelings.  It just really struck a chord with me after all the current things.  

At one point he goes into a comprehensive reply about the different forms of acting (Method vs. Classical) and how he employs a range of technics.  Just fascinating in its own to hear his thoughts on the subject but highly entertaining as well.  Just by coincidence I found this bit on the internet about British actors in American movies.  It goes somewhat into the training that classical actors (like Cumberbatch) get as opposed to the sometimes less formal training a number of American actors receive (it is rather broad in its approach but it has a certain point that is interesting).  Ben and Travis touched upon this briefly in their interview.   You can read the article if you like here -

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2015/01/28/selma-british-actors/

When I read it, it reminded me of what Ben had said in this video and how he benefited from having an extensive history of "troding the boards" before he hit it big and why he thought it was so important.  

There is one particularly funny bit that he had the audience roaring - when he acts out following a director's instructions on how to sit "relaxed".  It is just hilarious.

This is just the tip of what he touched upon.  Believe me it is utterly mesmerising in content alone - added benefit... just seeing him so engaged for almost a straight hour.   

-Val

Last edited by Ah-chie (January 28, 2015 4:53 pm)


"The only shipping I know is shipping containers."
                                           -Benedict Cumberbatch
 

January 29, 2015 8:57 pm  #73


Re: The Interviews Thread

Thanks for the interview link, Ah-chie, fascinating and engaging. He's really thought into what he does and how he does it, and conveys it so well. 

(That second link to the article just gets me to the front page of Inside Movies EW, but no article.) 


____________________

"Oh, you meant 'spectacularly ignorant' in a NICE way."
 

January 29, 2015 10:07 pm  #74


Re: The Interviews Thread

Good that I read in another thread that this interview was posted here. Definitely worth my time. 


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I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window there. Was there ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?

 

January 29, 2015 10:13 pm  #75


Re: The Interviews Thread

I'm glad you liked it REReader!

Sorry about the wonky link.  I did check it (and it works for me) but obviously it doesn't link up for everyone.  To alleviate that problem for you I will reproduce it in long form below...

What does the latest British invasion say about the state of American acting?by Jeff Labrecque

Martin Luther King Jr., is a celebrated American icon. His wife, Coretta, was a beloved American public figure. President Lyndon Johnson was a colorful Texan, and Governor George Wallace was a good ol’ boy son of the South from Alabama.

In director Ava DuVernay’s Best Picture nominee about the 1965 Selma civil-rights march, however, they’re portrayed by David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, and Tim Roth, respectively, who share at least one thing in common: They’re British.

Selma isn’t an exception—rather, the Brits seem to be everywhere lately. Last year’s Best Picture winner, 12 Years a Slave, about a 19th-century free black man tricked and trafficked into Southern bondage, starred multiple British actors, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Cumberbatch, and German-born, Irish-raised Michael Fassbender. (The biggest American star in the film, Brad Pitt, played a Canadian.)

12 Years was directed by a Brit—Steve McQueen—which could be one possible explanation for his film’s British-heavy cast. But the same can’t be said for several other high-profile recent and upcoming films. The American hero in Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, for example, is played by Jack O’Connell, an Englishman. David Fincher selected English actress Rosamund Pike as his Amazing Amy in Gone Girl. Fifty Shades’ Christian Grey was initially going to be played by Charlie Hunnam, an Englishman; when he dropped out, he was quickly replaced by Jamie Dornan, an Irishman. “I went to see a movie,” says Richard Hicks, president of the Casting Society of America, “and four casting directors were sitting around talking about, ‘What’s up with all the Brits and Australian actors snagging all the leads?’”

Of course, no one’s entitled to a role because of their accent or where they’re born. That’s always been true, even before Vivien Leigh won the role of Scarlett O’Hara. But recently, there’s been a visible surge in the number of British—and the occasional Aussie—actors and actresses winning plum roles in many of Hollywood’s most prestigious films (as well as many of the biggest franchise blockbusters). In 2011, British director Stephen Frears (The Queen) told an interviewer, “There is some sort of crisis in American acting“—and suggested this could be due to a lack of proper training, specifically theater training. Calling it a ”crisis” might be a bit drastic, but with an English Superman, a British-bred Spider-Man, an English Daisy Buchanan, a British Mad Max, a German-Irish Steve Jobs—to say nothing of the current British invasion that’s raised the quality of American television—it seems like a good time to at least contemplate whether the roots of this recent trend can be found in how both sides of the Atlantic are prepping its talent for Hollywood casting calls.

For decades, there were two major schools of thought when it came to acting: the Classical, which was best epitomized by Laurence Olivier, and the Method, which revolutionized the art form in America once James Dean and Marlon Brando brought it to the big screen. Classical was more of an outside-in approach, which emphasized a more presentational style associated with the stage. Method, rooted in Constantin Stanislavski’s theories, was more naturalistic, more inside-out. “For many years, there was a schism,” says James Lipton, a pupil of Stella Adler’s teachings and the longtime host of Inside the Actors Studio. “The British stressed training in voice and posture and the physical attributes, whereas the American training is deep rooted in the actor’s emotions.”

But in 2015, what was once a contentious rivalry is no longer an either/or proposition, as both schools implement elements of the other’s philosophies into their own training. Why then, do the Brits seem to have an edge? ”There is a lot of stage work in a lot of British drama school training, but I think it’s more to do with how we ask them to think about characters, how we ask them to be imaginative, and to change themselves,” says Joanna Read, describing the dramatic skills that current students are taught at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, which counts Cumberbatch, Ejiofor, and Oyelowo among its scores of famous alums and where she has been principal since 2010. “Our training will ask an actor to really play against type at times, to play a role that they wouldn’t necessarily be cast in in the profession, in order to work out and transform how they move towards that character. It’s almost like putting on a second skin.”

That academic challenge of portraying characters that aren’t obviously suited to an actor might be an essential building block that pays off down the road. “If you look at these English actors—David Oyelowo, Tom Wilkinson, Tim Roth—they’re accustomed to playing character-actor roles,” says Lipton. “Which is to say, they are very good at playing roles that are quite distant from themselves, physically, even emotionally. They are able to find, in those strangers, a core that resonated with themselves, so they are just as truthful playing that as they would be playing someone just like themselves on screen.”

Avy Kaufman, the casting director who discovered Andrew Garfield for Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs and recruited Oyelowo to play the eloquent Union soldier who recites the Gettysburg Address to Daniel Day-Lewis in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, thinks a shrinking world has opened the doors for all sorts of international talent. “It’s not that all these actors are better than the American actors, but I think we’re just opening up to more—and we’re all excited to find something new and different,” she says. “Lincoln was a very American story, but I just felt like I should say, ‘This guy’s the best for this.’ It doesn’t matter that he’s not American. He’s got the accent down. May the best man win.”

Nowadays, the best man doesn’t even have to be in Los Angeles to audition. “Instead of meeting an actor or having to see the actor audition in the room, I can audition them via Skype and have nearly the same experience,” says Hicks. “Quality acting is quality acting, and you can recognize that even when you’re thousands of miles away.”

Lipton believes, however, that the Brits do enjoy at least one built-in advantage—one that’s also a product of geography. While American actors generally have to chose between going to New York to work in the theater or settling in Los Angeles to find fame on television and the movies, the British dramatic community—film/TV/theater—is mostly centrally located around London. “The English have the advantage of being able to go back and forth, from Downton Abbey to a stage production,” he says.

But perhaps the biggest factor leading to the perception that American actors are falling behind is that the path to Hollywood fame in this country doesn’t necessarily go through the Actors Studio or Juilliard or the Yale School of Drama. Though Hollywood has its share of Jessica Chastains and Mark Ruffalos, well-trained professionals who studied at revered dramatic institutions, the difference might lie in the other cases, in which actors get a break in Hollywood with limited training or acting background. “I think our culture, in which we take reality-show fame as a measure of success, means that we feel like, ‘Oh, it just happens to you and then you’re famous,” says Hicks.

It might be even more subtle and widespread than the reality-show mentality Hicks mentions. In a Hollywood that feeds on young stars—many of which are groomed as kids on television—early success can stunt artistic growth. “The kids that start out as stars when they’re 19 or 20, they never had a chance to learn their craft, and because they become stars, there’s never a chance to catch up,” says Lipton.

“They’re not going to knock off for a year and study. They’re going to keep on making movies, as many as they can, as fast as they can. Some learn on the job. Some are geniuses, so they figure it out.”
But for every Jennifer Lawrence or Leonardo DiCaprio—instinctual wunderkinds whose talent and work ethic keep them at the top—there is a huge middle class of popular American actors who reach the age of 30 and suddenly find themselves overmatched by more disciplined foreign-educated artists. Actors who spent three years in their early twenties, for example, just learning how to properly speak and move while their American counterparts were auditioning for a Coke commercial and the new fall pilot. Cumberbatch was 30 before anyone in America knew who he was. Tom Hiddleston, a 2005 graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, was about the same age when he landed the role of Loki. “The demand for what we’re offering is something that is universally wanted,” says Read. “Their skills are very good technically, so that whether they’re on set, on location, or stage, they’re ready and able to hit the ground running.”In other words, the British are coming… because Hollywood needs them.

[Correction: An early version of this story erroneously referred to Jack O’Connell as Irish. His father is Irish, but he was born and raised in England.]

Hope this helps. 

-Val


"The only shipping I know is shipping containers."
                                           -Benedict Cumberbatch
 

January 29, 2015 10:51 pm  #76


Re: The Interviews Thread

Many thanks for the article, Val, that's really interesting. I'd heard the New York/LA, theater/film explanation before, but the training differences taken together with the ease of long-distance auditioning makes even more sense. ... Actually, I'd guess it's a little of all these differences added together.


____________________

"Oh, you meant 'spectacularly ignorant' in a NICE way."
 

January 29, 2015 10:58 pm  #77


Re: The Interviews Thread

Thanks for the comment.  I thought the article really tied in nicely with what Ben was discussing at a certain point on the video.  I like his approach to acting - it is very "all encompassing" and yet it shows clearly he has a strong background in classical theatre training.  I have never acted (other than in school plays) but I am extremely interested in theatre and films (and I did a bit of reviewing professionally when I was a newspaper reporter at one time before I became a teacher). 

-Val


"The only shipping I know is shipping containers."
                                           -Benedict Cumberbatch
 

May 18, 2015 4:36 am  #78


Re: The Interviews Thread

http://nerdist.com/nerdist-podcast-benedict-cumberbatch/

I stumbled across this podcast interview today while searching for Benedict's reading of Kafka's Metamorphosis (and found it! Yay!). It's also available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZzsJQURujc.

It's a little old, from December 2014, so some of you have probably heard it already but I thought is post it here for those like me who didn't know it existed (I searched the forum and found it mentioned in the Johnlock debate thread but nowhere else).

It runs at over 1 hour (I haven't listened to all of it yet) but sounds like it's full of Cumberbatch gold You can easily skips the first few minutes of junk, BC finally gets on the mike at 4:20 . Enjoy!


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October 24, 2016 5:11 pm  #79


Re: The Interviews Thread

I wasn't sure where to put this, or if I should give it it's own thread... 

But Ben was on the LBC show earlier today... he talked Doctor Strange... the lady tried getting him to talk about Sherlock but it ended up being about tennis instead... and the refugee crisis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWuqvrCL41o


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Don't talk out loud, you lower the IQ of the whole street!"

"Oh Watson. Nothing made me... I made me"
"Luuuuurve Ginger Nuts"

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October 24, 2016 5:15 pm  #80


Re: The Interviews Thread

Loved the interview. I skipped the first part since I ready it was very spoilerish. The rest is excellent. 


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"To fake the death of one sibling may be regarded as a misfortune; to fake the death of both looks like carelessness." Oscar Wilde about Mycroft Holmes

"It is what it is says love." (Erich Fried)

“Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame. I’m also a great believer in treating others as you would like to be treated.” (Benedict Cumberbatch)



 
 

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