(percussive intro)
- I'm Oliver Trevena in studio for The Hollywood Reporter,
joined by the brilliant Alessandro Nivola.
How are you sir?
- Thanks for that.
- It's true though!
I was genuinely excited about it.
I mean, you're one of those actors that you hear the name
and you're like, "Yes! When is he coming in?"
We can hug.
We can hug, but I might not let go.
(both laugh)
It's true, you just, and I don't know what the secret is,
I guess no one knows what the secret is,
but you've just continued, continued, continued, continued.
Great choices, great projects, great roles,
and I guess that's the key to it, right?
- To continue?
- Well to continue definitely helped,
but how did you do that?
Answer the question that every actor wants to know.
- I've always been drawn to roles that were really different
from myself, that's the main thing.
And maybe it happened by accident when I was younger
and I was just starting out,
and one of the first things that I got,
sort of a lot of attention for,
was the role that I played in Face/Off.
And it was such a kind of odd little character
that it kind of opened up a world of possibility for me,
because people who are casting movies sort of thought,
"Well, if he could play that, then maybe he could play this
"that's also totally different, in another different way."
- They saw beyond the image a bit more.
- Yeah, so I just wasn't ever, from the beginning
I wasn't ever really confined to playing young guys like me,
I was doing all kinds of weird,
tweaked little people.
And so, that just made for variety, I guess.
- Right, which is a perfect segue into Disobedience,
'cause that isn't, that's not you, right?
I mean it's a big change,
there was a lot that went into that.
- Yeah. That was, I mean this was
maybe the most that I've had to research
anything that I've ever done.
Which was a great challenge, I mean it was a gift.
You're always looking for that,
something that you can really spend months--
and also I was offered the job longer in advance
than I normally get offered work, you know?
- Which would help, for a role like this.
You'd like to think.
- Yeah, I mean, I needed time to learn to speak Hebrew.
- Right, an Orthodox Jew, for anyone that doesn't know
what we're talking about, this is what--
- Yeah, do I need to explain what the hell is going on here?
- Well now you can understand the work that went into that.
- You know, I was playing a Hasidic,
or an English Orthodox Jewish rabbi.
And yeah, I mean I--
look, my grandmother was German Jewish,
but she wasn't very religious, in fact she turned,
in the 1930s had moved to Milan to escape Hitler
but then went to art school there,
and she was kind of like a wild bohemian artist
and met this Catholic Italian guy there,
married him, and so--
- So, safe to say you started from scratch on this?
- Yeah, it didn't really help...
- Right, you couldn't pull anything from that experience.
- She definitely wasn't saying the right
Hebrew blessings over our meals at dinner,
but I was lucky enough to meet this woman
whose kids went to, go to my kid's school in Brooklyn,
and she had been the daughter of a Hasidic rabbi,
and had left the Orthodoxy herself
because she fell in love with this Asian guy
and got pregnant out of wedlock and was like,
"I'm done with it!"
And has been living as a totally modern woman.
But she still had all these siblings
that were in the Lubavitch Hasidic community
in Crown Heights in Brooklyn,
which is not far from where I live.
So she came and introduced me to all of them,
and I started hanging around with all of her family,
and they kind of were determined that I get this right.
And they were really worried that I was gonna get it wrong.
- Because it's really, it's a prominent part of the movie,
and I think, you mention Brooklyn,
that's where all of us live, there's these little pockets.
You know, you kind of don't know much unless you're in it.
- Yeah. And if you walk down the street,
if I would walk down the street normally,
they wouldn't look twice at me.
And so I wouldn't have had the opportunity
to really get inside at all, if it hadn't been for
this woman and for these people who kind of welcomed me in.
But pretty soon, I was like, you know,
this guy was teaching me all these Hebrew blessings
I had to say, and was inviting me to their Shabbat dinners,
and I really had a close encounter in a thrilling way.
So it took a big commitment,
and I was nervous about representing them accurately.
And I felt the burden of responsibility as well,
because my character kind of represents the religion,
and that particular way of life in the film.
And if I didn't do it in a way that was faithful
to the reality, it could be disrespectful,
or also it would just hurt the film.
- It's a big order.
- Yeah.
- They cast, obviously, Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams,
and this story of, you know, the forbidden love, I guess.
And it touches on a lot, in the movie, in the way that
it shows you, you know, you can take your own path in life.
I feel like there's a lot of messages in there,
which is why it's incredible.
The chemistry you guys have is amazing.
Did you guys meet before the movie to prep much?
Because obviously you mentioned you knew about the project
a while before, did they?
Did you all get together, was there much rehearsal?
- Well, they, so--
Rachel Weisz, is a producer on the project,
and she had found the book and brought the book
to one of the other producers, Frida Torresblanco,
who ended up developing with her,
so she'd been involved from the inception.
Rachel Weisz and I had done another movie together,
about 20 years ago, which was
this little Michael Winterbottom movie called "I Want You"
that nobody saw, but that brought me
over to England for the first time.
It was like, my second film role, right after Face/Off.
And I hadn't really intended to have so much of my career
play out in the UK, which it ended up doing
as a result of that film.
So I knew her really well, and we'd seen each other
over the years, and so that was Rachel Weisz.
And then McAdams, I didn't know at all,
but she and I were in the same boat in terms of
having to really do this research,
and we were both shit scared, and, am I allowed to say that?
- You said it.
(both laugh)
So you had that in common.
- So yeah, we were kind of, we met fairly early on,
I think we had a kind of little rehearsal
where we read through this script in New York
before we even went over to the UK at all,
and so she and I were in touch via email.
And also, the accent we were using
is a very particular accent, it's a London accent,
it's a North London accent, but that it has
a little bit of a kind of Yiddish inflection
in a way that, there's a New York version of it
where in Brooklyn you hear a Brooklyn accent,
but there's like, this kind of,
the "t"s and the "d"s, there's a little bit,
they kind of hang on their "d"s and their "g"s,
and so that sound is,
there is a London equivalent of that,
that I really wanted to try and get,
and I was hearing it when I was there,
and I was recording people into my iPhone a lot,
and sort of trying to hear what that felt like
and what that sounded like.
- So good, by the way.
Even just listening now, I'm kind of, I'm amazed.
I struggle to speak British,
and then there's you just popping in and out of everything.
It's amazing.
- Well, I love doing it, I've always loved--
my voice has always been a big part of
character and performance, and it's often been
a kind of starting off point for me.
Even if it's not an accent, just like,
the sound of my voice in whatever character it might be.
So I tend to fixate on that as one of the very first things.
And so she was too, and we had to sound like we were
from the same place, and that we'd been married
for 15 years or whatever,
so we spent some time together working on that, as well.
- It's nice to get a bit of practice time for that.
- Yeah. All these things, look--
the more time you have to prep for something,
it's always better.
I used to think "Oh, it takes away the spontaneity,"
or whatever, and I think that's total B.S.
You know, even in the theater, I used to not
memorize my lines until shortly before we were
up in front of an audience, 'cause I thought
through the rehearsal process that if I knew my lines,
I would have kind of a rote way of saying them,
and that that would take away from the discovery
of the rehearsal process.
And then, this last time I was on Broadway,
I was doing The Elephant Man with Bradley Cooper,
and we had done it before, a year before,
at Williamstown, as a sort of trial run over the summer,
and as a result,
the lines came back to me really really quickly,
and so by the time we were in rehearsal I knew them already.
And it was the most liberating experience of my life.
And it just goes to show--
- Especially for Broadway, too, yeah.
- Yeah, and any kind of process,
the more time you have, the more you live with it,
the more it really can settle in and become part of you.
- Amazing.
Well, clearly, whatever you're doing, keep doing it.
- Should we hug again?
- We can hug again.
By the way, we can make this the interview of hugging.
I just don't think other people
would appreciate what we're going through.
So, I mentioned Rachel Weisz and Michelle Pfeiffer
and De Niro, and all these people, McAdams,
that we just spoke about, that you've worked with.
Anyone on a call sheet that hasn't been on there yet
that springs to mind?
I mean I'm sure there's many,
but the first one that you'd like to work with.
- Oh, that I haven't worked with yet?
- Yeah, 'cause you go through your resume,
and it's literally like, IMDB's top 500 of all time. So...
- Well, there's some, I don't know if he's acting anymore,
I always wanted to work with Gene Hackman.
I met David Mamet
for this movie that Gene Hackman was gonna star in,
to star opposite him.
I can't remember what it was called,
but I remember sitting down in this meeting
with David Mamet, and the first thing Mamet said was,
"So, can you go toe-to-toe with Hackman?"
And I was like--
- It's a big question.
- "Yeah...?"
- Just say "yes." Even if you don't believe it.
That's when you just say yes.
- So I always wanted to go toe-to-toe with Hackman,
but--
- Who knows?
- I wasn't given the opportunity that time.
Who else?
They're all retiring!
Daniel Day-Lewis, he's retired.
- Let's get him out of retirement, we wanna see this.
We're gonna end with THR's top five, five easy questions.
I hope they're easy anyway,
otherwise I'm not gonna get that hug at the end.
TV show you watched as a kid that you wish you were in?
- Oh... Night Rider?
- Yes. Right?
KITT? Drive the car too?
Maybe that Bugati that you just had KITT in it.
- (laughs) I don't think so.
- One of our jokes.
- KITT would never be that declasse.
- (laughs)
One actor who inspired you growing up?
- Okay, I guess I'll say...
Dustin Hoffman.
I saw him in a movie of Death of a Salesman,
and I, for some reason, really loved it.
- There you go.
- He called me up after he saw Laurel Canyon,
that was the only time I've ever had
any communication with him.
- But what an amazing full circle that is, look at that.
Last show you binge-watched? If you do binge-watch.
- Well, it was a miniseries, Howard Zinn.
It's just been on, Hayley Atwell stars in it.
I'm going to do a thing in the UK now
called Foreign Skies, it's produced by the same guy,
Colin Callender, and it's gonna be shot
by the same guy who is this great Polish--
why are all great DPs Polish?
- I don't know.
- All great cinematographers are Polish.
- They have a great DP school in Poland.
- They do?
- Polish School of DP. Is that what it is?
- They do. In fact, the guy who shot the movie
I did with Rachel Weisz before was Polish.
His name was Slawomir Idziak.
- See, I wouldn't even try that.
- Shoutout.
- I would just call him Slav.
I'd be like, "Slav did it."
- "Oy, Slav."
- Oy, oy oy, Slav. He's got me down now as well.
One word to describe your journey as an actor.
- Like a Jackson Pollock painting or something?
Oh, one word.
- By the way, that was a better answer.
- Splatter, splatter.
- I don't think I could have asked most people,
"One painting to describe your career."
- I just mean there's no continuity to it whatsoever.
- Amazing, okay.
- Just hurl paint at the wall and see what sticks.
- Last question, just anything random that pops up,
one thing we might not know about you.
- Oh, um...
I've got orthotics inside my boots.
- I do too.
- Do you?
- Yeah, I got em down at the chiropractor.
- Do we need to hug?
- We hug now, we hug now!
Brilliant.
That's enough, enough of the hugging.
Or maybe not, it might continue, but we're cutting this.