I want to start by talking about it as you guys heard of the internet had a
chance a little while ago to go visit with PML at his house leaked out where
he keeps all kinds of crazy monsters and frankenstein's and you have not seen
that you have not experienced no I have never been I really want to go its own
way he talks about it like it's his own private disneyland it's you know it's
sounds extraordinary and I get a sense of what it's like just from working with
him for four or five months and and seeing his extraordinary passion for for
all of his great loves you know he said someone who finds beauty in the shadows
you know and he loves gothic material in the he's such a collector of all that
stuff so yeah one day open Invitational be in the mail
what's fascinating about him is that he surrounds himself with all this creepy
stuff and we have a little clip from from that visit do you guys want to see
inside the house and we play there
your favorite monster creature is to me the most moving unreliable and amazing
design houses and library two houses actually here
drawn here and we design something we want to show you a little curiosity than
I thought when I was a teenager York we ended up using the basis for the insect
on
never scared in these houses men will never never never never ever ever so
what I found fascinating as he is surrounded by all these creepy crawlies
and monsters and yet he himself is this delightful and very sweet man and it
seems unfathomable that he would come out but all that kind of support come
out of his imagination was that your experience in working yeah I it's
amazing when you meet him he's he is such a warm generous good-natured sweet
sensitive man you know and being around on set with him is a very very light
very light and light-hearted set to be on but he i think he finds out he's so
why's he understands that all of our lives our abundance of the light in the
dark and I think he understands the places of the darker aspects of our
nature and our world that make for interesting story to tell in in film as
a reflection of its a safe place to reflect those those thoughts feelings
and things that happen but it's I found I i genuinely found his wisdom
extraordinary extraordinary to be around
and crimson peak for him is is is he's poured his heart into it it's it's a
love song to everything he admires to the genre of Gothic romance in
literature and in cinema to hammer horror to gothic fiction like the Bronte
sisters and the mysteries of you'd offer by Ann Radcliffe and Horace Walpole and
although the study he dearly loves that stuff was not necessarily familiar to
you right you are not you didn't come up as a gothic romance fan right
not particularly it's I mean I was always familiar with the archetypes I
think it's impossible to grow up in England and not be understanding
understanding that the trajectory of Gothic romance is that there is always a
young pure hearted innocent heroine who is drawn towards a dark stranger with a
mysterious past and and and and its she falls in love perhaps which is drawn by
her sexuality towards him and then he always has a crumbling mansion on the
hill you think they know better but that you know these archetypes that actually
at the time were incredibly revolutionary you know this was a deeply
repressed time and especially things like the sexuality of young women and
and and the darker aspects of our imagination were never discussed it was
not societally appropriate and so gothic romance with genres that that I should
was predominantly came from women and was a way of exploring those themes that
the how love is a force of change and is chaotic
and often dangerous and it can empower you into situations which are terrified
when you approach a really really dive into a lot a lot of research in this
case your character is a kind of inventor and did you study you know
nineteenth century early 20th century engineering well I thought I did well I
would make it an appalling engineer but I the reason I do it is because I need
to I feel I always feel I need to create a an imaginative context which is very
rigorously built and then I can be free and if they're not so that's the sort of
that's why do the research is so that I can I understand the world the director
is creating and then once I inhabited I can be free with my instinct and China
acting is really about instinct and feeling is not about intellect but you
can't just be bringing sweetly as it's not it's a very very rigorously
controlled environment so I need to it's almost like I need to put Yemen's ideas
on my own wallpaper and then and then moving but is not necessarily a good guy
do you gravitate towards people like you who who enjoy flourish in the shadows i
think im just always loved playing complicated people because I think
people are complicated and I as part of the kind of I enjoy the amateur
psychological investigation if you like I'll I like trying to find the common
humanity and characters which are dangerous or unsettling and there's a
return to my shop in the film which I found very moving in the script you know
he's someone who presents himself with an external charisma elegance and
sophistication and behind that is about guilt and shame and then beneath that is
a is a vulnerability which means character attacks into in an hour to
move on ability discovers a new kind of courage which I found very I just found
it very moving so this movie is a gothic romance but you've also got a couple of
other films coming out and one of which we get to hear you saying you play Hank
Williams yes I do ya and was a terrifying to take on something somebody
is hank Williams like that it was daunting initially but that's part of
the thrill of a challenge for me and think about I think the thing I wanted
to do to invest myself in with with I found the screenplay so moving and music
has a huge impact on my life you know there's a there's a phrase the SAS
Walter Payton said all aspires to the condition of music I think music is the
most evocative the most immediate the most emotional art form and the more
honest about hank Williams the more I realized that he is a cornerstone in the
landscape of American music without hang we simply music as we know it doesn't
look the same he inspired Bob Dylan and Keith Richards and Johnny Cash and Bruce
Springsteen you ask all those guys you know who's up there in the in the in the
past the end as their inspirations and they talked about and bank in many ways
was the first rock star and he was very poor and he was from was born in 1923 in
Alabama any any any had he was very weak he he
he was too weak to work on the railroad work on the far more or join the draft
and and and the thing he found he was good at from a very young age he could
play the guitar and exchange virtual money he was told the guitar by this man
group is pain and Tito a black man who taught in the blues and and so really
hank Williams this is someone who's like she's channeling this extraordinary
blues tradition and infusing it with his own style and creating country music or
not creating it but but taking it on a step from the Star Band and Roy Acuff
you with a big stars at the time did you do you feel like you have a
responsibility as a performer when you're capturing especially certainly
when you're playing real-life people but even these moments in history which are
clearly really read up on do you feel like your responsibility as a performer
to tell us the truth about that the responsibilities huge simply because I
felt a responsibility to his legacy 222 his family and to all the people to whom
means so much i mean I got to Nashville International six weeks ahead of
shooting in this extraordinary time I lived with a musician called Rodney
Crowell and he was my tutor in the ways of the blues and just being in Nashville
and understanding you people come up and say oh you're playing you know my
granddaddy used to play songs when I was just a week it on his need to realize it
behind means so much to so many people and so the responsibility is is profound